When Our Spirit Leaves God

[HKHaugan]

Here is the critical loss that began the downward spiral of mankind into sin’s aloneness. It was the spiritual disobedience of Adam and Eve that separated them from God’s Spirit. They were tempted to think and make choices apart from God. Then they carried them out on their own.
That was when they lost spiritual contact with God and when they lost their spiritual perspective. The first symptoms of their separation were shame, guilt, fear, hiding from God and each other and feeling alone. That is what spiritual separation, aloneness, is all about. Aloneness in one’s body is spiritual separation from God, from one another and from the physical universe around us. It’s that personal sense of everything being on the outside and desiring to gain back the oneness with it that we lost. It’s the sea of the external that we spend our lives wandering and wondering through. You can hear it in expressions like “Being at one with nature” “Getting in touch with your past” “It’s a jungle out there” “They get all the breaks” “I’m going to travel until I find a place I’m comfortable” “If only my parents understood me” “My kids are a complete mystery” “I’m waiting for Mr. Right” “I’ve got to have someone to turn to.”

And who doesn’t remember the yearning lyrics “Someday I’ll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me. Where troubles melt like lemon drops away above the chimney tops, that’s where you’ll find me’, Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue…” Nostalgia, reminiscences, ‘shoulda-coulda-wouda’, regret, remorse not to mention the tears that come in emotional movie scenes, all clearly defining the spiritual emptiness called aloneness. And speaking of ‘somewhere,’ my own experience of seeing “West Side Story” for the first time and hearing the pleading lyrics “There’s a place for us, a time and place for us. Hold my hand and we’re half way there, hold my hand and I’ll take you there, somewhere, some place, somewhere…” They hit me hard and tapped into in my own aloneness and made me conscious that until I could get outside myself, until I reached out to the One who made me I would stay alone, be alone and wander alone ‘in the land of Nod, east of Eden’…forever.

Anything less than a personal relationship with God in Jesus is being lost in the land of Nod east of Eden. Nod is full of gurus for the mind, the heart and the spirit that wait for the lonely ’I’ in everyone. They are there like distracting neon signs blinking their messages that offer physical, emotional and spiritual poultices, anesthetics, momentary but deceitful satisfaction, dead end promises. They exploit the fear, the guilt, the empty wishing well in everyone. They lurk in the TV screen, the advertising on the highway, the dimly lit bar across town, the shelves of department and book stores and the “I wish I had” houses, cars, pretty faces, trim physiques and top floor offices with framed degrees on the walls.

But when all is said and done the bottom line is having a relationship, a bonding, a tie with another person, a person you can trust implicitly, a wise, listening and caring person. Also we have the need for a group of persons with whom we can share out thoughts, our emotions and our spiritual sense. That’s built into us intentionally.

In the old TV show “Star Trek” Mr. Spock had what was called a ‘mind meld.’ He could lay hands on the head of a person, be at one with them and know what was on their mind. Gene Roddenberry, the producer of that show, knew the desire in people and built that show around the moral insights everyone desires and Mr. Spock was Captain Kirk’s right hand man that kept him honest in a crew that needed honesty to survive their mission which was “to go where no man has gone before.” That mix of personal and moral insight was what made the show so popular. It struck the mind, heart and spirit chords in its viewers.

Note that in all of the foregoing the journey within to find the answer never works. Intuition, insight, wisdom, moral choice cannot come from imperfection which is native to all of us. It has to be personal, penetrating and perfect which means pushing aside our pride and reaching out externally.

Now consider the following story from 20 centuries ago when the Samaritan woman met Jesus at Jacob’s well. As they conversed He summed up her unhappy experiences of five marriages, giving up on marriage and resigning her lonely life to cohabiting with a sixth man. Jesus told her about salvation and that the Father of all mankind wants to be worshiped in spirit and in truth because “God is spirit and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).” When she says that she knows the Messiah to come will explain everything He replies “I who speak to you am He (vs.26).” She was so overwhelmed by the experience she went back to her town and told everyone there, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did (vs.29).” When they went to see Him many believed and their response to the woman was “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man is the Savior of the world (vs.42).” Jesus came from without and touched her within. That is what happened in the rest of the town. They reached out externally.

We are a people spiritually made to be touched within from without, from a perfect Person to solve our imperfection and that Someone to be at one with our aloneness. It was here God’s rescue plan began. It was His heightened awareness of the individuals and their inner struggles He came to put in spiritual perspective, an eternal personal perspective and return that perspective to us. This was His mission. His mission was one of awareness that every moment would find its destination in God the Father, through Jesus in the melding of His Holy Spirit.