In one sense that is almost too bizarre to admit to, seemingly at least among christians, all of my own walk has been nothing less than an argument. And not only so, but most usually if not always, it has been an argument I neither recognized nor knew as taking place. I have been like a man in a fight that does not even know he is in a fight.
That is bizarre no? Wouldn’t a man know when blows are landing upon him, when nose is bloodied, clothes are torn, teeth are missing and bruises abound? One would think so, yes?
But then, you’ve never met anyone as dense as myself. Maybe.
For I have been in an argument I simply cannot win. Even a fight to the death that never seemed so to me, dense as I am. And God knows, as only a god who knows everything would be the true God, could know.
Yes, He knows. Just as He also knows that in regards to myself I am no less, and certainly no more, than all those described by God to Jonah, as not knowing their right hand from their left.
It even took me reading that story (and so many many others) to think I sat with Jonah on that hill above observing, and with him, heard from God just as he had.
Yes, like a mediator I sat, understanding, or so I thought, all of Jonah’s thoughts, feelings, and points in regards to mercy shown a once great enemy of his and that God. “Yeah, Jonah,” I proffered “I sure understand, I get it…how that it just doesn’t feel right, folks who have been such an enemy end up with mercy…and that even from the hand of that God they appeared most hostile to…yeah, I really do get it” “After all,” I continued, “He was your God and not theirs”.
And, no less a mediator (or thinking myself one) I commended God for His saying. “Yep, people can sure be as stupid as not knowing their right hand from left, I sure know that too, God!” (wink wink) “And I really think it’s cool you didn’t fail to mention the cattle also, good call, it really shows how merciful you are even to dumb animals” And no less, “How you really do care for all of your creation in your sovereignty, cause didn’t even Jesus say ‘preach the gospel to all creation’?” Cool, God.
Yep, I surely could reconcile things, being such a good reconcilor. Who’d wanna fight with a guy like that, anyway…and further, not even let him know he was in a fight? After all, I understood Noah and his point of view, and got God’s, too. Even at how stupid and dense people can be…I mean…where’s the fight?
“Ain’t I allowed to agree with you, God?”
But even the densest and most oblivious of us, maybe like me, (or just me) eventually can be woken up a bit, and to certain things. Maybe it’s a limping too undeniable, or a loss of strength too profound to go unnoticed, or maybe it’s just blood…there’s too much blood, so much blood, something may even be wrong or need attention.
Yeah, the blood’s calling for attention.
And, I awoke to the argument.
It has been this from a peculiarly dense and oblivious man…a man so unstable and ignorant as fully fitting one not knowing his right from left, up from down, right from wrong, good from evil. Even a man who started that fight in his staggering, crashing into things he couldn’t see in his blurred vision, and thinking he was walking quite uprightly as drunks so often do, mistakenly.
“Really, I’m sober as a judge officer…”
Sober as a judge.
“Then tell me why you ran over those 8 people back there…”
I flunked my sobriety test. And had to know why.
You know something? A drunk will take on most everything and anybody…and this drunk was stupid enough to take on the God of all creation. Yep. Didn’t I tell you you probably haven’t met anyone like me?
But when the records came up, all too clear and too perfectly ordered to deny, even of attitudes, inner dispositions, even unspoken senses of things so hidden (or so I thought ), but now being made clear, even too clear and were presented against words spoken and deeds done…and the great irresolvable gulf between them made more than plain…BOOM!…snagged, caught, apprehended, nailed (who’d a thought He could see so deeply?) there they all were, testifying of a mercurial man, an unstable man, a hostile and pugnacious man, a drunkard throwing punches he didn’t even know he was throwing.
“Listen” said the magistrate, the judge. “Listen,” he continued “Son you got attitudes you don’t even know you got” He was being very folksy and even gentle, and it had not gone unnoticed He said, son. Was he just being patronizing, feigning a kindness? But in this setting something gripped me that I dare not say “Hey you ain’t my dad, so stop calling me son” No, this court had sobered me enough to know not to do that. That could lead to a sentence, if uttering that sentence, I dare not even consider.
Sometimes a man may just get…sober. It’s a miracle!
But he laid it out, and if I say laid it “all” out, I could definitely be wrong for I didn’t know how much more He might have to show…in fact, I never do. But what He had for this moment, He did indeed, lay out. And He is meticulous in His sight of things, and quite scrupulous to all details that His apprehension of things is undeniable. This judge…really sees. I mean, really.
“You’ve been fighting with me when I have no fight with you” He said. Boy, did that ever sting, but not as badly as one might suppose…for the hearing of “I have no fight with you”…sort of eclipsed all else that might seem unwelcome to experience…it was far better to know that…even at any cost, and hear that, even at whatever sting attendant might accompany. No, so far better that even the first pang of that sting…left. But I can’t deny, at first there was a sting. I was the man. I am “that guy”.
And then He laid it out. And man did it testify of a great instability, drunk doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Here was where, from some place unknown to me, some place too deep to be known to me…yet of me, and so undeniably so I can’t deny, came a “this”:
See here? You believe enough in salvation to…well…believe it. But there’s this little thing a’niggling underneath of that, a thing in a place it shouldn’t be and can’t remain, that has to be exposed to light.
Your idea of salvation, which you can’t look beyond by yourself doesn’t even let you see it, you even think the ripples caused by that niggling underneath, is part and parcel of the salvation you see, but once it’s dealt with that notion of salvation (or at least your perception of it) will be able to settle at least one level of depth that the occupation by that niggling thing once occupied. And you’ve been arguing with God as a result of that “thing”.
You been laboring under some notion God could be mistaken. You don’t think you think that way, don’t even want to think you may think that way. And you surely have put out a lot of words to say that that notion is totally untrue, You believe yourself convinced and convincing of others by the words.
But, the truth is, and you know it, and now that cards are on the table, so much has come from your trying to prove a thing you say is undeniable…that God made no mistake in saving…you. Which has of course, even by argument, left a door open to God possibly being in mistake. And of course, you couldn’t see that, or even imagine that was what you were doing…but God knows the why.
Because you see yourself…or at least you are totally convinced you believe you do. And what you see is so far from the God you think you see that you can’t help yourself from wondering…this and that reconciled? And you set out trying to prove God makes no mistakes, but in that deep level, you still can’t grasp the squaring of things between yourself and that God of whom, and to whom, salvation really means. You mostly, in that deep place where you believe your salvation lies, have a very hard time believing it is “for you”.
And so working comes as a result of your trying to prove, not to others, but to the very God of that salvation (for this is far deeper than can be apprehended or proved to another onlooking man) that: “See, you didn’t make a mistake in saving me”.
Yes, you are telling God, or seeking to, trying to, “You God, did not make a mistake…see?” See what I am doing? See?
And all born out of a proposition that mistake is and was possible…but just…not made.
Of course you don’t know it or see it till you do. You can’t even want or have any desire to think about it…till you can’t not think about it. Have I held God as in some possibility of mistake…simply because I can’t yet square things? Trying to prove Him all the while as the God for whom mistake is not even of His vocabulary for, or of, Himself…I go (or even others!?) about in all mistake.
Trust me don’t trust me, Paul went there.
And of course those heady moments (O! so heady!) by which the man may be brought to see that instability, that mercurialness…(when he is allowed to)… of when thinking he has nailed it spot on, so wonderfully in either word or deed, so that almost with a wink toward God for the rightness of a perfection he thinks he has achieved…in some labor, some deed, some speaking, almost in all forgetting of any former misgivings as mentioned above…the shout goes up from deep within:
Not “See? You have made no mistake!”…
But “See? No wonder you have saved one as me!”
Of course this may just be me. And I have already said maybe you have never met anyone like me. Maybe.
Salvation is so far deeper than any of those estates, and cannot be settled even one level lower in a man for establishment till all niggling things beneath be exposed to light. And I can’t deny I might be the last to the party who has only begun to see a god who is even that true God of neither shame nor pride.
Not ashamed to save (or of whom He saves) and not proud that He does.
He just…is who He is.
I have seen pride that is inexorably locked to shame. I have seen shame that locks itself to a pride. A pride that speaks. Even inwardly:
“I (I!I!I!) should have known better than to come to this place of shame”
But…I can know no better. Never could. Still can’t know better than I do.
Do you hear a something?
“Forgive them Father, they know not what they do”
Trust me don’t trust me, the sting of finding out you don’t know what you are doing is so eclipsed by the sight of mercy asked for there…a man daren’t miss it…even at the cost of being right. Or thinking he is. Or would even like (love?) to think he knows what he is doing.
But that may…just be me. God knows.
And that may just be God. God knows. That so called being right is only in coming to know how very much mercy one needs, and is made there, for all their wrongness.
It is so much more comfortable to think, act, speak, even behave (till one cannot any longer) in terms of how much others need mercy. And if you need to wake a drunk, make him uncomfortable.
God knows.
And obviously some of the above is just metaphor, or parable, or just plain vain imagination. God knows.
I’m still asking, seeking, knocking to see how all squares. How He squares what only He can.
How he is…how He is.
Till then I don’t know no better.
Someone said:
“What I am doing, you do not understand now, but you will understand later.”
As surely as I am in total need to learn what every jot and tittle may mean, much less all that blood, so much blood…I am no less in all dependence to know when later is. And means.
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