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.

lost world

Someone commented to me about the last post wondering why God hadn't spared me that pain. I truthfully never even thought of it in terms of why didn't he spare me, or anyone for that matter. I guess that requires that you expect something from God to start with. I guess I can't help but seeing how bad and unfair the world is. That's what led to the nihilism anyway. There seemed to be no order, no reason. The good suffered and the bad were rewarded and at other times it went the other way around. And through it all people bickered and competed over the most stupid unimportant things.

Obviously what I had been taught about God and the world didn't appear to hold up. It still doesn't to a large extent. That's what makes me so upset with the trite answers. I didn't look like I was that close to the edge most of the time. I had moments, but otherwise, I looked pretty together. So in any group, I always consider who might be sitting right there teetering on the very brink. Who might be a thread away from harming themselves or others. One careful word or kind gesture may prevent a tragedy.

There are so many people for whom life is a cruel joke. They want something real, something permanent. Something they desperately need but can't find anywhere. There's churches on every corner. If that was the answer, you'd think in 2000 years we'd have made a bunch more progress than this, huh? We are corrupt beings. We white wash it, but it only takes an open eye to see the results of our poison.

Jesus railed against the religious institutions of his day. He spoke in the "churches" of his era, was trained as a teacher, a preacher. But he offended them so much that he had to take to meeting in the country. John the Baptist, whom Jesus called greater than any man born, was a half-crazed hermit! His followers had to go find him in the desert! It was the religious leaders that plotted against Jesus and crucified him. Yet, in Jesus' very name, we have turned his ekklesia, the "called out" into the same entrenched institution that he railed against.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Christians. I don't even hate churches all together. I'm just saying that they are not bastions of God's Kingdom. They are miserably flawed at the root. Just like everything else in this world. And the more levels you add on top of the simple metanoia faith, that many levels you have departed from who God is. I don't care how much people might argue that the institutionalization is necessary to reach people...not at the expense of losing even one. Thank God that HE is the good shepherd. That HE is the one who saves the one lost lamb. No one else can.

If anything good comes out of this blog, it would be that those who do not know this Jesus will seek out more and that those who do, will realize what it means to seek first HIS kingdom and HIS righteousness. Myself included. I am just a howling dog running the flank for my master and holding the wolves at bay. And you can keep the gold and pleasures of heaven. I want nothing more than to be able to lie at his feet when the day is done and hear the words, "good boy." That's more than I deserve.