She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain When She Comes

Just a heads up:  this post really lives up to the blog name, "theological ramblings."  No grand revelation today.  Just some (admittedly one sided) questions.

So, there's this phrase kicked around the Christian circles I've been in--"going round the mountain."  It's a loose reference to when the Israelites were in the wilderness after God freed them from Egypt.  They could have entered the promised land in a few short months, but they failed the test, didn't trust God, and ended up wandering in the desert, going around the mountain, for 40 years, until that untrusting generation died.  When the phrase is used in Christianese it means something like not learning a lesson, therefore having to travel a long journey again, only to face the same lesson/test again.  But generally it takes more time the second (or third or fourth) go round, and is more painful.  The phrase also implies wasting or squandering time or opportunity. 

I'm a really good student.  That's in large part because I'm a great test taker.  Academically, I love tests.  When I worked in pest control, the company was trying to move into treating roses, which required an endorsement that almost no one had.  So they said anyone who passed the test and got that endorsement on their license would get a $500 bonus.  You want to pay me to pass a test?  That's freakin' awesome!  I was one of the first to get that endorsement.  (And I've been looking for the job that would pay me to take tests ever since.  Let me know if you hear of something like that, ok?)

But (there's always a big but in the way, isn't there?) that's just academic tests.  When it comes to life tests, I get petrified and paralyzed.  Terrified that I'm going to screw it up, and end up going around that mountain again.  The pressure mounts when some other bible verses start kicking around my head.  Like "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6).  And Mark 9:19, where after the transfiguration, Jesus says to his disciples who can't heal a mute possessed boy, "O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you?  How long am I to bear with you?"  When faced with a situation that requires action, and that situation looks similar to some other situation I've been in before, I'm frozen.  I don't want to get it wrong, fail, waste time.  When I'm stuck not knowing what to do, I realize I don't have faith in any of the options I have.  I get more stuck.  If I'm clueless about what to do, how can anything I do please God?  I don't want to miss out on achieving all that could be achieved.  It's a vicious cycle.  Much like thrashing about in quicksand, and only getting sucked deeper down. 

There's a passage in the book, The Shack, that comes back to me from time to time.  The character Mackenzie is talking with God, aka Papa.  (If you haven't read this book, you should.)

"Why do you love someone who is such a screw-up?  After all the things I've felt in my  heart toward you and all the accusations I made, why would you even bother to keep trying to get through to me?"

"Because that is what love does," answered Papa.  "Remember, Mackenzie, I don't wonder what you will do or what choices you will make.  I already know.  Let's say, for example, I am trying to teach you how not to hide inside of lies, hypothetically of course," she said with a wink. "And let's say that I know it will take you forty-seven situations and events before you will actually hear me--that is, before you will hear clearly enough to agree with me and change.  So when you don't hear me the first time, I'm not frustrated or disappointed, I'm thrilled.  Only forty-six more times to go.  And that first time will be a building block to construct a bridge of healing that one day--that today--you will walk across."  (pg 186-187)

While that's a really cool story, and potentially very freeing, it's fiction.  Now, fiction is a great conveyor of truth!  But, not everything in fiction is truth.  I'm a big big fan of orthodoxy and orthopraxy (right belief and right action).  So I'm cautious in wholeheartedly embracing the idea of this quote.  But the thought occurred, what if God views "going 'round the mountain" not as failure, but as a step closer? 

Tuesday, I was walking and thinking, and it seemed like God asked me a few questions.  One was, "Do you trust Me?" with a certain situation implied.  To which I sheepishly, but honestly, replied, "No."  He asked a couple other questions, and I answered those, too, sheepishly, but honestly.  Then I said, "And I know these aren't the right answers."  It seemed that God replied, with some passion, "I don't want right answers.  I want your heart." 

Here is where the pithy closing line of the blog comes, where it closes things nicely, or hooks you with a cool twist on a thought, and you come back for more.  But I don't have a pithy closing line for this one.  I just have a desire to go hiking this weekend and see if God might want to elaborate. 


photo credit: bretvogel via photopin cc

Understanding Mercy

We—well, let me not put that on you—I need the weight of choice to fully understand mercy.

I need to write more about choice.  I’ve been thinking about choice for a little bit longer than I’ve been thinking about grace.  But a brief summary is that I think God gives us way more choices than we realize.  So often we agonize over decisions.  “Lord God, what is Your will?  Should I go to this college or that college?  Take this job or that job?  Go to this house church/bible study or that one?”  I think way more often than not, God’s response is, “What do you want?” 

Making choices is how we grow in maturity.  And we are called to be mature daughters and sons of our Father God.  I’ve watched my friends give their children choices.  “Do you want yogurt or cheerios for breakfast?”  It does not matter which one the two year old picks.  Yogurt is not better than cheerios.  What matters is that she picks.  For a timid child, giving them the option allows them to figure out their preferences and that their preferences matter.  It helps them develop into themselves.  For a strong willed child, picking what they want for breakfast gives them a proper avenue to voice their preferences, so that their will isn’t squashed by always hearing “No.”  And as children grow, they are given more choices and more meaningful choices.  This is important, because once they are adults, they will have to make their choices.  If they don’t have practice—if they haven’t grown in maturity—then they won’t know now to make choices. 

Now, before I get back to mercy, let me say that there are wrong choices.  “Should I do an afterschool sport or do drugs?”  Yes, doing drugs is a wrong choice.  But many many more of the choices that we agonize over are not right or wrong choices. 

So, considering mercy, if every situation has a right and a wrong answer, there isn’t much room to plea for mercy.  If you choose the wrong answer, you deserve the consequences.  That is our underlying, unspoken assumption.  And with that assumption, we give lip service to grace and forgiveness.  Job’s friends are the classic example of this.  They knew that because all this bad stuff was happening, Job had chosen wrongly, and the bad stuff was a just consequence of that choice.  Their advice was not to plea for God’s mercy, but to repent and accept the (presumably just) punishment.  

But the thing about choices is that if I have free choices, so does everyone else.  When I make a choice, it is rarely in isolation, and therefore my choice presents a choice to another person.  The other person has to choose how they are going to respond to my action, my choice.  I may desire a certain response.  But making a free choice necessarily involves letting go of expectations of the other person’s response.    And this is when I understood, I mean really understood, mercy.   

When we are faced with choices—no, that’s wrong.  We aren’t “faced” with choices.  Rather, we are given choices.  The ability to choose is a gift.  But when we use our gift and choose, there is no guarantee how it will turn out, how another person will respond or how a situation will unfold.  We can choose wisely and well, and things can still turn out badly, or painfully.  Understanding and experiencing that, mercy now makes sense to me.  Mercy more than makes sense, it becomes our desperate need and is a totally unmerited favor. 

My favorite Hebrew word is “chesed”.  It means steadfast, convenantal, love.  It is often translated as loving kindness, but that’s kind of weak.  “Steadfast love” captures it a bit better.  But in other translations it is “mercy.”  God’s covenant with us, His steadfast love, is a very merciful thing, healing us from the sin of our flat out wrong choices and from the painful outcomes of good choices. 

When we are freed from the fatalism of the belief in one Right choice in every decision, we can grow in maturity.  We can cry out for mercy, and believe that it will be given.  Because God chooses to show us mercy.  

photo credit: Sepehr Ehsani via photopin cc