February 2019
LI/23 ML/12
One aspect of the narratives of the Bible is that one can read without seeing. Their truth is a secret. Baby Jesus was "spirited away" into Egypt to avoid the sword of Herod. He returned to Nazareth in secret. Those who watched him grow up did not know what they were watching. The body of Jesus was taken away to a grave and hidden from both friend and foe. He returned to the "Body of Christ" in secret. The world can look at those who are born into the kingdom without realizing what they are observing. Like Jesus, we can't prove who we really are.
LI/24 ML/13
Jesus is the Word of God become flesh. The Word of God, then, is not discovered in series of lexical entries in a dictionary nor in a group of doctrinal propositions formulated by men. The Word of God is God himself invading our time and space. He (not it) came to the prophets in the Old Testament confronting the priests, prophets and kings who wanted to govern the word from God. "I did not send the prophets, yet they ran," God said through Jeremiah (Jer. 23:21). To protect their privileged positions, men either resist, deny or distort what God is saying.
LI/25 ML/14
Jesus said, "Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me" (Jn. 12:44). Reading the stories of Jesus, we can see the historical Jesus and never see the One who sent him. Three disciples were with him on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Rabbi from Nazareth had become transparent before them. They were looking "through" Jesus to the One who spoke with Moses at Mt. Sinai and to Elijah on Mt. Horeb. They saw beyond the natural but did not grasp what they saw. We must see through the text to find the One who is speaking.
LI/26 ML15
Words are used to communicate the experiences of those who have been encountered by One who lives on the "other side" of reality as we know it. In this context, every testimony is a parable, a story presenting a side of reality that cannot be captured with words or known apart from a similar experience. With words we share what we have experienced, but the experience itself remains our own. It cannot be transferred. We can experience the presence of God apart from words, but we can hardly keep from talking about it. When we do, we use our own words.
LI/27 ML16
A sentence can mean something without saying anything significant. "Jack and Jill went up the hill" does not 'say' anything. We can ask, "So what?" To see what it is 'saying' one must hear the rest of the rhyme. So, the question is not, "What does this or that word mean?" but, "What is this story saying?" This question assumes that the story is saying something to someone. Language as discourse requires a partner-someone who is listening to the one who is "saying something" to them. Listening to scripture in this way we become partners in a dialogue.
LI/28 ML17
There is poetry in the Bible. The metaphor is more easily identified in poetry than in the narratives. The Lord as "my rock" is obviously not a scientific description of God. "I flood my bed with tears" is clearly an exaggeration even if you can imagine a bed floating downstream in tears. Can mountains really skip like rams? These examples are clear, but the question remains whether "poetic license" is used in the narratives. Our point is that we must use metaphors and symbols when speaking of spiritual experiences. There is no other way to share our experience.
LI/29 ML18
I experienced God's liquid love (1957) and later wrote these words:
Then there was evening,
Then there was morning.
When silent streams of sunlight,
Seeping through the window shades
To greet emerging consciousness
Have put to flight the Savage
Shadows of the Cloven hoof,
Then breaks Eternal Day.
Several have requested these posts be made available for an offering. I have begun compiling the posts in a form that you will be able to have a complete year of posts as they are completed. If you are interested in this, please respond with a "yes" so I will know if it is worth my time to do the compiling.
TT/1
In 2016 I posted my desire to write a book called, "The Naked God." I wanted to connect the "naked and unashamed" of Genesis with Jesus "naked on the cross despising the shame." My goal was to demonstrate how shame may have affected the way Old Testament saints spoke of God in his relationship to Israel and the nations. My hope was that this insight would help us understand why God looks so different in the Old Testament. Here I am still sorting through the problems that arose. I am still committed to this project, but I must take a detour at this point.
TT/2
I have discovered a deeper level of understanding of the nature of the Bible as a result of my study of the shame issue. Some of the things I have learned are in my mind as embryos, not developed enough to come to expression in language. In the next few posts I will be sharing my story. Every person's personal story is a short episode in the Larger Story of the Bible. Our lives are extensions of the Gospel stories since we are disciples who have responded to the Resurrected Lord or we are among those who resist that story. My story will illustrate this.
MS/1
Recently I realized I have "painted myself into a corner" with these posts. My nature is to pursue the 'scent' of truth like a bloodhound. Or, like a miner, I remove a lot of worthless stone looking for the vein of gold. I have been chasing this 'scent' for about two and a half years now. I found several gold nuggets here and there, but I have not yet struck the vein. I must now retreat to the places where the nuggets appeared and dig in a different direction. As the next few posts jump from place to place, understand we are still on the same safari we first joined.
MS/2
When you paint yourself into a corner you must wait for the paint to dry before you move-unless a way opens in the wall behind you. Our God is full of surprises. He makes a way where there is no way. As I wait for the "paint to dry," or a "way to open up," I plan to talk about my own journey. Perhaps the key to what I am looking for is in the journey rather than in the goal. Ministry is all about allowing who you are in Christ to come across by the Spirit to those who are also searching. So, you are about to discover who I am, what I'm all about. Here we go.
MS/3
My journey began in 1945 when I accepted Jesus and was baptized in water. I still remember the evangelist's sermon outline. He spoke of Running the Race using Hebrews 1:1. There was the starting line, the race track and the finish line. As he spoke of that race this eight-year-old boy was on the edge of his seat the whole time. I wanted to run that race. Even at that age I was interested in the journey more than the goal. The 'crown' at the end was not my focus; my focus was on the challenge of the race. The process, not the product. So, I entered the race.
MS/4
The year after I "began the race," I was lying on our newly planted lawn looking up at the milky way in the clear Texas Panhandle sky. I had spent the day on my dad's building site pulling nails from the lumber used as forms for concrete. As I gazed at the stars, a thought seeped into my consciousness. "I wonder if stars are really nail holes in the floor of heaven?" I thought. In my imagination I climbed up to look through one of the stars. Suddenly there was an eye looking through the star at me. He was watching me. Shame had already entered, so I was afraid.
MS/5
God watching me (yesterday's post) activated my shame. As a five-year-old I had wondered if I was adopted. I did not feel like I belonged. I always felt "weighed in the balance and found wanting." I felt like my big brother could do anything. I always messed up. I did not feel like my dad approved of me either. The preacher, out of his own shame, told us God was not pleased with us and wanted to destroy us, but Jesus stepped in to shield us. But it was God, not Jesus, who saw me looking in. So, when I saw God seeing me, I was filled with fear and trembling.
MS/6
You would think I was totally naive if I suggested there was a literal eye looking at me through a star (previous two posts). We all know that stars are massive astral bodies. Yet there was a "real" eye looking at me. That "eye" is more real than any star. In fact, the one whose eye I saw seeing me created that star. My point here is that God presents himself to man in symbolic forms, he appears through natural things. "Eye" is a symbol of "seeing" even though in God's case sight does not require an actual eye. God accommodates himself to man's limitations.
MS/7
One more comment on my experience with the "eye" (last three posts). Without the fear response, the experience would have been less than revelatory. In Isaiah's call to prophetic ministry (Isa. 6) he responded, "Woe is me." God cleansed his lips only after he acknowledged his human predicament. Fear is the normal response to any real experience with God before he is known as the one who says, "fear not." In some cases, as it was in mine, there may be several years between the "Woe is me" and the "fear not." I did not yet know him as Loving Father.
MS/8
The next phase of my journey was prompted by a trauma. My dad had been forced to declare bankruptcy. We moved to Tatum, New Mexico where my mother's parents lived. They were supportive even though my dad's drinking problem increased. His own shame caused him to become abusive. When I was about 12, he was threatening my mom with a knife. My brother stepped in to protect Mom. I joined him. In his anger, Dad took my brother and I five miles out of town, put us out and told us to never come back home. The downward shame-spiral began.
MS/9
Our grandmother saw to it that we were back in the house before sundown (yesterday's post). I was in the house, but not at home. I had shut down to my dad. What I did not realize is that, when we shut down to "one of the least of these" (Matt. 25:45), we shut down to Jesus. Jesus had been my best friend, but I no longer sensed his presence with me. He had not forsaken me; I had forsaken him without knowing it. I was unaware of what was happening because I was full of shame-pain. I began to look for ways to self-medicate the pain and cover my shame.
MS/10
I would not have survived those years had it not been for the music teacher, Mr. Guyon. He took me in as a father to a son. I spent much time at his house to avoid being in my dad's arena. He taught me how to play chess and affirmed me as a person. The comfort I had in his house protected me from becoming a complete reprobate, but I always had to return home. Another part of this story is that I was a reject in the High School. Everyone knew about my dad's drinking and almost all the students avoided the "son of the town drunk." I was an outsider.
MS/11
One way to deal with pain is to go away from the external source. When I graduated from High School, I moved away to college. My brother-in-law gave me an interest free loan to make that possible. I was not there to learn; I was there to get away from my dad. I was not at home in the University because my dad had convinced me I would never succeed at anything. I did well in French because, as I discovered later, I have a knack for learning languages. But because of my inner conflict, I joined the USAF the next summer. Shame was at the helm of my life.
MS/12
The Air Force sent me to electronics school in Biloxi, Mississippi to become a radar technician. I did well with the theory because I understand diagrams and schematics. I was in the top ten percent of my class even though I had trouble with the "hands-on" stuff. In the final exam they gave us a radio that didn't work, and we were expected to fix it. Shame surfaced and I have no memory of how that worked out. I was threatened by a real radio; it was nothing like the schematics. Shame blocks the mind. I graduated but felt like I had bluffed my way through.
MS/13
After Electronics School the USAF sent me to Japan. After a few months of enjoying the freedom of being a long distance from home, backsliding as many young military personnel do, I experienced the "liquid love" which I have spoken of many times. God entered my room and filled it with his love. For the first time in my life, I knew I had a Father who loved me and accepted me even with my tendency to mess things up. That was the spring of 1957. From that day to this I have never doubted his love for me. But shame has a way of hiding from view.
MS/14
In 1946 I saw the "eye" of God looking at me and I was afraid because I did not yet know he loved me. In 1957 I was overwhelmed with his love. That experience transformed my life on a deep level, but it took several years for that transformation to have its full effect on my thinking and feeling about myself. I still thought of myself as an orphan in God's house. He took good care of me, but I did not feel like I belonged. The self-concept developed in the context of my dad still held sway in my life. The process of transformation takes time to defeat shame.
MS/15
When Father came to me and embraced me with his liquid love, I entered the "world" of the text. I was still "in the world" but no longer "of the world." My story became an extension of the story of salvation recorded in the Bible. I was no longer an outsider reading a story of "once upon a time, in a land far away." I began my journey out of Egypt through the Red sea and into the Promised Land. In that land there have been enemies to defeat (not flesh and blood but the powers of darkness). As God was with Israel, he is with me. He will be with you.
MS/16
Release from the bondage of GUILT happened immediately when God's love came upon me and overwhelmed me. I was forgiven even without confessing my sin. I was released from guilt as love seeped in. I had a cigarette habit of two packs a day. It left that day as I "saw" cigarettes differently. The Greek word for repentance literally means to see things differently. This "seeing" is a work of God, not man. We can't see if he doesn't show. We let ourselves to BE transformed by the renewal of our mind (Rom. 12:2). But SHAME moved out more slowly.
MS/17
Then there was evening,
Then there was morning.
When silent streams of sunlight,
Seeping through the window shades
To greet emerging consciousness
Have put to flight the Savage
Shadows of the Cloven hoof,
Then breaks Eternal Day.
MS/18 ML/19
The image of evening preceding the morning is only one way of seeing time. In our culture morning begins the day and is followed by evening. What is Genesis "saying" by placing evening as the beginning of the day? Darkness precedes light? The truth of Genesis 1 unfolds as light shines into darkness and chaos is conquered by ordered time. The chaos of my early life was overcome when the liquid love (metaphor) of God shed his light (metaphor) into my shadows (metaphor) and conquered the "cloven hoof" (metaphor) of yesterday's post.
MS/19
When I experienced the liquid love of Father, it totally changed my life. In that experience I was participating in the eternity of God. I was in time; it was the spring of 1957. But I was also somehow outside of time with him in his eternity. Any experience of the reality of his eternal presence in our time changes everything. We become a New Creation. We are no longer the ones we were; "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). I held him; he held me. This is Father's eternal embrace. Eternal Love unites what is separated in time.