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Hanging On

May 27, 2019October 23, 2019
by Dr. Larry Crabb

When I was in private practice as a psychologist, a counselee would sometimes sense a door was opening into a long denied terror. And it was the fear of facing fear that would bring on what felt like a life or death struggle. In a quivering voice the counselee would then say, “If I let myself feel what scares me the most, I think I’d start crying and never stop.”

The writer to the Hebrews told us that Christ has :

“set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.” (Hebrews 2: 15 NLT).

For humans made in God’s image to live alive with God and for God, the fear of dying can be understood as the terror of living without love or meaning, the dread of an existence unprotected from troubles that could destroy all hope of deep satisfaction.

Right now, God’s ways are not making sense to me. Significant prayers, defined as requests not for health or wealth or success or recognition but only for the basics needed for me to feel safe from practical and emotional disaster, for some time have gone unanswered. I find myself enjoying a good television show more than God. I’m not in a good place.

Last night I picked a book off my shelves that I hadn’t read, a book I have no memory of buying. It’s a novel by G.K. Chesterton, one of my favorite authors, a book titled The Ball and the Cross. It’s a fanciful allegory about someone who believes in God arguing with an atheist. The Cross, of course, is the symbol of Christianity; the ball represents the globe, the world peopled with both Christians and atheists.

Early on, Chesterton has a godly man suspended above the ball desperately hanging on to a cross, swinging above “the sickening emptiness of air”. If the cross doesn’t support him, he will fall into nothingness, a pointless existence. Chesterton describes this man’s experience in a way that revived something in me. The man suspended by a cross above the ball

“… felt in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger was terror itself… His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too desperately desiring to be safe” (my emphasis).[1]

I read this into Chesterton’s phrase: one chance of coming out safely from an unmanageable, soul-threatening challenge to faith in God “would be in not too desperately desiring to be safe.”

An old truth is coming into clearer focus. When I insist on feeling safe, I risk living in the darkness of fear that danger could destroy me. Things might not work out as I want them to, and I could be intensely discouraged. My desperate desire for safety, a demand for God to provide the basics necessary for me to feel safe, strengthens my fear to face what I fear that could leave me desolate. And that fear impels me to deny the darkness of potential desolation, a darkness that could weaken my faith in God when He makes no sense, when He remains unresponsive to my “reasonable” requests for what would let me feel safe.

But that darkness could be my friend. I think that is Chesterton’s point. Darkness is my best opportunity to see light, but only when I give up the desperate desire to feel safe on my terms. Of course I’ll tremble when God’s ways make no sense. The passion of my demanding spirit of entitlement could lead me as I tremble into the quagmire of resentful resignation. Or legitimate trembling over life’s disappointments and difficulties could lead to settled trust that somehow His sovereign love is working all things together for the good that He understands to be my deepest good, what I long for the most, to know God and to rest in His sovereign goodness and love. Maybe the Cross will do what needs to be done. I’m betting on it.

I hope my counselees from years ago have come to know what now encourages me: if I let myself feel what scares me the most, I can seize the opportunity of darkness to believe that God is shining light on a path that leads to life. I might cry, buy not for long.

[1] G.K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross, Dover Publications, N.Y., first published in 1909-1910; republished 1995 p8.

Blog

Five Seconds

May 24, 2019October 16, 2019
by Dr. Larry Crabb

“I have something I want to share with you. I’m not very comfortable with this kind of language, but – well, here goes – the Lord spoke to me last night”.

I was all ears. I sometimes close them when others say something similar. Neither this women who was speaking to me nor I are fans of “easy-believism”, especially when it takes the form of sharing with a happy smile that God told them what they most wanted to hear. But Debbie, that’s what I’ll call her, had remained faithful to God during good times and bad, aware that the spirit of entitlement that plagues every Christian needs to be resisted. God’s ways don’t always make sense to us. We can’t count on God to respond favorably to every item on our wish list. Entitlement thinks otherwise.

Debbie was stunned by what she heard from God, stunned both by how foolish she was and grateful for God’s call to yield to her God-honoring desires that remained alive within her. Before (with her permission) I tell you what she heard from God, let me first tell you why I do so, I fear being misunderstood by something I wrote in my most recent book When God’s Ways Make No Sense. Debbie’s story clarifies what I meant. In Chapter Seven, I refer to myself as a Christian deist. Deists believe God made everything, set up natural laws like gravity, then washed His hands of any further involvement with what might happen in the world and among the people He created.

I am emphatically not a deist. I believe God is involved, interested, caring, compassionate, and sovereignly engaged in all that happens. *But it doesn’t always look that way.* Nothing escapes His attention, and nothing blocks the advance of the good story He is telling, not the holocaust, not a failed marriage, and not a stubbed toe. All things do work together for good to people who love God and remain confident that a larger story is unfolding in every detail of the smaller story we can see.

But such confidence finally depends on faith, not visible evidence. The lie of deism sometimes, too often, looks to be true: God seems distant and uninvolved. But things are not as they seem. Appearances really are deceiving. But now and again, always on God’s perfect timetable, we get a glimpse of His lovingly purposeful involvement in our lives, His commitment to our deepest well-being.

This is where Debbie comes in. For years she privately struggled with an addiction, a bad habit that curved her energy in on herself, an addiction that brought temporary but intensely pleasurable relief from the felt emptiness of life with all its worries and disappointments. It felt like she was struggling against her sin with no help from God. Was deism true? Was God really uninvolved in her struggle?

But then, after years, after God’s “little while”, she heard Him speak, meaning words suddenly rose up in her mind, uninvited but clear and powerful:

“Debbie, you are sacrificing the joy of giving yourself fully to your husband, children, and friends for five seconds of deliciousness.” Those four words hit her like a liberating thunderbolt.

Five seconds of deliciousness; five seconds of enjoying narcissistic contentment and unmitigated pleasure that left her alone, uninvolved with either God or others; five seconds that numbed the deepest thirst in her Spirit-indwelt soul, to love well. How foolish! She felt both broken over sin and released to live, to love.

I’m no deist. God is always advancing the plot of His story. Sometimes His ways become obvious. Trust Him when they don’t. Celebrate when they do.

Blog

A Crossroads

May 24, 2019October 17, 2019
by Dr. Larry Crabb

Years ago, as a self-declared right-leaning evangelical I got in trouble at a right-positioned evangelical seminary. At the time, I was leading a masters program in Christian counseling that I came to the seminary to establish. My practice was to invite students to join me in exploring our “inner worlds”. The phrase set off alarms. A few influential faculty of the fundamentalistic persuasion worried that I was smuggling Freud into the church. Didn’t Dr. Freud get counseling off track in the early 1900’s by teaching us to see what is going on inside, desires and impulses that needed to be de-repressed?

Perhaps. But I was teaching counselors to look into people’s inner worlds with different expectations and for a different purpose. But for a counselor to do anything other than exhorting moral, God-pleasing behavior that lines up with biblical standards for right behavior unsettles a Christian culture determined to keep Christians under control. It’s a culture that risks becoming simplistic, shallow, and legalistically stifling in its understanding of how the Spirit matures Jesus followers.

I don’t fit into that culture. I believe the Spirit works from the inside out, and that requires an inside look to see what needs to be repented and to awaken what can be released. Let me put it this way:

In order for God’s Spirit to do His deep transforming work that releases Christians to relate more like Jesus, we must open ourselves to seeing our self-centered, self-protective, self-enhancing motivation that bubbles up inside us like a filthy swamp. And we can expect the Spirit to put us in touch with the pure desire of our redeemed heart to love God and love others. Both our ungodly self-centeredness and our godly other-centered thirst must be seen. It’s then the real battle in the soul is engaged, the flesh-spirit battle that is waged in the service of spiritual formation.

That’s too many words. Fewer will do.

Every Christian who longs to be increasingly formed to relate, think, and live like Jesus in the Spirit’s power for the Father’s delight needs to enter their inner world where the one battle that leads to victory is fought.

But facing the complexity and difficulty of that battle is tiring. Most mornings I wake up around 5 unassisted by an alarm and seem reliably plunged into my inner world. God sometimes seems distant and uninvolved, maddeningly unhelpful with current problems in my life. I know He loves me and is a good God. The cross of Christ confirms it. But then I pray. If you could tune into the verbiage running through my mind you would hear something like this:

“God, sometimes You make no sense to me. I’ve got problems You’re doing nothing about, and I’m struggling with temptations and frustration without sensing the strength and relief I know You could provide. Trusting You to always be doing what is best for me is difficult, but I want to trust You.”

Words like that bring me to a crossroad: I can either effectively give up on God as I face my distress and do whatever I can do that helps me feel better about me and my life, or surrender my well-being to however God chooses to advance it. Too often I seem stuck at that junction.

So I leave my inner world battle and get up, get ready, and get on with my day: coffee, several cups unleaded; two eggs, maybe oatmeal; and on the 12 minute drive to my favorite breakfast spot Sirius radio, channel 5, 50’s rock; or channel 19, all Elvis. In the process, I enter another world, leaving my inner world with its worries behind. This second world feels better, no pressure, much easier, more pleasant.

Here’s the question: Do I stay there as often and as long as I can? Or do I think of brief times in this less stressful world as only a break from the struggle going on in my inner world? If I mostly live in the world where I can manage my own satisfaction on my schedule, I forfeit precious opportunities to follow the Spirit into my inner world where I can become painfully aware of my relational sin, choose to repent, and become joyfully aware of the new life within me that can now be revealed in how I relate.

While I listen to music I like and eat a good tasting breakfast, I might be living in the illusion that God makes sense: I want to feel good; God provides the means to feel good, the blessings I want in order to experience a hassle free, enjoyable life. But then I live a superficial, self-obsessed life, and mistake it for a Christian life.

When I delve into my inner world, I invariably come into contact with a God who doesn’t make sense. It’s then I discover the opportunity to remain actively open to what the Spirit most longs to do, to form me into a Jesus follower who is slowly growing to relate more like Jesus.

Tag: Suffering

Hanging On

Five Seconds

A Crossroads