Your Shadow Self

I often think about how very blind we are to the beauty, grace, and life that are pulsating, dancing, and shimmering with God’s presence, all around us.  We are like the stumbling oafs in Fairytales who walk though the enchanted forest never seeing the elves, never hearing the trees clap their hands, and oblivious to the treasures lying on the ground at their feet. Some of this blindness is due to not looking for it all and focusing only on what is wrong with creation, people, and life. Much of it, however, is due to a darkness in our souls: a shadow self that casts its spell across all of our senses.

In George MacDonald’s Phantastes*, not long after waking up in Fairyland, Anodos (“ascent” in Greek) comes across a hut in which, when he enters, is an old woman sitting on a chair reading an ancient book. As his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness of the room, he sees a door and is instantly curious as to what lies beyond it.  Without looking up from her book, she cautions him about going through the door. Ignoring her advice, he opens the door and walks inside. (In Fairytales, opening doors one has been advised to not open is Standard Operating Procedure.)

Upon entering, he discovers a great darkness with what he thinks might be stars off in the distance. As he stands there he becomes aware of a dark foreboding presence coming toward him. “All I could tell of its appearance was that it seemed to be a dark human figure.” Stepping back a bit to let this figure pass, he couldn’t see where it had gone.

“Where is he?” I said in some alarm, to the woman who still sat reading.

“There, on the floor, behind you.”

Anodos looks behind him and sees a black shadow the size of a man. Shaken, he asks the woman what it is.

“I told you”, said the woman, “you had better not look in that closet.”

“What is it?” I said, with a growing sense of horror.

“It is only your shadow that has found you.”

Before encountering his shadow, Anodos was able to see fairies and even communicate with them. Now, as he passes through the forest, his shadow casts a pall on everything, blinding him to the realities of Fairyland. Wherever he looks, where there had been magical beauty, there is nothing but emptiness laden with dreariness.

After a short while, Anodos decides that his shadow is not casting a pall on the world around him but is actually portraying the world as it is.

“The most dreadful thing of all was that I now began feeling something like satisfaction in the presence of my shadow. I began to be rather vain of my attendant, saying to myself, ‘In a land like this, with so many illusions everywhere, I need his aid to disenchant the things around me. He does away with all appearances, and shows me things in their true colour and form. And I am not one to be fooled with the vanities of the common crowd. I will not see beauty where there is none. I will dare to behold things as they are. And if I live in a waste instead of a paradise, I will live knowing where I live.’”

Rather than dealing with his shadow, Anodos chooses denial, calling reality an “illusion,” and the illusions created by his shadow, “reality.” While thinking he was no longer being fooled by the “vanities of the common crowd,” his shadow self was actually changing his perceptions of the world into a replica of itself.  

* George MacDonald, “Phantastes,” Wm Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1964.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Presents v Presence

Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.

--Frederick Buechner

No, there is no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it - no place to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Our Satan must go, every hair and feather.

--George MacDonald

Have you ever been struck down by grief? You can barely breathe, your brain can’t hold on to a single thought for longer than a microsecond, and you feel as if your heart is suffocating. Time stops and you are trapped in a horrific nightmare.

“Where are you, God?”

“How could you, God?”

Heal me, deliver me, have mercy on me, I need a miracle, don’t let this happen, please make that happen, make this stop. We want answers and resolutions, for God to explain Himself in ways that will help us understand what is happening and, hopefully, to make right what we believe is wrong, However, God isn’t always all that forthcoming, is He. Well, actually He is, just not in a manner that suits our immediate felt needs.

We want answers. God offers us Himself and asks, in turn, that we offer ourselves to Him. Think of Job. Did God ever answer his questions: explain to him why hell had been unleashed on his life? No. What was it that then that brought peace to his bereaved soul? Seeing God.

We want deliverance, now. God wants to walk with us as we grow in maturity and wisdom.

We want our problems solved. He wants our problems to drive us deeper down into the areas of our souls that have never been touched by His love and truth. While we are asking God to place a band-aid on a cancer, He is insisting upon excising the disease. “Our Satan must go.”

We want all the circumstances that are wrong in our lives to be made right. He wants us to be remade in His image.  

God is there. Our disasters, tragedies, difficulties, and personal failures are His trysting places. Such experiences open spaces in our souls that have yet to see the light of God’s day. We can embrace the dark trial, continually offering ourselves to God, trusting that His love will do His work in us, or we can be distracted by the peripheral pursuit of explanations and remedies that will never be sufficient for healing what ails our souls. While answers may resolve cognitive dissonance only God’s presence heals and transforms.  

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Christ’s Modus Operandi

Jesus is here: New Management, at last! That Old Testament God was a disaster, what with all of His gloom, doom, and moral prudery. But now Christ has arrived and he will put everything right with his love and might.

Do you ever notice how people cherry pick through the words and works of Christ, so as to create a narrative that supports the idea that he is the opposite of the Old Testament Ogre God? To do this, of course, they have to ignore so many of his sayings, such as, “When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” It would be entertaining if the intellectual dishonesty of it all didn’t have such tragic consequences.

Let’s take a look at Jesus’ management style. 

He walks over to the pool of Bethesda, heals a man, and walks out, leaving everyone else in misery.

He miraculously feeds 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes, while there are thousands more across Israel who will be going to bed hungry.

He raises Lazarus from the dead, but leaves all the other corpses in their graves.

He announces that with his coming comes the very Kingdom of God yet refuses to use his power to overthrow the tyrannical rule of Rome or to unseat the corrupt priests of Israel.  

Yes, there were flashes of power here and there – certainly enough to say, I am who I say I am. However, like his Father, he seems to have gone out of his way to not appear as Mr. Fixit.

Christ’s Modus Operandi

This is how our brains work: “If you really are God then this is what you should do.” And “this” is usually some sort of show of force so as to make things “right,” either in the world or in our individual lives. But “force” and “free will” are mutually exclusive, when it comes to God. He will force no one to love and obey Him. Chains are for slaves, not lovers.

“Wilson. I am not thinking of force per say but rather a show of power for the sake of love.”

Really?

We think that if Christ would, say, miraculously feed the world’s starving that people everywhere would flock to his flock. “Wow, He really is a loving God!” You think this would do the trick? You mean like that time God supernaturally fed the Israelites with food from heaven while they were stumbling around in a desert? Tell me, how’d that work out? Did this secure their love and obedience from henceforth? Not hardly.

Christ’s management style is to woo. He stands there in all of His alluring and bloody beauty, never forcing anyone to love and obey him. Once you see him, you are smitten forever and will follow him anywhere.  He doesn’t grab you by the neck and force-feed you with the Ten Commandments. He doesn’t mesmerize with displays of power and, while your system is flooded with endorphins, get you to sign on the dotted line.

“Bloody beauty?” you ask. When Jesus encounters the hateful forces of Israel and Rome, he chooses to yield rather than exert his power, and is hanged on a cross, all for love. If this demonstration of love is not enough to capture our hearts forever, then nothing else will ever be enough: not feeding the world’s starving, not healing all the sick, not making wars to end, not pouring out material wealth on the poor, and not righting all that is wrong. If you aren’t dazzled and smitten by his sacrificial love, then any demonstration of power will ultimately fall under the heading of, “What have you done for me, lately?”

(cont, Presents v Presence)

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014

Where Are My Great Escapes?

We have all heard the biblical stories of God delivering Israel via destroying Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, of how Nebuchadnezzar’s fires did not consume Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and of Peter’s jailbreak with the assistance of an Angel. The scriptures are salted with such miraculous escapes from being in harm’s way. And what is our takeaway from these Great Escapes? That when we get into trouble, when we are descending into a fiery trial, that God will also give us a way out: a miraculous intervention where He saves our bacon. But most of the time—or all of the time—there we sit in our trials, where there is no parting of the Red Sea, no quenching of the flames, and no Angel to guide us out of our prisons.

Our Job-like “friends” announce that we obviously have ticked off the Almighty with our unrighteous behavior. Others echo Job’s wife, telling us to get it over with: to curse God and die. And the bearers of the Good News of Hallmark Cards tell us that, any day now, a rainbow will appear and from then on there will be nothing but smooth sailing.  And right on cue a hurricane barrels through our property, destroying everything we own.

“What’s wrong with me that the God who is love doesn’t see fit to rescue me? After all, you can barely turn a page of the Bible without seeing someone being rescued, healed, or delivered.” Really? What’s wrong is that we have taken isolated events over thousands of years and created a picture of God’s Ways With His People, while ignoring those biblical stories that far outnumber the Great Escapes, where God did not intervene.

“But Monte, God even takes notice of and cares for every sparrow that falls from the sky, how much more so will He care for us.” Yes. He does see that sparrow fall. And there it lies, dead.

The fact that Peter and Paul, two of the greatest leaders and heroes of Christ’s Church were martyred should have at least given us a clue that, in this life, we have not been promised a pain or trouble free existence. “God is with us and loves us” doesn’t mean, “And a good time was had by all.”

You have to wonder just how much of our view of the Normal Christian Life is actually based on the American Dream. But what can you expect when so many ministers here in the US have covered Christ’s Good News with fools gold. 

“Getch’ your Popcorn, Peanuts, Sacraments! Why, one little sip of this spiritual elixir and you will become part of God’s Holy Lake Wobegone, ‘where are all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.’ Get it? Lake Woe-be-gone. Hallelujah!” (With apologies to Garrison Keillor)

We want lives where, metaphorically, we heroes of the faith conquer kingdoms, shut the mouths of lions, and escape the edge of swords, being powerful in battle! (Hebrews 11. 32-34) But what about those who were tortured, or faced jeers and flogging, were stoned to death or sawed in two, or wandered in deserts, destitute, persecuted and mistreated? (11. 35-38) Didn’t the author site these people too as people of faith, worthy of honor?

Christ’s promise to “be with you always” is not a talisman providing good luck and a charmed life. Life can be difficult enough without saddling people with the disastrous idea that if we only had more faith, more of the Holy Spirit, were more holy, and had a head full of “sound theology,” then life would be just peachy. How many people are languishing in a prison of self-hatred because their lives scream, “Where are you God?” all while thinking their plight is a sign of a shameful lack of devotion, rather than simply life this side of heaven? God have mercy.  

(cont)

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2014