Treasures of Darkness

As I write this, I am in a café, sitting in the corner, trying hard not to make a scene. I am weeping, suppressing groans and cries and wails so that I won’t be asked to leave. I came to read and study for a class I have in a few hours. Instead, I am humbled and awed and stunned into… into weeping.

You will understand a bit better after I explain in brief what happened this weekend. I have a friend, a friend I have known all of my life (who I speak of here), who has lived a crushingly destructive life. The choices he makes consistently wounds those around him, and the closer they are, the more he is meant to love them, the more he cuts and tears at them. His wife and children come to mind.

A couple of weeks ago I came to the end of my patience with his actions and choices. I love him too much to be passive and watch as he destroys himself. I wanted to call the true man into the ring. I set up a time to meet with him. There were two things I needed to get across at this meeting. One was that I wanted him to begin seeing the damage he has caused, the hurt and destruction his life has left in its wake. I wanted him to take a serious, unflinching glare into it. And second, I needed to let him know that I would no longer relate to him on any level except the most authentic: his damaging lifestyle. I would speak to him on no other plane except to bring him to reality and then, to help him to change only if he so chose. But that would come later. First, I wanted him broken and humbled and contrite at what he has done to himself and others.

Not an easy task. I felt going into the meeting a bit like Jeremiah, the prophet of hard sayings, the weeping prophet whose message from the Lord to Israel was brutal and harsh, since she had turned from her Lover-Lord to pursue other bedfellows. Someone had to bring her back to her senses. I knew that chances of success were higher if he were to come to an autonomous decision and understanding of his predicament through exploration and insight into his life, rather than having someone thrust upon him in impotent explanation what he is doing. He needed to see for himself, from his heart, the effects of his choices.

I realized this was my desire for this man.

What happened the day the meeting came is hard to explain. I almost want to fall back on the mythic tone of Scripture to describe the nature of the events, the way that I participated in something already going on, that I had a front-row seat to some deep and mysterious and even mystical change in the core recesses of this man’s very soul. And I use the word “soul” in the most literal sense, as that aspect of the whole being “that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self,” as Dallas Willard defines it. The “life-center” of the human being. My wrenching and mourning heart calling his to the same.

But he was already there. It was breakfast. We sat down to eggs and bacon and coffee, this man and me. I was prepared for what I’ve come to see as his typical defense against seeing the truth of his life: manipulation, control, threats, escape. I imagined him decking me or stabbing me with the yoke-soaked fork or just walking out, unable to hear what I was burdened to bring him.

Instead, he choked on the first words out of his mouth, words that I could barely understand but heard as “I am a bad father.”

I was stunned. I sat quietly while he tried to regain his composure. I came to speak honestly, man to man, and so I only said, “Yes, you are.”

The next four hours – four hours – we spoke about the decisions he has made in his life, of the way he cannot do what he has sincere intention to do (Romans 7), of the demons that have gained control over various aspects of his life, of what it means to be a father and a son and a brother and a friend of God, of repentance and forgiveness, of wounds and the messages about life interpreted from them, of his growing up and about his God.

Somehow, through it all, I came to see that I wasn’t doing anything but observing what was already going on in deep places in him. Before I arrived, I wondered how I would possibly be able to speak to the real man, to the deep and true person underneath the defenses and walls erected throughout his life to protect himself from abandonment and rejection. But I never had to. His heart was already ripe for the harvest, so to speak.

Understand, I love this man deeply. I want him to change for his own sake and the sake of his family. But I knew that in order to do so he had to recognize the way he lives first. The prodigal only began the trek back home when he looked around him and saw himself eating from pig troughs and remembered his father’s home. I came to meet this guy at feeding time and wanted to invite him to look around himself.

James tells us to “grieve, mourn and wail” and to “change our laughter to mourning and our joy to gloom.” And this is why. To look honestly at our situation and predicament often calls for that: mourning. This friend this day was mourning. God was “cutting the bars of iron” in the rescue of his soul (see Isaiah 45:2-3). And I got to witness it. I got to plunder the “treasures of darkness and hidden riches” of his soul and the vision of it redeemed. I got to participate so that I would know that “the Lord called me by name.”

I am barely able to write through the tears. This is what it means to praise the Living God, to be so grateful that you fall before Him speechless.

What I wrote a month back (in this post) about this friend and his situation was that “the love my wife and I have for [he and his family] is not enough to ransom them from this snare. They need the unyielding ministry of Christ in the deepest places.” And this is, it turns out, a great picture of what is happening for this man now: Jesus painfully and violently breaking him out of the illusions with an unyielding intention to bring him into truth and life. It is a severe mercy, this ransom of the treasure of his heart from darkness.

 

The Judgment of God

What a way to open up a discussion, huh! “The Judgment of God.” That’s about as heavy a phrase as I can imagine reading. It sounds like the title of some 1970 apocalyptic movie, or a promo for a particular ideology that was touted during the days of Hurricane Katrina.

But before we all sigh under the weight of that phrase, let me explain why I titled this talk as such. First off, I figured it would either run you off or intrigue you enough to actually read on. So, it may be a bit manipulative, I confess. I figure it’s worthwhile to have friends in the world, and if you can’t have them you might as well have enemies. I want at my funeral two extremes of folks present: those that are wailing and mourning, rending their clothes that I am dead, and those celebrating joyfully that I am gone. (In the latter category there will be still ideally two groups of people: Those that are joyous that I finally made it Home (and that I would be hearing these words) and those that are simply happy that the thorn in their flesh is finally out of their lives. Now that would be a worthwhile event.)

Really, though, I just wanted to discuss this topic because it’s one that I’ve not understood well, and my impetus for writing always seems to stem from some sense of wonder or from some need for clarity, and usually it’s an odd mix of both, with a dash of hope and desire thrown in for flavor.

The other day I was listening to a talk given by Dr. Richard Swenson, the author of Margin, in which he was discussing the busyness of our lives that exists in such extreme measures that we no longer have time for the things most important. In his diagnosis of the malady of our day, he said that “we need to judge [those things that steal our time],” and then went on to explain that they need to be brought into the light and dealt with. His use of the word caught my attention, and I had to listen through that portion of the talk several times to figure out why it did. What was it about his statement that grabbed me?

Often we think of judgment strictly in terms of condemnation. Maybe the most famous reference to this kind of judgment comes from Jesus’s statement in Matthew 7:1, that we are not to judge “that ye be not judged.” The Greek word used here, krinō, is the same word Jesus uses in John 12:47 when he says, “For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.” This is the typical understanding of judgment we have — a judgment against a person, which is condemnation.

But there is another kind of judgment Jesus speaks of. It is a judgment regarding a matter or against a thing. In Luke 12, Jesus is speaking to a crowd regarding “reading the times,” predicting the weather based on the direction of the wind or the look of the sky. A few sentences later he uses the word interpret and then judge in almost the same breath. He says, “How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” (v. 56b-57) In other words, Jesus is speaking here of a kind of discernment, of coming to an understanding regarding the nature of something and its moral standing. Is it right? Is it good? Is it true? Later, Peter and John, both close friends and disciples of Jesus who were taught to think clearly and discern the order of things by the Master himself, use the same word when speaking to the religious council of the day. They tell them to “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God” (Acts 4:19).

In this way, judgment becomes a kind of sorting things out, a way to discern what is real and right. We are supposed to do this. It is our mandate and our place. “To search out a matter,” goes the Proverb, “is the glory of kings” (25:2). To bring light to the darkness. (See also 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 — a pretty humbling Scripture.)

The astounding news of the gospel, that Jesus did not come to condemn us (John 12:47; Romans 8:1), is truly breathtaking, especially considering that we stood absolutely opposed to God (Romans 5:8). That God loved us enough not to hold against us our hatred toward Him — that is such a relief. But, let me be clear on something — and this is often where I think many teachers in evangelical circles get hung up — this work of Jesus, as astounding as it is, stands incomplete. It’s not enough to simply be accepted by Christ. It’s not. Let me explain.

To just be accepted by Christ, were it not for the rest of the ministry He offers us, would be somewhat analogous to reading a letter from our parents telling us how much they loved us… while on the beaches of Normandy getting shot. It’s great. It’s wonderful, I mean, that they would love us and write to us to let us know, but that does nothing to help us with the trouble at hand. Or, maybe it’s a bit like a POW getting a visit from a dignitary, say even the President, and they tell them how proud they are of their service and how they give them a full pardon for any wrongdoing done back in the States. The problem is, though, that the President has no authority to free the person from imprisonment, and so he would have no chance to exercise his full pardon back home. Sorry, man. It’s just the way it goes.

Do you see how unhelpful it would be, even cruel it would be, to be accepted by someone but then have no access to them. Jesus did not leave us like that. He did not judge us, but He did judge someone. Check this out…

(This is Jesus talking here…) “When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.” (John 16:8-11). Jesus judged the Evil One. What did that do for us? It disarmed this Enemy of his and ours, so that now we are free from his clutches (John 12:31; Col. 2:15; Matthew 28:18; Col 2:10; Eph. 2:6, 1 John 4:4). “With justice He judges and makes war” (Revelation 19:11). This is Jesus, our Rescuer. Who does he make war with? Our captor, the one who stole us from Him. He is our “rescuing knight” (Psalm 18:1-2). And we have the same authority over Satan and his kingdom that Jesus does.

Obviously there is more that Jesus did and that the Spirit of Christ continues to do for us, evidenced even in John 16:8-11, beyond judging our Enemy. But the grace we experience because of this judgment cannot overstated.

There will certainly be a day of judgment, in which the motives of men’s hearts and the actions of their lives will be judged (Romans 2:16; 1 Corinthians 4:5; Hebrews 10:30; 1 Peter 4:5; 2 Peter 3:7). But here’s where the good news of Jesus’ grace comes into play. For those of us who are in Christ, who take on our new lives in Him and put to death the misdeeds of the body, we will be judged not by our sinfulness or misdeeds (that would be being judged by the law — Romans 2:12), but rather by Christ’s righteousness, by His perfect life (Romans 3:21-22, 4:5; Philippians 3:9; 2 Timothy 4:8; 2 Peter 2:9; 1 John 4:16-18).

God’s judgment has revealed both death and life to us: death for those who do not trust in Christ and His perfect sacrifice and ministry for them; and life for those of us who cling to it tenaciously with deep hope (Galatians 5:5). His judgment, then, means our rescue and restoration and reward.

Surely the righteous still are rewarded;
surely there is a God who judges the earth
-Psalm 58:11

We also have a role in our own judgment. A.W. Tozer, in That Incredible Christian, states that, though the final judgment on the heart is God’s, “there is, nevertheless, a place for self-judgment and a real need that we exercise it (1 Corinthians 11:31-32).” Tozer points out that we should not exercise judgment on the hearts of one another (Matthew 7:1-5), and we should be careful in even trying to judge ourselves (1 Corinthians 4:3), there is still a place for self-discovery, for knowing ourselves, and for using that knowledge to grow in Christlikeness (this is the whole purpose of God’s judgment of us, anyhow, as already mentioned). He continues, “While our self-discovery is not likely to be complete and our self-judgment is almost certain to be biased and imperfect, there is yet every good reason for us to work along with the Holy Spirit in His benign effort to locate us spiritually in order that we may make such amendments as the circumstances demand… In discovering who I am I will also be finding whom I am not and whom I can be through Christ. Revealed will be those areas where I most need to submit to the Spirit’s transforming power.”