"But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides; they shall trouble you in the land where you are settling. And I will do to you as I thought to do to them." Num 33:55-56
There is a promise land that God calls us to, yet there are awaiting there those who have set up strongholds long, long ago. In a sense they are embedded. There can be no peace or rest until they are gone. Cast out. Uprooted and expelled. To fail to engage in the battle to rid these vestiges of the past is to comply with them and ultimately become as one of them.
This scripture is an excellent illustration of how generational sin and cursing, as well as our own fallen beliefs, interact as we embrace the salvation of God. When we are first saved we are indeed transplanted to a new and exciting place. Joy, wonder, and hope open up before us. But soon the newness wears off and our optimism fades as we realize that deeply rooted and destructive elements of the past world we left behind are still with us. They are barbs to our eyes making it hard to see, and thorns in our sides making it hard to walk. So long as they remain we shall be tormented. If we ignore them not only do we forfiet our promised land, but in the end we will become like them. And, in failing to deal with these remnants from the past, it will be for another generation to root out the tendrals of what has become our own sin.
Salvation must involve battle with elements of the past.
"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ." 2 Cor 10:4-5
"Since you have heard all about him and have learned the truth that is in Jesus, throw off your old evil nature and your former way of life, which is rotten through and through, full of lust and deception. Instead, there must be a spiritual renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You must display a new nature because you are a new person, created in God’s likeness—righteous, holy, and true." Ephesians 4:21-24
Friday, February 15, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
Committing to Getting (The temptation and Fall of Adam) -Part 3
"Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” "Gen 3:9-11
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”" Matthew 4:1-3
"I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed..." Revelation 3:18
So far, God has initiated contact with Adam by drawing him forth from the shadows of fear, shame, and hiding with a series of gentle probing questions. The progression of these questions is important as each question is designed to equip Adam with the insight needed for him to answer the next. In the first question, "Where are you?" Adam is led to consider and name where he is in his own story, to name the terrain of his heart. In the second question, "Who told you that you were naked?", God reveals to Adam that the belief that nakedness = shame, and the subsequent fear and hiding this belief encourages, has a cause external to himself that is tied to a message given by another. He encourages Adam to consider the influential nature of this message and to name his accuser. Up until this point every question the Father asks of Adam focuses on the circumstances that have led him to his present state of fear and hiding but here the focus shifts from these circumstances to Adam himself and a concrete choice he has made.
"Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
I am just blown away by the wisdom and beauty of our Counselor as he leads Adam toward naming what is the ultimate cause of this present state of fear and shame. If the first question dealt with the where of his present situation, and the second question dealt with the who of where the destructive message came from, this last question deals with the why of Adams new shadow identity. For though it is true that Adam would not be in this present state of shame and fear if it were not for a message he received, and though it is true that this hurtful and destructive message came from an enemy over whom Adam had no control (Adam was truly sinned against), it is also absolutely true that Adam would not be shamefully cowering in the shrubbery if he had not made a willful and deliberate choice to take hold of that which God had explicitly forbidden. Adam has made a commitment, entered into a contract. It is this contract that the Father's final question is meant to reveal.
We see the nature and foundation of this contract in Genesis 3:4 when Satan whispered these words, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." In essence what Satan was saying was "Because you are substandard, inferior, (Read: lacking important and needed wisdom), it shows that God does not really care for you. He has lied to you. Therefore if you want to become better, acceptable, superior...like God, you need to take matters into your own hands. You need to take care of yourself. You can do it. I‘ll show you how." Thus we see in this temptation the subtle accusation that fuels all temptation. Temptation always involves some message of personal inadequacy combined with the promise that somehow we can, in our own power, gain what is lacking and thus restore our sense of security and honor. This is the first instance where we see Satan appearing as an angel of light, a helper. He appears as our friend who has come to offer us a way out of a painful, frightening, confusing, and shameful circumstance. The author of sin appears as one who has come to offer deliverance from sin!
It must be noted that even if Adam and Eve hadn't eaten of the tree the suggestion that God was untrustworthy, did not really care for them, and that they were somehow unsatisfactory would no doubt have caused them great pain and confusion. You mean I am really not o.k.? God doesn't really love me? I am really all on my own? These are devastating words to hear, and as is the nature and intent of all sinful words, would have caused significant hurt. Sin always causes suffering. Yet, it was not Satan’s sin nor the painful consequences of that sin that was ultimately responsible for driving Adam and Eve into the shadows. What drove Adam and Eve into the shadows was their agreement with those words.
Again, as it is with Adam so it is with us. Regardless where it is we find ourselves, the messages we have received, and the damage evil has wrought in our lives, it is always, always, always the contracts that we choose to make with darkness that leads us to a place where that darkness defines us. Call it shame, low self-esteem, a poor self-image, or even a prideful compulsion to always save face, maintain control, or establish yourself as slightly superior to others, it is always rooted in a painful message we received at the hands of sin combined with our complicit agreement to seek self-salvation on the terms of that message.
Now I must say, for those of us who have suffered greatly at the hands of others, these words might sound incomprehensible and intolerably cruel. You mean to tell me it was my fault? Is that what we tell the young child who is struggling with shame, resentment, self-loathing, and fear because their loved ones abused them? Is that what we tell the fearful, unstable, and emotionally assaulted among us? That you struggle like you do is your fault. You are just doing this to yourself. Unfortunately that is exactly what many, many poor souls (including myself) have been told. It is a natural outflow of the “if only” theology that dominates far too many Christians these days. It goes something like this. “If only you prayed more, read your bible more, witnessed more, knew more, had more faith, served more, forgave more, or whatever, then you would experience healing and not suffer as you do.” Is that what God is saying? I want to state here emphatically no! A thousand times over no! no! no! This message is not the Gospel but a grossly twisted misrepresentation that leads, not to life, but darkest death. This is a doctrine of demons and smells of the fiery pit! (It must be noted that this if only reasoning is not confined to Christians alone. In fact I would go so far as to say this is the defining philosophy behind what the bible refers to as the whole world system. All people have this belief that if something is wrong, either in the world or in themselves, all could be made right if only. It’s just the world has a different set of lists to follow than do Christians.)
That said it still leaves the question; if God is not encouraging self-blame what is he trying to accomplish in having us acknowledge that we have eaten that of which He warned us not to eat?
Well, could it be rather than encouraging self-blame God is actually encouraging us to name where we have already accepted self-blame. Could it be that in helping us to name the contract we’ve made, God is actually providing us a way out from under the crushing weight of blame? A weight we have been falsely lead to believe was ours to carry? As we shall see, in reality God is helping us discover the redemptive truth that it is not now, and never has been, our fault. We have been deceived.
You see when our eldest ancestors ate from the tree they were doing more than simply snacking on forbidden fruit. For in the act of swallowing the fruit they also swallowed the lie that they were deficient and could and should secure for themselves their physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. They sold their hearts (and ours too, I’m afraid) to the idea that their sense of dignity, worth, and meaning…their sense of true security, depended upon their own actions and strengths. Apart from their works they would remain substandard.. From here forward humankind was committed to earning their own worth by attempting to attain to perfection. They traded being for doing, and in the exchange bound themselves over to a sense of shame.
Can you see the implications of such a belief? Ever after that moment anything that caused them a sense of pain or loss, anything that would reveal imperfection and expose their inability to arrange for their own lives would be accepted, without question, as a personal failure. I should be better. I should be able to secure and control my life. At that moment Adam and Eve willingly agreed to take the blame for every evil to ever befall humankind including the evil inflicted by Satan himself. For if you truly believe you can get right by getting it right, that you should get right by getting it right, and yet your life is not right it must mean that you got it wrong. From now on not only would people experience deep pain in the face of loss and sin but with it a deep sense of failure and shame. Sorrow originally meant to lead us to seek out the support and comfort of both God and others would now become a shame-igniting catalyst propelling us toward greater and greater isolation.
Now we see clearly the sad sordid tale that is the human condition. We are born into this world believing fully that we could and should control our lives. And with this deeply entrenched conviction an unsettling awareness, not only of the deep pain that sin causes, but also a deep shame for the belief that we somehow allowed it. That it is somehow our fault for not preventing it. Our fault for not being impervious to the pain. Our fault for not having more control. We are born running. I should be better. I should be able to secure and control my life. Thus we see the universal phenomenon of little kids blaming themselves for their parents divorce. Parents blaming themselves for their child’s suicide or drug use. Rape, incest survivors, victims of sexual abuse blaming themselves for not having prevented it, or blaming themselves for not being able to heal themselves from it. We even see people blaming themselves for surviving tragedies clearly beyond their control…survivor guilt. On and on and on it goes.
So, though it may seem like God is encouraging self-blame He is actually redeeming us from it. Self-blame is rooted in a commitment to self-salvation and it is only God who can save. We were never meant to carry such a burden. Redemption is the process whereby God restores us to a relationship of dependence on Him. We were created to trust in Him to meet all of our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. We were created to rest in Him. Here, in these few moments following the fall we see the flow that marks the direction back toward liberation for all who have since followed in the footsteps of our most ancient ancestor; A) name where you are, B) name the influential messages you have received and identify the source and nature of your accuser, and C) then name the commitment you have made based on what you have been told.
And what of us? Have we , like our original parents, believed the lie that life depended on us? Have we, like them, felt the intoxicating pressure to get right by getting it right only to be left with the naked sense of our own failure and shame? Have we too felt the fear beneath our pressured striving that keeps us driven, guarded, and alone? Do we carry with us, not only the long history of our own personal tragedies and our own brutal encounters with sin, but also a nagging sense that somehow we could have prevented it? Done better, been stronger, acted wiser? Do we, along with the roots of humanity, struggle with the conviction that we should be able to heal ourselves, or others, if only…? Do you really think that it is all your fault?
In other words, “Have you eaten…?”
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”" Matthew 4:1-3
"I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed..." Revelation 3:18
So far, God has initiated contact with Adam by drawing him forth from the shadows of fear, shame, and hiding with a series of gentle probing questions. The progression of these questions is important as each question is designed to equip Adam with the insight needed for him to answer the next. In the first question, "Where are you?" Adam is led to consider and name where he is in his own story, to name the terrain of his heart. In the second question, "Who told you that you were naked?", God reveals to Adam that the belief that nakedness = shame, and the subsequent fear and hiding this belief encourages, has a cause external to himself that is tied to a message given by another. He encourages Adam to consider the influential nature of this message and to name his accuser. Up until this point every question the Father asks of Adam focuses on the circumstances that have led him to his present state of fear and hiding but here the focus shifts from these circumstances to Adam himself and a concrete choice he has made.
"Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"
I am just blown away by the wisdom and beauty of our Counselor as he leads Adam toward naming what is the ultimate cause of this present state of fear and shame. If the first question dealt with the where of his present situation, and the second question dealt with the who of where the destructive message came from, this last question deals with the why of Adams new shadow identity. For though it is true that Adam would not be in this present state of shame and fear if it were not for a message he received, and though it is true that this hurtful and destructive message came from an enemy over whom Adam had no control (Adam was truly sinned against), it is also absolutely true that Adam would not be shamefully cowering in the shrubbery if he had not made a willful and deliberate choice to take hold of that which God had explicitly forbidden. Adam has made a commitment, entered into a contract. It is this contract that the Father's final question is meant to reveal.
We see the nature and foundation of this contract in Genesis 3:4 when Satan whispered these words, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." In essence what Satan was saying was "Because you are substandard, inferior, (Read: lacking important and needed wisdom), it shows that God does not really care for you. He has lied to you. Therefore if you want to become better, acceptable, superior...like God, you need to take matters into your own hands. You need to take care of yourself. You can do it. I‘ll show you how." Thus we see in this temptation the subtle accusation that fuels all temptation. Temptation always involves some message of personal inadequacy combined with the promise that somehow we can, in our own power, gain what is lacking and thus restore our sense of security and honor. This is the first instance where we see Satan appearing as an angel of light, a helper. He appears as our friend who has come to offer us a way out of a painful, frightening, confusing, and shameful circumstance. The author of sin appears as one who has come to offer deliverance from sin!
It must be noted that even if Adam and Eve hadn't eaten of the tree the suggestion that God was untrustworthy, did not really care for them, and that they were somehow unsatisfactory would no doubt have caused them great pain and confusion. You mean I am really not o.k.? God doesn't really love me? I am really all on my own? These are devastating words to hear, and as is the nature and intent of all sinful words, would have caused significant hurt. Sin always causes suffering. Yet, it was not Satan’s sin nor the painful consequences of that sin that was ultimately responsible for driving Adam and Eve into the shadows. What drove Adam and Eve into the shadows was their agreement with those words.
Again, as it is with Adam so it is with us. Regardless where it is we find ourselves, the messages we have received, and the damage evil has wrought in our lives, it is always, always, always the contracts that we choose to make with darkness that leads us to a place where that darkness defines us. Call it shame, low self-esteem, a poor self-image, or even a prideful compulsion to always save face, maintain control, or establish yourself as slightly superior to others, it is always rooted in a painful message we received at the hands of sin combined with our complicit agreement to seek self-salvation on the terms of that message.
Now I must say, for those of us who have suffered greatly at the hands of others, these words might sound incomprehensible and intolerably cruel. You mean to tell me it was my fault? Is that what we tell the young child who is struggling with shame, resentment, self-loathing, and fear because their loved ones abused them? Is that what we tell the fearful, unstable, and emotionally assaulted among us? That you struggle like you do is your fault. You are just doing this to yourself. Unfortunately that is exactly what many, many poor souls (including myself) have been told. It is a natural outflow of the “if only” theology that dominates far too many Christians these days. It goes something like this. “If only you prayed more, read your bible more, witnessed more, knew more, had more faith, served more, forgave more, or whatever, then you would experience healing and not suffer as you do.” Is that what God is saying? I want to state here emphatically no! A thousand times over no! no! no! This message is not the Gospel but a grossly twisted misrepresentation that leads, not to life, but darkest death. This is a doctrine of demons and smells of the fiery pit! (It must be noted that this if only reasoning is not confined to Christians alone. In fact I would go so far as to say this is the defining philosophy behind what the bible refers to as the whole world system. All people have this belief that if something is wrong, either in the world or in themselves, all could be made right if only. It’s just the world has a different set of lists to follow than do Christians.)
That said it still leaves the question; if God is not encouraging self-blame what is he trying to accomplish in having us acknowledge that we have eaten that of which He warned us not to eat?
Well, could it be rather than encouraging self-blame God is actually encouraging us to name where we have already accepted self-blame. Could it be that in helping us to name the contract we’ve made, God is actually providing us a way out from under the crushing weight of blame? A weight we have been falsely lead to believe was ours to carry? As we shall see, in reality God is helping us discover the redemptive truth that it is not now, and never has been, our fault. We have been deceived.
You see when our eldest ancestors ate from the tree they were doing more than simply snacking on forbidden fruit. For in the act of swallowing the fruit they also swallowed the lie that they were deficient and could and should secure for themselves their physical, spiritual, and emotional needs. They sold their hearts (and ours too, I’m afraid) to the idea that their sense of dignity, worth, and meaning…their sense of true security, depended upon their own actions and strengths. Apart from their works they would remain substandard.. From here forward humankind was committed to earning their own worth by attempting to attain to perfection. They traded being for doing, and in the exchange bound themselves over to a sense of shame.
Can you see the implications of such a belief? Ever after that moment anything that caused them a sense of pain or loss, anything that would reveal imperfection and expose their inability to arrange for their own lives would be accepted, without question, as a personal failure. I should be better. I should be able to secure and control my life. At that moment Adam and Eve willingly agreed to take the blame for every evil to ever befall humankind including the evil inflicted by Satan himself. For if you truly believe you can get right by getting it right, that you should get right by getting it right, and yet your life is not right it must mean that you got it wrong. From now on not only would people experience deep pain in the face of loss and sin but with it a deep sense of failure and shame. Sorrow originally meant to lead us to seek out the support and comfort of both God and others would now become a shame-igniting catalyst propelling us toward greater and greater isolation.
Now we see clearly the sad sordid tale that is the human condition. We are born into this world believing fully that we could and should control our lives. And with this deeply entrenched conviction an unsettling awareness, not only of the deep pain that sin causes, but also a deep shame for the belief that we somehow allowed it. That it is somehow our fault for not preventing it. Our fault for not being impervious to the pain. Our fault for not having more control. We are born running. I should be better. I should be able to secure and control my life. Thus we see the universal phenomenon of little kids blaming themselves for their parents divorce. Parents blaming themselves for their child’s suicide or drug use. Rape, incest survivors, victims of sexual abuse blaming themselves for not having prevented it, or blaming themselves for not being able to heal themselves from it. We even see people blaming themselves for surviving tragedies clearly beyond their control…survivor guilt. On and on and on it goes.
So, though it may seem like God is encouraging self-blame He is actually redeeming us from it. Self-blame is rooted in a commitment to self-salvation and it is only God who can save. We were never meant to carry such a burden. Redemption is the process whereby God restores us to a relationship of dependence on Him. We were created to trust in Him to meet all of our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. We were created to rest in Him. Here, in these few moments following the fall we see the flow that marks the direction back toward liberation for all who have since followed in the footsteps of our most ancient ancestor; A) name where you are, B) name the influential messages you have received and identify the source and nature of your accuser, and C) then name the commitment you have made based on what you have been told.
And what of us? Have we , like our original parents, believed the lie that life depended on us? Have we, like them, felt the intoxicating pressure to get right by getting it right only to be left with the naked sense of our own failure and shame? Have we too felt the fear beneath our pressured striving that keeps us driven, guarded, and alone? Do we carry with us, not only the long history of our own personal tragedies and our own brutal encounters with sin, but also a nagging sense that somehow we could have prevented it? Done better, been stronger, acted wiser? Do we, along with the roots of humanity, struggle with the conviction that we should be able to heal ourselves, or others, if only…? Do you really think that it is all your fault?
In other words, “Have you eaten…?”
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