What's Behind the Curtains?

[HKHaugan]

What’s Behind the Curtains?

When someone has a house built for them windows are important. They let us see the outside world and they let in the light. But sometimes the light is too bright and the windows too plain looking so we cover them with either drapes or curtains. In fact we tend to see the window or curtains as ends in themselves and decorate them in a way that we feel will please others when they come for a visit. It’s kind of an unwritten rule that the functions have to be dressed up to give a good appearance. That matters. Appearance is really not about what is seen but the impression it gives. It’s the unseen impression that matters. Impression carries meaning and meaning is unseen as is the impression itself. This carries us into the meaning of windows and curtains and what they are in our lives. Windows let us see out and let light in to see inside. But what is being centered on here is really about the curtains. Words can be curtains and if we look carefully at Paul’s words here maybe we can pull them apart and see more of what is going on around us. A word covers a meaning waiting to be seen.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities---His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse (Rom.1:20).”

We use words to express ourselves. Ourselves, for instance, is really a word describing invisible persons invisibly processing something that we believe is behind what we see. What are we expressing but a process we cannot see? We may be in physical bodies but what runs them is invisible. So words have meaning, invisible meaning. They are physical sounds with an invisible meaning that has a purpose. We want to express what we can’t see. We want to share what we can’t see. We want a relational experience which is unseeable but factual, real and purposeful.

This is exactly what Paul was emphasizing in all his letters. The question is, why?

For a moment consider one event that happened at Jesus’ crucifixion, the tearing of the Temple curtain from top to bottom (Mt.27:31). It was the signature sign of God tearing, from His throne, the divide that separated man from Him. But there is more to it than that. While it shows that no Temple, no Law, no institution, no culture can separate an individual from the presence of God, everyone has personal access to God by faith in Jesus. But that access involves what happens when God is that personal.

The quote above from Paul’s letter to Roman believers may very well reveal the curtain in his temple of self-centeredness that had to be torn from top to bottom. His curtain was his slavish devotion to the Law. It wasn’t that the Law was bad. It was what the Law pointed to in him that he couldn’t resolve. That was his covetousness (Rom.7:13-25). No matter which way he turned his covetousness was always there and he knew he was guilty and sin was something he couldn’t control. Sin had control of him. He knew it and couldn’t resolve it. Could it be that he was really angry with God? How do you face that inner conflict of anger against a Holy God? Take it out on anything safe and weak appearing. That inner anger is what made him such a devoted persecutor of Christ. Could He find a justifiable way out? The Law he believed in, even if he inside himself was guilty of not being what it called for, was being replaced by a Galilean messianic pretender. Could that have been the way he reasoned?

Paul’s curtain was trying to be right without God. He was using God and the Law to justify himself. That curtain had to be torn open. That is exactly what happened on the Damascus road. He had experienced the very essence of ultimate invisible reality in Jesus who tore his inner curtain from head to toe and the light of Christ exposed him to himself. It wasn’t what could be seen with his eyes but what could only be seen with real sight, spiritual sight, inner sight. This is the reality every person has to eventually see for themselves. No one can inherit it, pay for it, get therapy for it, learn it in school, have a degree in it. It is the nature of conversion, the realization that faith is where we start and where we end. And that faith rests in the person of Jesus. He is the only person and the only name by which the curtain of self-centering sin can be torn from top to bottom. Can we not identify with this soul wrenching process whether over a moment or an extended period?

The rest of his letter to Roman believers rests on that understanding that what happens within is the spiritual breakthrough every person needs.

There are not words enough to express the importance of seeing the invisibility behind all Creation. You look out at the universe and the order of its movement obviates something unseen operating it. Its fact, its meaning, its purpose surrounds us in every moment of our experience as human beings. The fact of what is not seen is the essence from which everything seen comes. Meaning begins as we assess where we are going in the next moment. We cannot wake up without meaning pervading the unseen process guiding our entire being. The whole process of experience is motivated by the purpose we read in just being here. What is first unseen, invisible, beyond physical apprehension. Every cell in our bodies is functioning based on an unseen process and an unseen source, namely the Lord God.

Think about it.

Exactly what is there that can be seen in the way we think, feel, begin every moving element of our being? Nothing. That is the fact of all existing visible reality. It has to be described, analyzed, defined and then categorized for function and the piece it plays in the large context. It’s what runs everything. That is how we understand existence and our place in it.

That understanding is the description of the unseen process of existence, all of it. We are driven not by what we see but by what we don’t see. Understanding, meaning, definition, function, apprehension, knowledge, experience, self-consciousness, fact, quality, eternal, power, excuse, playing a part, essence, Creation, God; all words about the inner self, the unseen self, used to filter what it means to be alive.

For me this invisibility is the talking point to bring into any discussion that we have with people searching to understand why they are here. Those two songs from the past, “What’s It All About Alfie?” and “Is That All There Is?” are everyone’s questions. And isn’t everyone looking for “A Bridge Over Troubled Waters?” to escape ending up in “Heartbreak Hotel” at the end of “lonely street?”

Paul’s resolution becomes ours and we can say with him, “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom.8:1).” That condemnation means it is no longer from God, from others or from one’s own guilt. The Cross and the Resurrection resolved that for us. We have been saved by grace through faith.