So Broken

Someone once said to me, "Bro, you are so broken."  It was in a slightly intense conversation patching up a small disagreement.  So I wasn't sure if this was meant as a positive or negative statement.  But the particular circumstances are not important now.  What is important is that at the time my internal reaction was, "Yeah!  Of course!"  But not knowing how it was intended, I didn't respond at all.

Still, I haven't forgotten it because it was so direct and confusing.  It's not something you hear often, even in Christian circles.  But recently it came back to me due to various circumstances involving something I was reading and something I was feeling, etc.

The thing is, my reaction still hasn't changed.  Yeah, of course I'm so broken.  That's WHY I'm a Christian!  Jesus said he came to seek and save that which was lost.  The word, "lost" means literally or figuratively destroyed, dead, lost, marred, perished.  He said it isn't the healthy that need a doctor but the sick.  He said that all the weary and burdened should come to him.  He was called the friend of drunkards and prostitutes.

It should go without saying that I follow him, seek him, hope in him exactly BECAUSE I'm so broken.  I have no other hope.  No other place to turn.  It shouldn't be a surprise, it should be a matter of course.  "Oh, there's one of those Christians...you know what they are..."

Ok then, what kind of person is Jesus not for?  The only harsh words he ever spoke were to the religious, the pompous, the self-righteous, the hypocritical.  Those who are unaware of or who hide their brokenness.  He even turned away a man who had too much invested in his money and standing.

But I don't mean broken in some theoretical or rhetorical sense.  I mean literally broken.  Broken-hearted, broken-minded, emotionally spent, physically unsound.  BROKEN!  This is me guys.  Good God, it's so frustrating to keep saying it and have no one understand.  I'm not OK.  I'm the depressive cutter with anger and authority issues who can't focus for more than like 10 minutes unless I'm hyper focused in which case I forget everything else.  These hollow sunken eyes?  They're from an autoimmunue condition which is also why I'm so skinny.  What you call comfort food puts me in the hospital.  I know what a gun barrel tastes like and I have to stay extra busy because if I get too idle that's when the demons start playing havoc with my senses.  Which may or may not be really happening, but feels the same either way and will eventually end in me hurting myself.  But I'm also a really good liar because when you try to tell people things like this they freak out in various ways, none of which are helpful.  So the me you know is probably only the merest bit really me and you probably think I'm just making this stuff up for dramatic effect.  And maybe I am...which would evidence a whole different set of issues, none better!

In short, I know my need for help.  I know my struggles.  I see my flaws.  I am still in this world only because I gave up control over myself in one of the worst moments of my life.  And I'm so stuck on the hope I have in him that if it's not real, if it's some delusion produced by a overwrought mental state, then there is truly no hope for me.  Because I really and truly deep down believe what I'm saying.

If there is a God, then he has to be the God that Jesus talked about.  The pure loving light that is all creative unchanging good.  That's the only being worthy of the name God.  And if Jesus is right about that, he has to be able to save me like he said he could.  I can't prove it.  But I'm convinced of it.  If I dreamed the strong luminous presence that drives out the dark, and silences the fits and fills me with hope, and whispers good things in the back of my mind that somehow keep me getting up every morning, then I am lost.  I hope in him, because I've got nothing else.  Like Steve Taylor, I say, "Jesus is for losers...just like me...broken at the foot of the cross."

If you claim to hope in Jesus and aren't that way, who are you hoping in?  Because we obviously don't know the same guy.