A Surrogate Kingdom |
| Posted by Mark (mark) on Jun 24 2008 at 3:58 PM |
Upon seeing the barrenness of endless pursuit; when I finally saw the desolate condition of my traditions; as one model was discarded for another—newer, better one; the futility crept inward like a thief in the night. Yet this thief was no ordinary intruder, for I had invited him; but he did ransack my possessions, and stole my delusion of self, exposing my nakedness in a way I had not seen before. My independence—which I once self-righteously called faith—was revealed in the dawning of a new day and its sickly demeanor was astounding to me.
In my new condition—not that I hadn’t been sick for a very long time, but that I was now only seeing and feeling it truthfully; in this condition I was comforted by Jesus’ words echoing along the pallid inner walls of my heart: I’ve come for the sick, not the healthy. How could I have been so deluded? I’d read that verse many times before and always thought, with a tinge of scorn, about the self-righteous pharisee. I’d probably preached about it too. What a fool he was, not able to recognize his own malady; which only made him sicker than the average sinner. Yet, he was I, and I was him; and it all flooded in upon me with waves of stark reality.
I had poured out my life for the sake of the kingdom, or so I told myself, but remained as sick as could be. Here I was, a lover of God, finding out I loved myself far more. The worst part of it was that this—yes this revelation! was exactly what I’d asked for in years past. I’d asked Him to burrow into my heart. I’d cried out to Him to strip me of self-righteousness, ignorant of its depth in me. I’d piously asked God to break me. Now I realized how little I had meant that; yet how much I had meant it too, and how glad yet broken I was in the midst of it. The worst part of the revelation was this: I knew He’d barely scratched the surface; I knew the rabbit hole went much deeper. This was just the beginning.
In the days that followed this hollow but somehow overflowing moment, a sense of failure began to work upon my mind and heart. I see it everywhere now even today, though it no longer snuffs out the hope within me as it did then. The failure of men, the failure of me. I had even piously boasted of how—if the lord doesn’t build it, the workers labor in vain! Now I realized I’d been working in vain. But how? Why? I was working for the Lord all those years, wasn’t I? My innards groaned with guttural questions: what the hell is this? The anger scared me. But the sense of failure was fomenting it, and in that atmosphere of forceful honesty I didn’t want to hide my ugliness from myself anymore; for I saw now that He had always seen it in me, and still somehow loved me. So I had only been hiding from myself.
All the good programs we’d run; the drop-in center and food programs and clothing programs; the services and meetings we’d held; all of it I once hailed as great successes, were but memorials to my failure. I could see now that those who truly desired to know Him, had found life not because of the programs, but in spite of them. The sense of defeat He was bathing me in was bringing me to a place I couldn’t have fathomed a few years ago when we set out to help build the kingdom; when, full of youth and vigor we’d left the constraints of our old denomination, frustrated with their perceived inability to follow the spirit, and set out to really love the community. We wanted to love people with no strings attached. But now it all seemed as some grandiose, and falsely pious boast. The very thing we’d built was a monument to this. And here we were seeing the same problems surface we thought we’d left behind in the old parish. We were more trendy, and certainly on some level very genuine in our desire to show others the love of Christ, but it was the same story over again.
Failure, utter failure. And there it was, the piercing honesty that had me wondering about and questioning everything. In the nakedness of that moment, a thought brushed against me: we’d built a surrogate kingdom. And in an instant history flashed across my mind. I saw the Hebrews running from God, asking Moses to be their surrogate instead: I saw them again, demanding from Samuel a king to rule over the nation, an intermediary between them and God. I saw the post-resurrection church morphing into a pre-resurrection church; demanding sacred buildings with sacred priests and sacred worship services. And the spirit whispered some scripture into my quivering ears: they all shall know me, from the greatest to the least; I will write my law upon the lining of their hearts; they shall worship in spirit and truth. It was all so utterly contrary.
More images filled my now fearful thoughts. People lining up for confession. People lining up for a prophetic word from the prophet. A priest blessing the sacraments. A litany of christian self-help manuals. Program upon program. Model upon model. I saw whole movements rise up and take shape—and die from within. I saw men flocking to revivals and exporting the newest, hottest models from them (for a profit of course, after all, the worker is worth his wages right?). The shepherding movement, the prophetic movement, the evangelical movement, the charismatic movement, the protestant movement, the house church movement; the emergent movement; surrogate, surrogate, surrogate, surrogate, surrogate, surrogate! It screamed at me from all sides.
I cried out to the Lord as a palpable, complete sense of futility darkened my eyes, “Surely there is some life in these! I’ve seen you touch many hearts in these settings,” my despair choked the words.
A gentle whisper mingled about my heart, “There is only life in me.”
“But it all seems so barren, so sick to my eyes now!”
And a familiar thought pressed upon me once more, “I’ve come for the sick.”
It seemed so clear now, as if seeing anything truly for the first time; the models we create, the surrogates we use, only end up impeding His life in us. They compete with and devour true life. Bitter sensations pulsated through me. Anger heaving I fantasized about tearing down these terrible surrogates we’d created; I wanted to lash out at every Christian model and widely used program I could think of, but a strange thought bewildered and nagged me so, “Why would you do such violence to others? Not for love’s sake. Put down the sword Peter, it is not the way,” and I remembered Peter in Gethsemane drawing his sword and striking a man as they were coming to arrest Jesus.
I thought of myself a few months prior. If someone had come to tear down the surrogate I was still striving to build, would it have opened my eyes? No, I couldn’t imagine it would have. As long as I was looking for life in a model, in a surrogate, I would’ve just built another. I couldn’t distinguish the source from the surrogate. In our delusion we had built our machine, our model, to be a surrogate mother of sorts.
Just as a surrogate mother is impregnated and the new life grows within her belly, we thought our model could be, and even was carrying within it’s belly kingdom life; but it wasn’t. It carried within its belly what it was built to carry, the vain efforts of men to create life. Its appetite was growing and growling constantly. The more we fed it, the more our own creation devoured us. Yet in this setting the kingdom was indeed blooming in many of us. Our hearts were being knitted together and we were growing in Him. That was the confusing part, for the flicker of kingdom shining amongst us was perceived as the offspring of our efforts. Yet that thought haunted me in this moment, “I’ve come for the sick.”
I saw it now. He dwells among genuine hearts, and genuinely sick hearts, as certainly as we flock to empty models looking for life. He loves to be among the sick, and the sick are looking for life in all the wrong places. He’d been with me amidst all my striving. He’d been with me from one model to the next. He was with me in the old denomination, and He was with me now. Always there whispering, healing, breaking and working in me. Another whisper graced my ears, “All things wholly given to Him, are Holy.” I could feel His delight in our hearts. Somehow, He’d been delighted with us in our efforts, even though our efforts were in vain; but then, were they in vain? Even now he was redeeming them by spreading this revelation before me. All things are turned to good for those who love Him...I guess?
A scary new world suddenly spread before my jolted eyes—could I live without the guide of a model? What do I do, without striving? There had always been a surrogate of one sort or another, in one form or another, telling me how to live. I’d always thought it was Holy Spirit, but now I saw that most of it wasn’t. Certainly I would never totally escape contact with models in this life. By simply being around people I’d be brushing against them constantly; perhaps even moving in and out of them for the sake of relationship. Perhaps though, I was being freed from my bondage to them. Freed from my eternal search for life. Freed from my endless toil, tilling the spiritual ground of my heart, hoping to harvest a crop of contentment. I would no longer have to build them or serve them. Perhaps the obligation and guilt would fade. I needed no surrogate any longer. Maybe my life with Him and in Him would now begin to manifest freely in my relationships, and in my solitude. It was frightening and exhilarating. It was life altering. Yet I still wondered, how did bitter failure bring so much life? I gawked at my own disbelief. Was my god really that small, that I couldn’t believe it? Perhaps...and perhaps I hadn’t really known God nearly as well as I thought. Perhaps that’s what it is to be a modern day Pharisee.
