dRobinson

I see some aspects of the Shack much the same way. Young didn’t intend to write a theological study of the persons of the trinity. He was describing via fantasy, a journey of the heart of a man back to the heart of the God who loves him.

Two very positive aspects of the Shack have stuck with me. First is the beautiful way Young paints the relationship among the Trinity.  Our God — Father, Son, Holy Spirit, one true, eternal God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory; although distinguished by their personal properties — this Triunity since forever, have been in a heroic, intimate, loving fellowship. I love how Young brings this out. Jesus, equal in power and glory with Papa, is always deferring to and honoring Papa. And Sarayu, flitting across the pages, was always pointing to Jesus. Long before Creation, there was active love, in and among the persons of the Triune God. Just as Lewis captures the power and love of Jesus in Aslan, Young captures Trinitarian love and honor as has no other work of fiction I have read.

The other sticky point for me was being reminded that since before the foundations of the earth, before I had ever done anything, before creation and the fall, sin and redemption, God knew me and fore-loved me. 

I hit The Shack at a time when I was dry and had been dry for a long time. Young offered me a cup of cold water in Jesus name. The cup had a chip or two, and Young’s hand shook a bit, maybe. But the water was the real thing, pointing me back to the God who loves me, who is especially fond of me.

I spent the weekend away from my routine on a retreat in the N. Georgia mountains. I help with the A-V tech on these retreats: DVDs, audio and video stuff. What I do in the background helps the presentation aspects of the retreat to go smoothly. Ours is not intended to be a highly polished approach, but I want us to avoid the ?cringe factor? in the A-V side of things. The media presentations should not be a point of disconnect but a support to the message. So what I do behind the scenes and the quality I bring to the weekend makes a real positive impact on the flow of the retreat, and I am happy to be able to bring that. I love a smooth transition!

I came up in the early afternoon Thursday to get equipment set up, and make sure of how our gear would work in the meeting room. I enjoy working alone at this, tweaking this and trying that, working at getting things just right. That ?just right? can be an illusive mark, and striving for it is a blessing and a curse. Good work, doing well, and seeking excellence are, well …, good. But because of the illusiveness of ?just right? I can get compulsive over the little details. On Friday during a period of alone time, I realized just how consumed I?d been all the past week with wires, mixers, video clips and the like. I?d spent far more time wrapping and re-wrapping cables than praying for the men coming to the retreat or thinking about my own heart?s condition or meditating on what Christ has done for me and is doing in me.

Why is it that I find doing so much easier than being? Give me a task, and I?m on it, and do it well. Give me five hours (or thirty minutes) alone, and I get fidgety, needing something to do. Being a man of action is a good thing; being addicted to action is not. ?Addiction? may not be the right word, but it?s close. Even writing these blog posts is an activity, a task that I use to help myself tune in to my inner life.

I wrote earlier about this same issue in terms of study vs. meditation. Study is doing; meditation is being. Meditation and prayer are to a large extent, hanging out with God, creating an environment where intimacy can grow. When I talk with other guys about our relationships with our wives — uh … how each of us relates to our own wife — so many of us focus on what we have done for her more than how we have related to her. We expect the intimacy of doing sex without the intimacy of just being with her. I?m getting better at just spending time with Chris — cigars on the deck help. I?ve begun to enjoy sitting and talking with or without an agenda.

As Christians, we talk about a personal relationship with Jesus and intimacy with God. I always used to nod and agree, but had no experience of that. I understood the concept, but did not know the reality. And to say you understand about intimacy is like saying I understand sex: this part goes there and such; it?s not the same as knowing sexual intimacy with my dear wife, Chris. I want to know Jesus, not just understand facts about him. I want to be with him, not just do stuff for him. The doing is needed, but it is not enough.

Doing stuff is easier for me, just like masturbation can be easier than initiating sex. The former involves no mystery; do this and get a predictable result. There is no mystery in wrapping cables; there is also no deep satisfaction. When I smoke a cigar with Chris, and know the conversation could go anywhere, and that I am willing for it to do so, there is more mystery and more satisfaction than in a we need to talk conversation. And I?m finding that the more I just be with her, the less we need the we need to talk talks, because when we are together (cigars or no) we talk about the we need to talk topics before they get to a we need to talk point.

But I didn?t intend to talk about Chris, I?m talking about God, but thinking about my relationship with Chris is helpful. My relationship with Chris is somewhat analogous to my relationship with Jesus — except that He is my (the Church?s) groom, but that?s another story. There is similarity between my relationship with Chris and with Jesus. And thinking about intimacy in my marriage may help me understand intimacy with God, so that I can better know that intimacy.

To be continued …

I’ve been reading/ listening to CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. I hit a section yesterday that got me thinking. It’s a word picture of true humility.

[God] wants to bring a man [or woman] to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the, fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. [God] wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour’s talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things.

 Humility is not “pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools.” More than “a low opinion of [one's] own talents and character,” humility is  ”self-forgetfulness.”  God would rather a man ”thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one.” 

What a good and true view of ourselves! And how rare. We have been taken in by Screwtape’s ploys to get us either seeing ourselves better (false pride) or worse (false humility) than we really are. In either case, we are thinking about ourselves and our standing too much, and we are focusing on a false view of ourselves. Here is the key. Whether we have false pride or false humility, we are out of touch with reality.

I want to be real, true, honest with myself and others. Lewis says true humility is to acknowledge what is real and true, to rejoice in it, and to be able to recognise all creatures (myself included) as glorious and excellent things.   (more…)

I’m a word boy; I don’t usually think in pictures. But last night, as I was praying for a friend, I saw what I was praying about. I saw God, … sort of. I saw an older man talking with a younger man, but knew it was Jesus and the Father. They were looking down, I assume, at my friend Britt. Britt was not visible, just these two talking about him, and I could overhear parts of their conversation.

Jesus would nudge His Father and say, “Abba, did you see the way Britt caught the light with those brush strokes? Wasn’t that neat!” And the Father would say, “And did you see that smile when he was talking to his boy Al? That looked like your smile. He takes after you when he smiles like that.” Then, “Abba, he really screwed up just then. He’s such a knucklehead, but I am so pleased with how quick he was to turn from that and ask you for forgiveness.” The Father smiled a big, slow smile and said, “Yeah, that’s my boy Britt. I’m especially fond of that one!” 

I’d been praying that Britt would be reminded, no, that he would know deep down how precious he is to God. How no matter what, God is especially fond of him. (more…)

I’ve been reading/ listening to CS Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. The other day another passage struck me as “so true.” In this letter, Screwtape discussed how we humans are “completely fogged about the meaning of the word ‘real.’” which now has two almost opposite  meanings: 1) the facts of the situation, and 2) one’s emotional response to the situation.

So we “tell each other of some great spiritual experience, ‘all that really happened was that [we]  heard some music in a nicely lighted building.’ … On the other hand, [we'll] say, ‘It’s all very well discussing that high dive as you sit there in an armchair, but wait till you’re up there and see what it’s really like.’ [the tendency is] in all experiences that can make [us] happier or better, only the physical facts are real, while in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt, the spiritual (emotional) elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be escapist. Thus in birth, the blood and pain are real, the rejoicing is just a subjective point of view; in death, the terror and ugliness reveal what death really means.”

It got me thinking, wondering how to talk about reality. Both aspects, the facts and the feelings, make up the experience of a situation for us.  In most cases, both are part of the reality of any situation. As one who wants to be in tune with reality and with the Real One,  I want and need to be aware of both in my own story, and to discount neither when others tell their story. 

Reference: In the linked copy from The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics, on Google Book Search, see letter #30, on p. 185-186.