When the Heart Leaves God

[HKHaugan]

Jeremiah tells us that the heart is deceptive above all things. Let's look at where we may be.
Suffering is not a word we easily accept in conversation much less in our private thoughts. It brings up all kinds of images in our minds, unpleasant memories, experiences and the emotional shuddering accompanying it. But yet there on life’s highway, just around the curves with few warning signs to alert us, lies this pain collecting noun.

Suffering is not an objective reality, a thing like a jack-in-the-box that springs open and pours out. It’s just a word to describe what we consider the common result of the specific moments of painful physical, emotional and mental experiences while living in this world. ‘Suffering’ is a verbal trigger that spikes our memories of things that hurt, that produced fear and the need to avoid it and them, explain them away or face them. Suffering is an umbrella word we use to gather up the effects of an experience, an event or series of events that carry questions like ‘Why do people suffer?’ and ‘Is there anything we can do to avoid suffering?’

This gathering, this summing up, this verbal coagulation of real events is what we as human beings have done to try and control how we experience anything unpleasant. Then after we find a way to box each experience in the ‘suffering’ package we try and invent a way to deny the package, to define it and then invent techniques to escape it. The danger in this approach is that we don’t allow ourselves the benefit of facing the reality of each moment, learning from it and being alert to use our minds, feel with our hearts and sense with our spirits the contents of the moment.

What we are really doing denying the contents of ‘suffering’ is denying the gift of awareness we have been given by the God who is always aware of everything at every moment in every detail of existence. Being aware of the detail in every next moment is to be living out what an image of God is and does, being aware, evaluating with the mind, feeling with the heart and reacting with the spirit. Of course none of us likes pain in any form but it is part of the life cycle and the specifying of it is what enables us to deal with the whole of our living experience and how each part fits in all the rest.

In the movie “Chariots of Fire” Eric Liddel, who became God’s missionary to China, summed up why he ran feeling pain to the point of collapse. It was one activity among many that helped in the maturing of his faith. “When I run I feel His pleasure,” he said. It was in the moments of pushing himself through the pain that He became more aware of God, aware of the moments of life as well as life itself.

This was the reality Jesus showed in His entire life on earth. He was aware of the details of the intellect, emotionality and spirituality in the physical body in which He was born. He did this to be an example so we could make sense out of what it means to be human as His Father intended. He engaged the negative hostile and fearful people who opposed Him. He went to the sick, the diseased, the broken hearted, to relieve their condition. When challenged by the indifferent secular and religious authorities He answered them with perceptive interpersonal wisdom. Wherever He went true humanity was revealed in Him. His reactions, His presence and His teachings made everyone aware they were dealing with truth for the mind, feeling for the heart and motivation for the spirit to act.

It was His true humanity that threatened the way the world around him wanted to have control over what defined humanity. He confronted every level of self-centeredness that had evolved through sin on every level of society. Whether it was some political, social, economic or religious definition His very presence stood in contrast because He was a true person in mind, heart and Spirit that exposed the opposite in them. By His just being in their midst they read Him as a threat. He had to be eliminated.

What Jesus experienced in His arrest, trial and agony on the Cross were the painful extremities resulting from the fear of who He was and what He had caused in the hearts of those who accepted Him and those whose fear was disguised as world power. But, more than that, He exposed the devil and the powers of evil that corrupt human society. This is what the Cross was all about. He took humanity into the bright light of His truth and Spirit. No one could take the exposure. Not even His disciples. He died for them all and for all of us who would come after Him since we still carry the sting of sin in all its devious patterns.

It’s the awareness of the detail in every next moment that brings our personal consciousness in this world alive. It’s embracing the Cross for each thought, emotion and attitude in Jesus’ perspective that expands us as human beings. The Cross shifts us from self to His example to live as He lived that allows us to enjoy and appreciate the moments we are mad, glad, sad and afraid because His Spirit sorts it all out moment by moment. This what Jesus meant when He said, “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full John 10:10).”

I think David was on to something here when he said, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Ps.73:25-26).”