Author Archives: Rebecca Trotter

A mom, writer, thinker, talker, teacher, Christian and odd duck . . . www.theupsidedownworld.com
  • gay hurricanes

    God’s Judgment Coming Through Disasters

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    gay hurricanesEver stop to think that maybe God’s really upset with open fields? And farmers? Seriously. Do you have any idea how many tornado’s go rampaging through open fields every year? We all pay attention when a tornado hits a populated area or a pro-gay church gathering, but the vast majority of tornado’s hit open fields and farm land. And since (according to some people’s thinking), natural disasters are a sign of God’s wrath, then God must have some big beef with open fields and farm land – right?

    Or did you ever think through the implications of the fact that our planet couldn’t support life if it wasn’t so dynamic? Without geological process which lead to earthquakes and volcano’s and even weather events like hurricanes doing their part, life could not exist on Earth. So if destructive weather events and earthquakes and volcano’s and such are the result of man’s sin (the teaching of some folks), then if everyone stopped sinning, the planet would become stagnant and we’d all DIE. Now there’s a reason to carry on fornicating if ever there was one!

    OK, OK, I’m being silly. Piper and Driscol their ilk not withstanding, I think all reasonable people understand that natural disasters are the result of the normal processes of the planet and not sent by God to punish us for pissing him off. And yet – believe it or not – I don’t think the “Hurricane Katrina was caused by Mardi Gras” people are entirely wrong to think that there is a link between God’s judgment and natural disasters. In the bible, natural disasters are sometimes linked quite explicitly to God’s judgment. But I don’t think it works the way some people think it does.

    First of all, major weather events and calamity aren’t caused by people sinning and making God angry. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornado’s, volcano’s and the like were happening long before we were here to piss God off. And life on earth does depend on these dynamic processes. The bible says that God “causes the rain to fall and the sun to shine on the good and evil alike.” Rain can mean flood and sun can mean drought, so this isn’t just a statement indicating blessings, but also disaster. So both good weather and bad weather will happen regardless of whether people are good or evil.

    Or consider the time that Jesus and his disciples were on their boat in the middle of a terrible storm. Many of Jesus’ disciples were seasoned fishermen. These weren’t the sort of people who were likely to panic over a little rain and wind. Or even a lot of rain and wind. So this must have really been some storm to get them thinking they were about to die. Worse than any they had experienced before, perhaps. Pretty clearly, this storm wasn’t caused by sin or an example of God’s judgment on Jesus and his crewmates.

    Then there’s this lovely description of Elijah’s encounter with God:

        And behold, the LORD was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing.

    God is not in the wind or the earth shaking or the fire. God was the gentle blowing, inviting Elijah from his cave to speak with him.

    When disaster strikes, it is not because God has sent it as judgment on us. But it may happen that when the wind, the fire or the earthquake comes, it will be followed by God’s still, small voice inviting us to speak with him.

    The reason I say that I do think there is a connection between natural disasters and God’s judgment is because of the way judgment actually works. Judgment isn’t about punishment or condemnation, but about being confronted with reality. Repeatedly in scripture, a connection is made between God’s judgment and the truth of men’s sins being made known:

    Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God. ~ 1 Corinthians 4:5

    God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. ~ Ecclesiastes 12:14

    Judgment is like a being shown a cosmic mirror which forces us to look at the reality of who we are, what we love and serve. We can plot and scheme and play nice much of the time while fooling ourselves about what we’re doing. But when we are pushed into extreme situations – like say, during a disaster – and we’re working off instinct, that’s when who we really are becomes clear.

    Are we the sort of people who take pictures of someone who is about to be hit by a train or do we jump on the tracks and pull them to safety? Do we take a few minutes to gather our valuables as a tornado approaches or do we run to the neighbors to make sure they are getting out before the storm? As destruction approaches, do we wish we had time to settle some scores or to tell someone we love them? Do we find a picture in the rubble after the buildings fall and hold onto it in case we can return it or do we toss it aside to continue the search for our own stuff? In ways big and small, disasters will bring the reality of our hearts to the surface. And when we are face-to-face with the reality of our good or evil hearts, that’s judgment.

    One of the often overlooked aspects of God’s judgment is that as a rule in the bible it comes on nations rather than on individuals. When someone first pointed this out to me, my immediate reaction was that this was unfair. I should be judged on my own merits, not on the merits of the group I belong to. But we are social creatures – we are made for relationship with each other. God doesn’t just want us to be good as individuals, he wants us to have properly functioning communities and nations. And much like with us as individuals, the way we react as a nation, community or group reveals the truth of who we are as well.

    Do we fail to help the poor get out of the way of impending disaster? Do we make plans to meet the needs of the poor in the wake of a disaster? Are there families ready to look out for and comfort the children affected by disasters or have we lived our lives in such a way that we have masses of kids without the men and women they deserve to help them navigate traumatic situations? Do we provide security for those living in poor areas during major disruptions or do we deploy our resources to protect the well-to-do from further loss of their assets? Are we investing our money to maintain the services and infrastructure which keep the needy afloat and allow them to recover from disaster? Or do we give to the already secure under the guise of expecting them to create opportunity and security for the vulnerable?

    As with individuals, the heart of nations are exposed when disaster strikes.

    The reality is that disasters aren’t sent as judgment. But they can be a powerful means of rendering judgment on us by what they reveal. Of course, one of the other things which the “God is setting forests on fire because of abortion” crowd doesn’t get is that judgment isn’t always bad. Sometimes in judgment, we see what is ugly in us. But with heartening frequency we do discover that there is something very good in us as well.

    When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ~ Fred Rogers

  • boy-bowing-down-in-gods-hands1

    Self Righteousness, Election and Healing

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    How’s this for the most pretentious opening line I’ve ever used for a blog post?

    So, I was talking with my therapist yesterday . . . .

    OK, maybe pretentious is too strong a word. But yes, really, I was talking with my therapist yesterday. Because when you’re going through so much and your support system is failing like a fat woman’s bra and you have a bunch of kids who might be adversely affected by watching their mother break into a million tiny shards, the responsible thing to do is to get a therapist. I’m just hoping I can get my shit straight before they start coming after me for all the co-pays, but that’s another story.

    Anyhow, my therapist was going through the 8 types of emotional experiences/stressors which can end up being stored as unresolved issues in our autonomic nervous system. As she went through, I stopped her and said, “that one – unmet needs. That’s exactly what I’m hung up on right now.”

    We talked a bit about some of these unmet needs – little things like the need for comfort, belonging, affirmation, knowing that someone gave a crap if I ended up as a self-sufficient adult or a hobo. Stuff like that. And for a moment, I started to feel that strangely narcotic thrill of self-righteousness. I’m sure every human knows just what I’m talking about – that simultaneous feeling of being superior and victimized. The one which allows us to use other’s wrongs to elevate ourselves while condemning them.

    There’s something about feeling self-righteous which is so  . . . . satisfying. Ego boosting. Seductive, even. Over the years I’ve noticed that I can let go of many things pretty easily, but there’s something about this feeling of self-righteousness which feels almost like being in a warm embrace. Letting go of it feels like a loss in a way that letting go of anger or desire or frustration just doesn’t.

    But as I sat there in the momentary thrall of this feeling of self-righteousness, my spirit whispered, “those people who didn’t comfort you, who comforted them when they were small and hurting?” Which brought me and my gloating pity-party up short.

    The reason I think self-righteousness is so enticing is because it feeds on the knowledge that we’re right. We’re (at least in our own minds) innocent – or close enough to innocent to count. The other person is guilty. Not just guilty, but unjustified as well. What’s wrong with simply pointing out facts?

    But the reality is that the other person has an identity that has nothing to do with what they did or did not do for me. No matter how satisfying it is to slap the name tag “Guilty, Unjustified” on their chest, their true identity is actually “Human, Image Bearer, a little bit broken”.

    The truth is that my list of unmet needs exists in large part because those people I want to label “Guilty, Unjustified” have much the same list of unmet needs themselves. Someone who was never comforted, encouraged or affirmed will often be at a loss for how to offer comfort, encouragement and affirmation to others. What’s sad about it is that this can be true even when there is an enormous amount of love present.

    People have a hard time leading others someplace they’ve never been to and giving others what they’ve never received.

    Perhaps it hurts to let go of self-righteousness because it means letting go off our often-well-earned right to feel aggrieved. But it’s no virtue to feel superior to someone whose real crime is often having been broken themselves. God himself says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”, so who am I to withhold mercy?

    Of course, forgiving someone doesn’t mean that what they did no longer hurts. While I can offer mercy to someone else who hasn’t given me what I need, the need is still there. And just as importantly, I’m hardly the only one with such needs – every person I meet needs the same things from me as well.

    I’ve done therapy briefly a couple of times before and one of the benefits for me has usually been that it allows me to see that I’m actually a surprisingly healthy human being. Despite everything I’ve been through. I’m hardly perfect and its an ongoing process to be sure. But all-in-all, I’m pretty awesome. ;p

    Yet the only reason that I’m pretty awesome is because I didn’t have to depend on other human beings to give me what I needed. I’ve spent the last 25 years walking with the God of comfort. The God who tells me who I really am. The God who says, “you are mine.” It still hurts not to get those things from other people, of course. We are made for relationship with each other. But God isn’t broken or lost like we humans are. So he was more than able to give me what I need. And because he’s given me what I need, more often than not, I’ve been able to turn around and give those precious gifts to others as well.

    The funny thing is, I didn’t chose to have this God fixation. And despite my best efforts, I’ve never been able to let it go. Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something to the idea of election – that some of us do get chosen for relationship with God. But not so that we can spend eternity in heaven. Instead, maybe some of us are chosen to be in relationship with God so that we can do this work of receiving what humanity needs from His hand and then pass it on to others. Perhaps God is using his people in Christ to seed humanity with what it need to heal and reach redemption. That’s certainly worth letting go of self-righteousness’ embrace for, isn’t it?

  • What if life's like this? Only without the TV on our head.

    Life as a Video Game

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    There are scientists working right now to try and figure out if the universe is actually a massive holograph. Frankly, I’m not really sure what it would mean if it turns out it is. As long as our only awareness is within this realm, I don’t see how knowing that I’m stuck in an intricate projection would change anything. But I do have my own unprovable theory about technology and the nature of our lives which I think could be useful. It’s this: what if we thought of our lives as us taking part in a massive, intense, virtual reality video game? Now, I’m no gamer myself, so I’m sure I’m going to miff some details here, but bear with me.

    See, I think that when we become embodied, it’s like starting to play this virtual reality game. The physical realm is the setting for the game. One of the game’s features is that it’s so all-encompassing, we tend to forget that it’s not reality (or at least doesn’t represent ultimate reality which would be the spiritual world). It seems likely that some of us retain the memory that we’ve entered into this alternate world for a while when we are very young. Thus the common beliefs/reports that infants and small children can see angels.

    Like a video game avatar, everyone gets a body to use during their time in the game. While each of us bears the image of God, these bodies are shaped by a nearly endless array of genetic differences, environmental exposures, quirks of growth and such before we are born. Add the influence of external factors – circumstances, relationships and parents and each of our avatars carry God’s image in completely unique ways as we move through the game.

    Like all games, this one was made with challenges, risks and even unavoidable traps and dangers. In the Christian tradition, there has been a tendency to think that prior to the fall, the world was perfect. Unless you were a plant, because everyone – even the tigers and vampire bats – ate you. But the reality is that God declared the created world “good”, not perfect. All of the evidence we have points to the reality that there have always been earthquakes, sickness, droughts and animals who think we look like a tasty treat. But if we remember that this life is a game, then we can also remember that any game worth playing has challenges and risks or its just not worth playing. Part of what happened at the fall seems to have been that we decided that life – including ourselves – wasn’t good enough. But even with flesh eating bacteria and spiders the size of our heads, the world was made good and it still is today.

    I think that the story of the creation of man can be the story of the day when God said to adam – humanity - “come and see this place I’ve made for you to play in. It has plants and animals, day and night, mountains and valleys for you to enjoy and cultivate. I’m going to start you off in a garden where you can tend to the land and the animals there to start off with. You will be paired as male and female to have children so that everyone can get a chance to play the game and learn and grow there. Some of you will play the game for many seasons and some of you will kind of pop in and out. At the end of your turn, we’ll take a look back and see how you did. There are risks, of course, but I made you very good. You’ll figure out how to advance in the game to deal with these risks over your generations.” 

    I think that the tree in the garden – the one with the fruit man was forbidden to eat from – worked like a cheat in the game. Eating the fruit would take humanity straight from the level we were at to the level that God plays the game at - as one who knows good and evil. The highest level available for the game – in our world, at least.

    God told us that if we ate from that tree, we would die on that day. Which shows how dangerous jumping straight to that level was. On the day we ate that fruit, humanity would be condemned to die. Given that it took a good 6.5 billion years or so for the planet we are playing the game on to be ready for us, and that the creation story condenses that into 6 days, no doubt humanity is still living out that day. The human race is still in danger of losing the game entirely. We certainly have the ability to wipe ourselves out at this point in human history – and may we do so if we don’t change how we are playing the game.

    In this context, the story of our faith is the story of the rescue mission through which God is trying to help us avoid that fate. As it turns out, just as there was a cheat which allowed us to jump to a level we hadn’t earned and weren’t ready to play, there’s a cheat which lets us find our way out again. It works like in a hedge maze where people entering it are told, “if you get hopelessly lost, just keep turning left and you’ll eventually find your way out.” In our case, the fail-safe is love. This was the message Jesus was giving us when he said that the whole of the law was summed up in the commands to “Love the Lord your God [ie Love] with all your heart, mind and being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.” If as we go about our business of raising families, studying bugs, learning to make cakes or whatever we are doing, we would all devote ourselves to love and nothing else, we can find our way safely through. In fact, if we all embrace this, we will not only find our way through, but our game-playing ability will catch up to the level of the game we are playing at. We’ll discover how to use the resources of this good world created for us to sustain it and ourselves. How to treat each other in ways which bring life and dignity rather than oppression and death. The challenge is convincing everyone to stop trying to play the game in the way that seems best to them and instead pay the price of learning to live lives which are expressions of pure love – ie as images of God.

    It’s that convincing everyone to use the fail-safe built into the game which is the real problem we now face. Religious people often like to talk about free will, but only when it’s as an explanation for people going to hell or sinning. But choosing love is as much an act of the will as sinning has ever been. God can’t just descend, tell us what to do and have it be so. We have to choose to live differently than we and our people have been up until this point. In fact, all of scripture can be seen as a record of how through his relationship with Israel, God has sought to take humanity from our own, erroneous and limited understanding of how to play the game and help us choose to re-orient them ourselves to Love. It’s the only way we can be redeemed from the death which we are on a path towards. And at the end of our lives, as we review how we played the game, this will be the standard by which we are judged. How well did we love? How much closer were we able to bring humanity to the day when we’d all be living by Love above and beyond anything else we could be doing.

    Which leads me to an often missed feature about this video game. It’s a group project. Jesus made it clear that we are supposed to be living our lives for the benefit of others, not just for ourselves. The point of the game isn’t just that I would learn to play it well. Rather, by learning to play it well, I will be making the game easier for others to play well. I will be leaving the game in a better working state than it was when I got here. Jesus didn’t pray for us to be good individuals, but for us to be one as he and the father are one. That we would see ourselves working and acting as one unit rather than a separate from each other.

    Jesus even told us that we ought to be willing to give up our lives in order to achieve this goal. Many people think that a good life is a long life and a life cut short is a sign that the game isn’t working or is unfair. But the only good which comes from having a long life is having more time to make the game better. A short life, done well and received well by the people around us, is sometimes the best contribution a person can make to moving us forward in learning to love. At the end of the day, Love is the one and only purpose which will last from this game we are playing.

    So, how’s your game going?

  • grief3

    The Gift of Delayed Grief

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    My early twenties weren’t exactly a stellar time. Within a short period of time I was raped twice. I found out I was pregnant shortly after I decided to take Jesus’ words that it’s better to enter the kingdom maimed and had broken up with then boyfriend. The people around me didn’t exactly rise to the occasion. One woman I told about one of the sexual assaults told every-freaking-body. A man she told became so belligerent towards me that I had to interrupt his screaming rant to let him know that if he laid a hand on me, I would call the police and have him hauled away. One of my dearest friends died after a life-long struggle with a rare blood disorder.

    I had been studying to become a high school English teacher, but would now need help so I could complete my student teaching in order for that to happen. Instead, I was sent out into the world without so much as a chair to sit in or a bed to sleep on. I became homeless and wound up in a homeless shelter/half-way house for single mothers. My roommate was an orphan who stole a ridiculous amount of money from me. The other women there were children of drug addicts, forced out by violent step-fathers, recovering from addictions themselves, etc.

    Some of the people around me felt free to demand that I go into hiding and then place my child for adoption so my siblings, relatives and community wouldn’t know of my shame. (The idea that perhaps a person who has already had their right to self-direction grossly violated shouldn’t be told what to do with her own baby didn’t register, of course. And no, this wasn’t the ’50s. It was the mid-90s)

    After I had my son and decided to follow God’s leading and raise him myself, family and friends refused to have anything to do with me. Some went so far as to tell me directly that I wasn’t welcome to come around anymore – particularly if my son was with me. I did manage to eventually finish my degree, but what sort of work to pursue with a degree in Literature and Communications still eludes me. I was poor, alone and directionless beyond knowing that I needed to care for my son.

    There were a few brighter spots. My then 16 year old sister was supportive and actually happy about her new nephew. A local church held the only baby shower I had until a couple of my husband’s friends’ wives threw a spectacularly under-attended shower for me when I was pregnant with my 5th child. So, at least I had a stroller when my son was born.

    The local crisis pregnancy center was a God-send. They gave me a maternity dress and money so I could buy a pair of maternity jeans, as well as a crib for the baby, the occasional $20 for gas and later a $100 a month stipend which my roommate repeatedly stole. And they provided weekly sessions with an amazing counselor which made a world of difference.

    In the years that followed, I gained the life-sustaining friendship of an amazing women I had met while doing prison ministry. And after our son was born, my now husband began stepping up to the plate. Some of the people in my life insist that he’s a terrible person and can’t understand my relationship with him, but the reality is that he’s always been the only person who has been there and done whatever he could figure out to help me out when I needed help staying off the streets or getting access to transportation or whatever. Which as my kid’s father and later my husband was only right, but he had scarcely any more support than I did and really needed people who would help him out as much as I did.

    As I went through all of this, it hurt, of course. But I refused to give into anger. I forgave profusely even though it would be nearly a decade before any sort of apology at all came. I didn’t throw people’s failures or my suffering in anyone’s face. I didn’t judge the people who hurt me, but chose to recognize that they were limited people who were still beholden to their limitations. I didn’t create additional turmoil by demanding what people were unwilling to give. I rarely allowed myself to wallow in self-pity; it’s pointless and draining and I couldn’t afford it. I let go of the friendships, my reputation, my ministry, any material comforts and a future I had already worked very hard and overcome many obstacles to set-up for myself. What’s been done can’t be undone and the only thing to do is to keep moving forward.

    I stumbled through, tried things and failed, took enormous pleasure from being a mom, eventually married my husband and despite some ridiculous challenges and against enormous odds, we made a life together. The people around me continued displaying an often appalling level of callousness towards me, but I just kept forgiving, letting go, returning kindness for evil and seeking God. And in the last decade even the worst offenders have become much more supportive and kind. So, it was a royally sucky way to start life, but it wasn’t the end of my story by any means. And I do get to take pride in the fact that looking back, for whatever mistakes I made, all-in-all, I handled everything like a fucking super-hero.

    Part of what allowed me to survive was this amazing thing which our minds will do in the face of trauma and loss. You see, although I faced my challenges head on and never intentionally stuffed anything, going through so many awful things and suffering so many tremendous losses has a way of creating a great amount of pain. Far more pain than I was emotionally or practically able to cope with when these things were happening. So, my amazing mind, in all of its wisdom, dealt with what it could as it went and tucked the rest away.

    As I say the memoir portion of my book The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress:

    Emotions are funny things; like energy they never actually go away – they just move from one form to another. Using the tools I had to combat emotional reactions which were simply too much for me to deal with was like holding a beach ball under water – eventually you lose control and the ball will come shooting out in unexpected and uncontrollable ways.

    For most of this year this is exactly what has been happening with all the crap I went through in my twenties. Those emotions which I was unable to process fully as I went through have been coming out to be dealt with and released.

    This isn’t the first time I’ve had this experience. It happened in my late teens and again when I finally dealt with the trauma of losing all of my friends after having my son. Almost everything I’ve read about the fairly common experience of delayed grief has spoken of it as a bad thing. What happens when you aren’t willing to face reality, live in denial or avoidance. But I think it’s genius. An amazing sort of grace which allows us to survive and thrive in the face of devastating suffering and loss.

    There was no way I could have done as well as I did in life if I had been weighed down with the sort of pain and grief I have been experiencing this year on top of everything else. By tucking this pain away to be dealt with later, when I was safer, stronger and more secure than I was as a young adult, this delaying of grief allowed me to survive and even sometimes thrive. It gave me time to mature, grow stronger and become more settled before having to face it. Dealing with this pain has nearly done me in this year. I can’t imagine what it would have done to me back when I was couch surfing with a toddler or looking for change in the cushions for food for my kid.

    The problem with this sort of delayed grief, I think, is that we often don’t recognize it for what it is when it comes up. Often, our brains will wait until things are fairly settled to let these emotions out. Which is good but often confusing. I’m finally in a safe place, so why am I so miserable, we’ll think. We’ll wonder if maybe there’s some other problem – a failure of forgiveness or a need to change direction or an unrecognized problem with how we are currently doing life which is at the root of our suffering. Sometimes we keep trying to use the same coping mechanisms which we used to shove aside the pain the first time – perhaps denial or minimizing or internalizing – only to discover that they are no longer working. Hopefully, either on your own or with the help of a good friend or counselor, you will figure out that it’s old pain demanding to be dealt with and released.

    Delayed grief is something which many people experience, but it’s not something which is very widely known or understood, which can make it hard to recognize. Most of what is written about it is, as I said, negative and usually written about those who have lost someone to death. But loss takes many forms. It can be the loss of relationships, reputation, work, security, or anything else we care about. It seems to me that as hard as a loss of a loved one to death can be, unless the death is particularly unexpected or violent, grief from death is usually much easier to process than the grief which comes from the evil we do to each other. Physical death is a normal part of life in this world whereas the things we do to each other comes from the brokenness which mankind has been struggling with since the fall. It is unnatural and beyond what God created us to have to cope with.

    Since one of the reasons delayed grief is so difficult to deal with is that we often don’t recognize it when it happens, here are a few signs of delayed grief:

    • You find yourself dwelling on past events. You may find yourself repeating the story of what happened to yourself over and over. You may imagine conversations you could have had or even think you might want to have with the people involved.
    • Like the grief which is experienced after the death of a loved one, the pain you are experiencing may sideswipe you unexpectedly. You may suddenly start crying, being angry or exhausted or anxious for no particular reason.
    • While reading, in conversation, watching TV or movies, etc you may find that hearing or seeing things which are similar to your past events triggers intense emotions.
    • The pain you are experiencing tends to be more draining than regular frustration, hurt feelings or anger. Grief tends to be particularly draining – both emotionally and physically. You may find that you just have less energy over all than normal.
    • Sometimes you may find that you are re-experiencing past events, almost as if you are right back in that moment. This can be a sign of PTSD. If this is happening, it’s particularly important to find someone to talk things out with.

    Of course, no one wants to be in pain. But one of the good things about the pain of grief, is that its a healing pain. Once it passes, you will be whole-er and more peaceful than you were before. So it’s not a bad thing. Of course, there are things you can do along the way which will make working through grief harder than it needs to be and perhaps even complicate it so it poisons your life going forward.

    Some of the ways you can avoid this and allow grief to do its work:

    • The most important thing is to allow yourself to experience whatever pain you have. Pain that is experienced can be released. If you refuse to allow yourself to feel it, it will never go away.
    • The presence of grief doesn’t mean that you’ve done something wrong and need to be making changes. If you need to make changes in your life, by all means do that. But if your pain is coming from the past, changing the present won’t be much help.
    • Having forgiven someone doesn’t mean that what they did doesn’t hurt. But you may discover that there is unforgiveness or anger present which needs to be dealt with. Dealing with that can help move the process of grief along.
    • Resist the urge to second guess or blame yourself. Even if you screwed things up along the way, we all do the best we can figure out how as we go. If you know better today, be grateful and proud that you know better now rather than you did then. Some people go through their lives never learning anything.
    • Be compassionate towards yourself. Don’t tell yourself that your pain is ridiculous or that you should just get over it. Much of our pain is created when others lack compassion towards us. Don’t join in and pile on. Treat and talk to yourself the way you would a good friend who was going through a hard time.
    • Find someone to talk to. Just make sure they are safe. If you try to talk with a friend, family member or fellow Christian and they don’t respond in a way that makes you feel better, don’t do it again. The fact that this person should be someone you can lean on doesn’t mean that they are. Don’t hesitate to see a counselor to talk things out, even if you only go a few times. Staying isolated will only make things worse.
    • Do things to help others. It does help to have other things to focus on as you work through your grief. As you help others, you will often be exposed to experiences, ideas and insights of others which might be helpful to you as well.
    • Give it time. Grief is a process which often follows a two-steps forward, one step back progression. But over time it will lessen, episodes of intense pain will come further apart and eventually be less intense. Eventually, your grief will be more memory than anything and you will have gained healing and peace for your efforts. But it does take time.

    One last note. I went to find a picture for this post and put “grief sculpture” into the image search. Almost every single picture which came up was of a woman or female form. Almost every. single. one. Men: you are allowed to grieve. You need to grieve, just like we women do. Please know that and don’t buy into the cultural nonsense that men always have to buck up and take it. It’s not true. Suffering is not a female experience. It’s a human one. And its worth it. There is healing and peace on the other side, which after all the suffering, we all deserve.

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    I Guess Jesus Was Telling the Truth

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    There’s a saying that you should never put a period where God has put a comma. But as my readers know, there does come a time when one has to wonder how many commas can fit into one damn sentence. Which is where I’ve been for the last few months. I’ve allowed comma after comma to be added to the ongoing story of my life until it just seemed ridiculous to continue thinking that somehow, this story was going to work itself out. So I decided that this time, I would put that period in and take a look at how things looked.

    To a certain extent, I suppose this is a pretty normal state of mind for an oldster like me. I’m going to be 40 in a few weeks. Surely now is as good a time as any to stop and take stock of how it’s gone so far. And the verdict is, they’ve gone pretty damn crappy. In fact, the prospect of another 40 years of more of the same practically sent me into a death spiral.

    Part of it was that by this point I had slipped into depression which brings what is bad into sharp focus while dimming one’s view of what is good. But a lot of it was that as I looked back, I saw a life lived following God and his ways the best I could. This had lead to me making what more realistic, sober minded people would see as some poor decisions, but every step of the way, I simply trusted in God. Until I just couldn’t convince myself to allow one more freaking comma. The time had come to put that period there. Looking at my life, all I could think was, “I followed God and trusted him. And this is where it got me? Seriously?”

    The problem has been where to go from here. If I got here by following God the best I could, then maybe I needed to find another way of doing things. However, as I mentioned, I’m getting to be an oldster now. I’m a bit set in my ways. I don’t really know any other way to live than the way that I have been living. Being selfish and angry and shallow and materialistic just seem like soooooooo much work. I’m to lazy for all of that. Old dogs and new tricks.

    I read a post a few months ago (can’t remember who wrote it at the moment) in which the writer basically said, “if you ever find yourself poor, worn out, mourning, yearning for things to be set right, not up for the task in front of you, sick of all the conflict, friendless and wondering why being a good person doesn’t seem to do you any good, Jesus says you’re doing it right. He says you are blessed. In fact, he says you should be rejoicing.”

    The problem, of course, is that when you are poor, worn out, weighed down by injustice, oppression and cruelty, feeling small, friendless and wondering why all the good you’ve worked so hard to grow hasn’t amounted to anything, you don’t feel blessed! Instead you feel, well –  poor, worn out, weighed down by injustice, oppression and cruelty, feeling small, friendless and miserable. Reading the beatitudes feels like Jesus saying, “who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?”

    At some point I had to seriously ask myself: do I actually believe Jesus? Do I believe that he’s telling the truth? Do I believe that the truth he’s telling is worth chasing after? Out of habit if nothing else, I wanted to say yes. The problem being that believing Jesus up to now has lead me to a place of being poor, worn out, weighed down by injustice, oppression and cruelty, feeling small, friendless and like a failure. Depressed? Yes. Rejoicing? Certainly not.

    And that’s where I’ve been stuck. Until a couple a days ago, I had a small epiphany about why I have been suffering so terribly this year. I’m not going to get deep into it in this post, but essentially I realized that I’ve been dealing with delayed grief. And much like when a person has been struggling with an undiagnosed or misdiagnosed illness, finally having the right diagnosis for what is going on is an enormous relief. You finally have a name which is attached to your experience and can be used to explain it. You have a prognosis, some idea of what is actually causing the problem, what lies ahead and can choose an appropriate course of action. My problem has been a terrible grief over terrible experiences which my psyche is now strong and able enough to experience the pain of. I’m going to get into the details of this sort of grieving in another post, but for now I want to get back to this issue of commas and periods and being blessed while you feel like crap.

    So I finally understood that at its root my suffering for the last few months has been a normal part of working through the pain created by some really fucked-up experiences. Which is good for me. Unlike making money, friends, my husband happy, my house orderly or some of the other things I’ve been struggling to do to lift my suffering, I know how to do grief. So my perspective has been shifting ever so slightly. And to my astonishment, I’ve started to discover that what Jesus said is true. Even with that period I have been insisting on putting in place. Yes, I have been poor and miserable and struggling. But I’m realizing that because I did follow God, I have been unexpectedly blessed.

    For example, I have a clear conscience. My life has not been error free, but I’ve always forgiven freely, always loved the best way I knew how, always followed God’s lead when I could discern it. I have rarely been intentionally mean to anyone, known the right thing to do and chosen to do something else, ignored someone who was suffering or in need. I’ve done crappy by the world’s standards in life. But I have a clear conscience which I’m realizing is a really great gift to be able to give yourself.

    There was a lovely guest post at Ann Voskamp’s site (mute button on the bottom to the left) by Lysa TerKeust the other day which posited that

    And you know what I’m tempted to do as a mom?  Draw a straight line from my child’s wrong choice to my weakness in mothering. . . . But what if that’s the wrong line to draw? . . .

    What if God said, “What mama is strong enough, persevering enough, tough enough to bend without breaking under the weight of the choices this child will make?

    What mama is willing to be humbled to the point of humiliation yet not blinded to the wisdom found like diamonds in dirty places?

    So what if I’ve had this terribly hard, unfair life because God looked around, said, “who is strong and wise enough to carry the burden of other’s sins and a large sized serving of humanity’s pain and work through it without passing it along and multiplying it?” What if that was me? If the world looks down on me, but God saw me as good and able to the task, then maybe that is cause to “rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven”.

    And there’s something else. Five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, when the things which I find myself grieving today were happening, I loved God and did my best to follow him. But in the last couple of years, through terrible struggle, I’ve gained a perspective I didn’t have then. Then I thought of myself as moving in and out of God’s presence. God could descend from without or rise up from within. For a while, I could even access that presence pretty much at will. But as of late, I’ve become aware of God’s continual presence with me. Not in a watching over me from above sort of way. Or even a carried within me sort of way. But rather as a just there – in the everyday, here and now, mundane world sort of way. Like air or atoms or life itself. Always just there. (Which, if you recall, I have been a wee bit frustrated with.)

    So now, as I look back, I understand in a way that I never could have then that God really was with me all along. When I was lonely, he was there with me. When I was heartbroken, he was there with me. When family and friends turned me out or mistreated me, he was as close to me as ever. I was never alone. I was never unnoticed. I was never uncared for. Those are all things I knew in my head even then. But now, I understand them in my bones in a way that I simply couldn’t have then.

    So I guess that what Jesus said was true, even though I couldn’t see how it could be. I am blessed. And if he was right about that, then I guess I can count on the fact that as this terrible grief passes, it will be replaced with rejoicing. Because in this kingdom he brought down, great is my reward.

    BTW, I think I’m ready to get back to regular blogging, but grief does tend to use up a lot of energy, so we’ll see. But if you miss me when I’m not writing here, you should go “Like” The Upside Down World on facebook. Even when I’m not blogging, I share thoughts, articles, pictures and such pretty regularly over there. And I’d feel extra special if you’d join me. :)

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    “Me Too”

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    Late last year, I read an amazing article about a pastor who became friends with the notoriously disgraced Ted Haggard. (For those of you who don’t keep up with such things, Ted Haggard was a prominent conservative Evangelical pastor who had been caught hiring a male prostitute to join him at hotels for “massages” and crystal meth.) After his scandal broke, Haggard had gotten counseling and then restarted his ministry. Most of us watching from the outside scoffed at the idea of him as a legitimate minister at that point. But in that article, his reluctant friend described Haggard as “excited that the only people who would talk to him now were the truly broken and hurt”. Think about that. Jesus said, “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” And that’s what those of us who are following in his footsteps are supposed to be doing as well. Prior to his scandal, Haggard was the leader of the National Association of Evangelical Churches. He was a founder of a large church in Colorado Springs. This was a man who was surrounded by and ministering almost entirely to the righteous (or at least the outwardly righteous). It was only after he was disgraced and lost everything that he found himself walking in the steps of Christ serving those who, like himself, were too broken to even hide their sin and sickness.

    Now, I certainly don’t mean to imply that hiring prostitutes and using drugs is a great way to put yourself on the road to serving Christ. But I do think that the story of Ted Haggard has something to teach us. Most Christians want nothing more than to live safe, respectable and prosperous lives. And we are loathe to do anything which would imperil that. To the extent that this allows us to avoid sin, that is fine. But too often, the result is that we are also avoiding becoming the sort of people who can really reach out and serve those who are not righteous but broken.

    Of course, life is not always so kind as to only send you troubles which you have chosen to set yourself up for. Accidents, injuries, sickness, loss and other human beings often intrude on even the most carefully constructed lives. And when they do, the nearly universal response is to ask the basically useless question, “why me?” We feel that somehow life has been unfair to us. We line up all the reasons we don’t deserve our injuries or the scandal of failure as evidence of how unfair life is being to us. But as the saying famously goes, life isn’t about us.

    Ritu Ghatourey has said, “some of the most comforting words that can be heard are me too. That moment when you find out that your struggle is also someone else’s struggle and that you’re not alone fighting that same battle.” One of the things which I have come to suspect as I’ve walked through my own struggles is that so far as there is a reason for the bad things which happen, it may be for just this reason. If I, like Christ, am supposed to be serving and tending to the broken, what can I offer if have never been broken myself?

    If our primary goal is to be comfortable and safe and we eschew following God or life into places where scandal, poverty and suffering may result, we may well find ourselves too comfortable and clueless to help the broken. And how might the knowledge that we are gaining insight, empathy and understanding which will allow us to minister to others in need change our attitudes about our own suffering? If we understand our primary work to be loving, serving and healing ourselves and each other, then no suffering is pointless. No loss is irredeemable. Whatever we are going through, it can be used by God and by us in the ongoing process of redeeming this world.

    After all, this is exactly what God did for us. He became as one of us – he shared in our suffering. He emptied himself and took on our reality as his own. We have a savior who knows what tempts us, what hurts us, what we struggle with and how dark and confusing this life can be. Rather than viewing suffering, scandal and loss as terrible things to be avoided, part of following Jesus and sharing in his suffering may mean doing the same for each other.

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    Disbelieving Forgiveness

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    Sorry for the long silence. I’ve been dealing with some heavy stuff here. I think it’s getting better. Prayers are appreciated. Or if that’s not really your thing, cash is always an acceptable alternative. ;)

    Today, I want to talk about what happens when we refuse to believe we are forgiven. Like everyone else, the people around me have sometimes treated me in ways that weren’t the best or even done outright awful things which I then needed to forgive. Fortunately for me, forgiveness has always come fairly easily. If nothing else, my self interest kicks in and I realize that the benefits of letting go of the wrong far outweigh whatever payoff I might get from hanging onto my hurt. In doing so, I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons. That what other people do is about them and not me, for example. And that it’s easier to recover from being hurt than it is to recover from the way the fear of being hurt warps us.

    However, I have often been befuddled and frankly, hurt, over the years that some of these same people who I have readily extended grace to for some pretty major things were often unwilling to extend grace to me for relatively minor faults and failings. For a while I thought that maybe the problem was that the sort of people who required extreme grace were also the sort of the people who were just kind of jerks anyways. However, over the last couple of years, I have discovered that there has been something entirely different at work.

    What I’ve learned is that either because I didn’t communicate it well enough or they still felt guilty or the easy grace seemed too good to be true, a few of these people didn’t believe that I had really forgiven them. They believed that even if I had openly communicated forgiveness, in my heart, I was secretly angry, hostile and score keeping. Which made it easy for them to see my (numerous) faults and failings as evidence of hostility, passive-aggressive revenge or withholding. The truth of the matter is that I’m just far more flawed than these people may have realized.

    These people who didn’t believe themselves forgiven didn’t just assume that there was an unfinished conflict between us. The assumption of this unfinished conflict colored their whole way of seeing me and our interactions. If I was forgetful or short or overtaxed, they assumed it was if not deliberate, then certainly a sign of my real feelings about them. In turn, they would be resentful or become more demanding or pull away from me. And I would struggle to understand why people who I had extended so much grace to were so quick to judge, criticize and be angry with me.

    Now, my point in sharing this isn’t to brag about how great I am at forgiving. First of all, I can’t claim credit for being temperamentally inclined to forgive. And forgiving should be the norm and not in the least exceptional for Christians. Plus, I’m far from perfect. There are times when I will or struggle to forgive or allow the relationship to break even if I do forgive because remaining in it caused more pain than I was willing to deal with.

    The reason that I’m sharing this is because I think there’s a very similar dynamic which often happens between us and God. God, of course, doesn’t have my imperfections and doesn’t need us to extend grace to him in reality. Yet, I can’t help but think of how often when things don’t go well or when we hit a spiritually dry time, we jump to the conclusion that it’s because God is angry or disappointed with us. We’ve been told we are forgiven, but much like these people around me, we don’t really believe it. And it colors the way we view God and our relationship with him.

    Of course, it could well be that there is some sin or character flaw which God is pushing us to acknowledge and bring to him for tending to. But once we’ve done that, it’s done. It’s gone – between us and God at least. But whether due to guilt or disbelief, many times we continue waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yes, we are forgiven, but there will be a price to pay at some point seems to be our working assumption.

    So when we hit a rough patch we don’t recognize it as a normal part of life or an opportunity to grown, but as evidence that we haven’t been fully forgiven – not until we’ve paid our pound of flesh, at least. And after a while, when the rough patches keep being rough and no rain comes to the desert, we become resentful. “Haven’t I already paid enough for my sin?” we ask ourselves. We demand of God, “what do you want from me? Why won’t you let it go so I can move on? Where’s this forgiveness you promise?” And often, we’ll just withdraw from God. If not entirely, then a certain coldness and lack of enthusiasm creeps into our relationship with him.

    The truth is that even through our rough and dry patches, we have always been forgiven. That work’s been done, but the power of it does remain elusive so long as we disbelieve it and allow that disbelief to be a lens which colors how we see God working in our lives. It seems to me that it is essential to a healthy faith life for us to refuse to see whatever we are going through – no matter how incomprehensible or painful – as a sign of God’s anger or rejection of us. Although it may feel unnatural or even presumptive, reality is that we must give up our disbelief in God’s forgiveness before we will be able to see his movements with any clarity.

    Disbelieving forgiveness can destroy a relationship. I know.

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    Raising Jesus and Original Sin

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    I have this theory about how it was that Jesus came to be born without sin and it is just that – a theory. But I thought I’d share it with y’all because it has real implications for those of us who are or will be parents. Traditionally, it has been taught that Jesus was born without sin because he was conceived without sex. Because somehow it seems, the act of sex by our parents mysteriously implants this dark stain of sin on us at conception. While there is a verse in Psalm 51 which can be read to confirm this view, I personally find the idea that my parents having sex to conceive me made me sinful unreasonable and unconvincing.

    Sex is a good thing. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. Sex allows the two to become one – to reach past ourselves into another. It brings joy and satisfaction into our lives. It is the means by which we bring forth life and become co-creators with God. It can be misused, to be sure, but how could something which is fundamentally a good also be the thing which stains us before we even have true being? Not to mention that the mechanics of how something my parents did when I wasn’t even there made me bad are problematic.

    I don’t think that Jesus’ lack of sin had its roots in the way he was conceived. Rather, my theory is that his lack of sin came about due to something far less mystical and more practical – from his parents. Mary and Joseph had been told prior to Jesus’ birth that this child would be the messiah. Which means that before he was even born, his parents understood that Jesus was good, holy and anointed. Don’t you suppose that this knowledge influenced the way that they parented?

    Orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus was both fully man and fully God. But most Christians tend to give short shrift to the idea that Jesus was fully man. Rather, they seem to think of him as just playing at being human. He resided in a human body, sure, but otherwise, he was God. However, I think that unless Jesus had fully entered into the experience of being human – with all of its confusion, limitations and struggles – then he could not have been fully human. If he was born understanding why he was here and what he was supposed to do, he wasn’t fully human. If he arrived not needing to be instructed, not having to struggle with self-mastery, not being shaped by the culture and people around him, then he wasn’t fully human.

    We know nothing about Jesus as a child, but certainly he must have cried as an infant. He probably got frustrated and lost his temper as a toddler. Maybe he showed off his ability to burp the Hebrew alphabet to relatives. Or pulled the goat’s tail. Spilt things. At the wedding in Cana when Mary tells him to help out with the wine situation, Jesus responds, “woman, it is not yet my time.” It makes me wonder if he wasn’t teasing Mary about all the times while growing up that she’d told him not to use his supernatural abilities because “it’s not yet your time.” Then there was the time when Jesus was 12 when he stayed behind in the temple while his family headed back towards home. If I had done that, my parents would have killed me. And telling them that I had to be “in my father’s house” would NOT have gotten me off the hook.

    The reason I say that I think it was Jesus’ parents who were responsible for him being born without sin is because knowing that their son was good, they would have responded to his normal childish behaviors differently than those of us who believe we are parenting children born sinful. Perhaps this allowed them to see immaturity as immaturity rather than as a sign of sin. Perhaps this allowed them to see errors in judgment as simple mistakes rather than rebellion or willfulness. And perhaps this different perspective allowed them to avoid passing on their own brokenness.

    I’m not in the least claiming that Mary and Joseph were perfect parents and that is why Jesus was perfect. Parents don’t actually have that must power over their children anyways. But the older I get and the more I work through my own struggles, the more I realize how damaging the message that there is something wrong with me has been.

    When we reflect back to kids that their immaturity is sinful, we make normal growth and maturing a painful process of being wrong and bad. When we reflect a lack of judgment as rebellion, sin and willfulness, we similarly stunt their ability to grow while also undermining their trust in their own judgment. If we reject manifestations of their personality – playfulness, shyness, curiosity, determination – as sinful rudeness, withdrawal, impertinence or stubbornness, we teach them to reject the very tools God has given them to work with in life. And I do wonder if perhaps, working with the assumption that their son was good, Mary and Joseph avoided falling into these all too common parenting errors.

    Of course, Jesus was God. You and I and our children are not. Yet, it seems to me that as people who have been redeemed from the wages of sin through the work of Christ, we ought to adjust our own parenting accordingly. Our kids are not God, but they are made in the image of God. This and not sin is their true identity. So perhaps if we start where Mary and Joseph started – with the assumption of their child’s goodness – we won’t pass so much of our own brokenness onto our own children. Certainly, we’ll do it imperfectly and our own children, not being God, will no doubt actually sin. But if they in turn parent their own children with the assumption of their goodness and pass on less of their own brokenness, we’ll start to look less and less like what we have been and more and more like Christ.

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    Prayers of Futility

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    I start to pray and stop myself. Why bother? It’s not like God’s going to do anything for me. Give me something I need or a blessing or favor. I’ll ask and just be more bitter for the asking.

    I’m not a genie in the sky. I don’t exist to grant wishes and manipulate outcomes to your liking.

    I get that and it’s fine. But you don’t even offer comfort. A little comfort. Is that really too much to ask?

    Do you want a friend who only comes to you when she wants someone to listen to her cry? Again? You know the answers. You know how to care for yourself. You’re going to be OK.

    I used to pray to worship you. To tell you how wonderful you were. To tell you how much I wanted you. That’s all I really want is you.

    I’m right here with you.

    Right. Here in this messy garage. With a cold, rainy wind coming in. And there’s nothing special. There’s no joy. It’s just normal but now I know you’re here in the normal. Only it doesn’t change anything. I don’t understand. What difference does it make if you’re here or you’re not here? It’s all the same. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with you anymore.

    It takes awhile to work it out.

    *Snort.* Of course it does. I’m going inside. The kitchen floor needs washing.

    I know. I’ll be there.

    (Picture credit ASBO Jesus.)

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    So What Happened to Adam and Eve Anyhow?

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    Let’s do a quick horticultural lesson here today on the difference between fruits and vegetables. Fruits, technically, are the fleshy, edible part of a plant which contain seeds. They are produced by plants that flower as a means of reproduction. Vegetables, on the other hand, are plants which are themselves used in part or whole as food. So, for example broccoli is a vegetable because we eat the stems and immature flower buds of the plant. Tomatoes are fruit because they contain the seeds of the plant they grown off of. Lettuce is a vegetable because we eat the leaves of the plant. Apples are fruit because they are the seed bearing part of the plant which grow after the pollination of the tree’s flowers. Get the idea?

    The reason I bring this up is because there’s a little detail which is often missed in the story of the fall which is actually, very, very important should we wish to understand what happened. You see, God forbid eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit is what a plant produces – not the plant itself. Fruit is the end result of a process of blooming, pollination and growth. What God was forbidding wasn’t the knowledge of good and evil, but the end result of it – the fruit of that knowledge.

    (Before going any further, if you haven’t already, you will need to read the previous posts on the fall or nothing I say below will make ANY sense. They are:

    Why Was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden?

    The Fall Wasn’t Our Fault

    Does God Sit Around Monitoring Our Thoughts? And Other Pertinent Questions

    Don’t worry. They’re short, We can wait.)

    You will perhaps recall that when speaking to the serpent, Eve said that God had also forbidden touching the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We don’t know if she was mistaken and actually thought she wasn’t allowed to touch the tree or if she was exaggerating to make her point to the serpent. But either way, I think it’s fair to surmise that Adam and Eve were unfamiliar with the tree. Which means that when they ate of the fruit of the tree, they got the results of the knowledge of good and evil without having even started the process which normally leads up to the having fruit to eat.

    The text says that Eve saw that the fruit was useful for gaining wisdom. Wisdom is when you use knowledge and understanding to guide your actions, thoughts and choices. Eating the fruit was useful for gaining wisdom – it gave the person who ate it the chance to live as one who knows good and evil – ie is able to put their knowledge into action. Only Adam and Eve had no knowledge. And without knowledge, the only way to learn wisdom is by screwing up and learning from it. The difference between how the fruit was meant to be used to gain wisdom and what happened to Adam and Eve is like the difference between dropping a newly minted navy seal off in the middle of the jungle with only a what he could fit into his pack to survive on and dropping a kidnapped child off in the jungle with a notebook, two pencils and a fruit roll-up in their Barbie backpack.

    Not only did Adam and Eve have no knowledge, they were immature – not yet grown. And it’s shown all through human history. I love my kids and they love me, but I am quite certain that if they had been able to manage it, a couple of them would have shanked me for having the gall to thwart their will back when they were small toddlers. Fortunately, by the time they were big enough to handle a knife, they had matured and no longer responded to discipline with blind fury. But imagine if the world was run by people with the emotional maturity of a toddler. It would look an awful lot like a world history book, non?

    The story of the fall is usually taught as being a morality tale about obedience to God. All of the details of what happened get swept together into one overarching fact: Adam and Eve had been disobedient. However, if you look at the story itself, you will see that this wasn’t how Adam and Eve saw it. They weren’t worried that God would discover that they had disobeyed him. They were consumed with the shame and fear of being seen naked. To them, their disobedience was barely an after thought. What really mattered to them was that all of a sudden they were completely convinced that there was something wrong, unacceptable and shameful about themselves. Why?

    The text says that when they ate of the fruit, “their eyes were opened”. Often this is explained as them gaining self-awareness. However, all of us gain self-awareness at some point in our lives. But we don’t always freak all the way out about it. Often it happens with us hardly noticing the change. We just become more self-aware. We are less apt to forget that someone else might be watching us. It does tend to make us less free, but usually it’s only really a problem when someone’s disapproval or ridicule triggers that self-awareness. But in the case of Adam and Eve, it appears that the only ones disapproving of them are Adam and Eve themselves.

    I think that what we see here is the damage which occurs when children are inappropriately brought into the adult world. They experience things which normally are reserved for the adults, but do not have the knowledge, maturity or perspective to process what is happening to them. Seeing themselves as one who knows good and evil was an adult activity. And just like when children are introduced to the adult activity of sex by a perpetrator, Adam and Eve reacted with shame. The felt sure that there was something wrong with their nakedness and sought to hide it and themselves.

    I think that what happened would be akin to what it might be like if a very young child were to gain an adult perspective and apply it to themselves. For example, my youngest daughter was known around the house for a long time as Lady Godiva. She was forever stripping down to her birthday suit and wasn’t the least bit impressed at our insistence that she not walk out the front door naked or strip down to her sandals at the park. I also have a 13 year old son who would just as soon allow himself to be stabbed to death as strip down naked in public. What Adam and Eve experienced was probably a bit like what it would be like for my little Lady Godiva to suddenly have my 13 year old’s view of nudity just after doffing her clothing at the playground.

    What Adam and Eve experienced might be explained by considering another example; my husband has repeatedly told us that should he ever lose control of his bowel functions, he wants to be left out back with a gun. Which is ridiculous, of course, but a common enough sentiment. Imagine what it would be like for an infant to understand that we consider pooping on ourselves so repulsive that some people would prefer to die than to live with it. Knowing that wouldn’t suddenly give an infant the ability to control their bowel movements and use a toilet, but it could cause intense shame at a normal bodily function.

    Of course, we don’t view a streaking toddler as some sort of sexual deviant or an infant in a diaper as revolting. There’s nothing wrong with either the toddler or the infant, although as they get older our expectations of them will change. Similarly, there wasn’t anything wrong with Adam and Eve being naked before the fall. And there wasn’t anything wrong with them just after the fall. But lacking all perspective and understanding, they judged themselves harshly for what was both normal and appropriate for them as young children.

    The reality is that Adam and Eve hadn’t changed after the fall – only their view of themselves changed. They faced the daunting task of walking a path meant to be walked with knowledge without that knowledge. They were going to have to learn on the fly, from their mistakes. A task made much harder than it needed to be by the fact that they saw normal immaturity and lack of knowledge as evidence that something was wrong rather than as places where growth was called for. Add in the ongoing work of the accuser – the one who revels in condemning us, in misleading us, in offering deathly imitations of the things our hearts most yearn for an need and you have a recipe for all manner of evil and confusion. The result is the skewed, harsh perspective of themselves and how to deal with life which fallen man and woman passed on to their children, and which their children passed onto their children and which has been passed down through the generations to us.

    Of course, all was not lost. We’ve stumbled and erred and done great harm to ourselves and this creation we were giving dominion over. Yet, God willing, as time has passed we have learned more about ourselves and the ways the world works. We have gained some of the knowledge which we should have had at the beginning of our journey of living as people who know good and evil. And we are hopefully maturing a bit past the wrathful toddler stage of dealing with life.

    When Jesus showed up 2000 years ago, he lived in a world which was utterly shaped by the results of the fall. By humanity’s wrath, its trauma, its fear, its lack of understanding and immaturity. But there was this one people – the ones who God had found so long ago “like grapes in the desert”. And he made a covenant with them to be their God. And gradually, painfully, over many centuries, dealt with them much like a parent might deal with a traumatized, drug addicted child, working to draw them back to himself – to the safety of the ones who love them. He met them where he found them, making offers of safety and rescue when possible and setting boundaries and consequences when needed. And when the time was right, he went in himself. He absorbed all of the sin, fury and cruelty that we could throw at him. And he overcame. He told us to stop worrying about his wrath and accept his forgiveness. From that point on, he declared, our job wasn’t to try to set ourselves right with him – our job was to learn how to love as Jesus had taught us. To gain the knowledge we had been deprived of so long ago. And begin the process of our redemption from the long nightmare we’ve been living. Until the day we have learned to live and love with enough wisdom for him to dwell among us in the new heaven and earth which is the promised end we are heading towards.