After the earthquake a fire, but Adonai was not in the fire. After the fire there was a soft whisper of a voice. ~I Kings 19:12 [Tree of Life version]
Let’s say for some interesting reason you needed to transport about 200 Lego pieces to your neighbor across the street. Now trying to carry them all in your arms without dropping one, or twenty, would not only be somewhat stressful, but downright near impossible. But, if you put all the pieces in a box to take over, it would be a thousand times more doable, and much less effort on your part, because you would simply be focused on one task, holding the box, as opposed to desperately trying to keep 200 different items from slipping through your precarious grasp.
This is how it feels when we attempt to juggle too many tasks under the self-imposed pressure of our own efforts. We impossibly try to concentrate on a ridiculous number of responsibilities, all the while worrying that we’re going to drop the ball on one of them because everything in life hangs on our own ability, capacity, and skill set.
But the Kingdom mindset is much different. There is just one effort that matters, and that is following the gentle, affirming voice of the Holy Spirit always guiding us lovingly and clearly-if only we are able to quiet ourselves enough to hear that Divine whisper. This is the “box” for our Legos. We still have tasks given to us, but this is a much more effective way to carry them out.
“Performing for an Audience of One” simplifies efforts and gives a peace which does indeed surpass our mere human comprehension, for all of our scatteredness is brought into a concentrated holy focus on the one Word and approval which matters so much that all other foci are swallowed up in its satisfying goodness.
If you have a lot you’re trying to carry, put it in a box.
As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.1 Timothy 1:3-7 [NIV]
Some people dedicate themselves to “myths and endless genealogies” which promote controversial speculations rather than God’s training. They miss the point of it all which is love coming from genuine faith in God. Instead of this, they have gone down the path of meaningless talk.
In some ways, I think the evil one has a bit of an easier time with this particular temptation today. I’m thinking of scatteredness. Of our thoughts being shot multiple directions to the point of such diffused focus that nothing is clear. This goes hand in hand with the evil one’s popular strategy of layering hardships upon you so as to overwhelm. It’s usually not just one thing.
This has happened to me a little as I’ve been missing that singular focus upon one lesson or verse or truth or word for a whole day, perhaps even an entire week of simply pondering one thought, drilling down, deeper and deeper. Sometimes my hunger for truth is twisted into “overeating” many different foods, failing to actually taste any one of them. This renders us ineffective, keeps us chasing and never doing, never settling in on one good thing done well.
The Spirit does not confuse or overwhelm. Confusion and being overwhelmed is most likely coming from an evil source, or from our own flesh, or from others like the false teachers mentioned in this passage.
Are you debating? Or doing good?
Are you encouraging others? Or chasing endless, meaningless speculations which go nowhere?
More is not always better.
More is usually not better.
More information.
More tasks.
More choices.
If “variety is the spice of life”, as they say, perhaps we could say that infinite variety is the confusion of life. “Infinite variety” here referring to the ubiquitous information at our fingertips, more than we are designed to ever take in over several lifetimes.
How good and healthy it is to drill down on just one thing. To have some time each day in which God is the only thing on your mind, even if for only five minutes. How restorative! As my friend Miguel says, “Words, words, so many words–only one Word matters.” Ah yes, we have but one crucial task: listen to the Voice, to the Word of God speaking to you and to me.
There is a temptation to be fixed upon external stimuli, neglecting the deeper meaning of experiences, neglecting the ultimate First Cause, neglecting the truth of the universe which is that it was created by Love and is sustained by that Love, and will be brought to completion by Perfect Love.
Another dear brother of mine, Aundre, would consistently ask me, “What’s the Spirit been speaking to you?” What a good reminder to always be listening to the Wind for the Word that matters. And by “Wind” we of course mean Ruach-Pneuma-Spirit-Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ! In case it was unclear.
One of my favorite quotes of all time, and quite befitting of this Ripple, is by Henri Nouwen. It’s just one sentence which I come back to again and again, but here it is within it’s fuller context which is even more meaningful, I believe:
God loved you before you were born, and God will love you after you die. In Scripture God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” This is a very fundamental truth of your identity. This is who you are whether you feel it or not. You belong to God from eternity to eternity. Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you too.”
Life is just a little opportunity for you during a few years to say, “I love you too.”
I have been reading the latest book by one of my 5 favorite authors of all time, Michael Casey. His new book The Longest Psalm is absolutely fire (like Holy Spirit fire). At 82 years old he is still bringing the thunder, and I am continually inspired and refreshed by his deeper-than-the-Mariana-Trench insights into humanity. The Longest Psalm is, of course, on Psalm 119 which has 176 verses. He offers a meditation on each verse, and so far, they are all gold. I’m on verse 64, in case you were wondering.
There’s a phrase I came across that really struck me and has stayed with me like none other. It is this: “The basis of life is gratitude not accomplishment.”
The simplicity and profundity of this sentence. It goes against much of the world’s ways of thought I suppose. With this pithy thought I have found much freedom. It is a wholly fresh way to engage each day and each experience.
This truth was reinforced a week ago during my time of lectio divina over John 16:31-33 which ends with Jesus saying, “You’ll have trouble in the world. But cheer up! I have defeated the world!” I sat meditating on this for some time, and have often wondered over the years what exactly Jesus meant by this. Then the Michael Casey phrase entered my mind as I was seeking the Lord Spirit’s wisdom, and I realized that this is at least one aspect of the meaning behind Jesus’s defeat of the world.
As He said, we will indeed have troubles in the world; it seems there is just no guarantee against that. But we as believers and partakers of the Divine Life offered by Christ realize that there is a new basis of life which does not follow the stressed out masses of the world. Our motivation and satisfaction come from another place if we have genuinely accepted the truth Jesus brought to us from the Father. As we live in God’s light we live on this basis of gratitude and do not feel we must compete and win and accomplish in order to feel and know that we are someone, that we are valued. We already know that we are of infinite value and are cared for more intensely than we can possibly imagine, and are subsequently free to bask in the smile of our wonderful Creator at the end of the day.
It is this “basking” which is that gratitudinal basis of life that allows us to engage creatively with reality and then, in turn, accomplish exactly what we are meant to do without any unhealthy pressure.
Give reminders of these things, solemnly pledging before God not to engage in verbal battles, which lead to nothing useful, but bring catastrophe to those hearing them. ~II Timothy 2:14
But shun foolish debates and genealogies and strife and battles about Law, for they are unprofitable and vain. ~Titus 3:9
For the month of August I decided it would be a good thing to read through the entire New Testament. I was able to finish it in 28 days which is averaging just over 9 chapters per day. My main purpose with this task was to get a nice bird’s eye view of the New Covenant Canon, and take note of the overarching and repeated themes which I may not notice without a cover to cover timely reading. We tend to drill down on a single chapter or verse or theme, sometimes missing the big picture. It’s great to study a verse or even a word, but we probably do not want to neglect the 30,000 foot view.
[By the way, this is why I didn’t send out anything in August-I was too busy reading the New Testament! Not that anyone was worried about me, I’m just saying…]
So I thought I would be nice to share what stood out to me during this quicker paced reading. Now I realize that I have my own filters, and my antennae are attuned in a certain configuration due to my life’s specific lenses, but I did make a considerable effort to read as open-minded as I could, as if reading it for the first time which is of course impossible, but hey, I tried. To help with this effort, I read the newest translation I own, which is the second edition translation by Eastern Orthodox scholar dude David Bentley Hart. Being new (2023), I’m not terribly familiar with it, so it slowed me down a bit, especially with its “knotty” rougher around the edges style rendering. Mr. Hart attempted to preserve the raw and unpolished style of the original writings.
On to the big standouts:
The first observation I made, which I almost found humorous, was how often in the Gospels Jesus tells someone to tell no one about Himself or what He’s up to. It was way more than I realized! When you read it this quickly, you tend to be like, “OK! We get it.” Or do we..? I’m not sure what to make of this yet, though my friend Miguel made an interesting point that perhaps all these directives are kept in there to teach us something about God’s timing and human timing. Hmmm, I wonder.
Secondly, what leaped off the page, for some reason, was leaving the 99 sheep to go rescue the one. I’m not exactly sure what it was about this that made me take notice other than the fact that it is in the Gospel accounts twice. That second time it came up I was shot through to my innards; I guess it could simply be what the Spirit wanted me to see at this time. I thought of the multi-layered meanings available through this picture of leaving the 99 for the one. What came to memory was the lesson I learned at Outreach, working with homeless high school students, on being careful not to expend all your energy on the “99” who are the loudest yet not ready to move forward, at the neglect of the quieter “one” who craves your assistance and care that will be just the catapult he or she needs to make a life change. There’s also the idea of leaving the 99% way of the world’s thinking and pursuing the 1% Kingdom way of thinking, as Jesus did.
Other repeated and noticeable themes form the Gospels were, not surprisingly, the importance of servanthood, along with its related declaration of what it takes to be great in the Kingdom of God. Spoiler alert: it’s not about being great.
With Paul’s writings I realized anew just how much he was against stringent law-keeping, and all about the person Jesus, and clinging to Him being all that really matters. It’s sort of funny to me how the tradition I grew up in was big on using Paul to write systematic theology books and multitudes of morality rules, not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that, but the tenor of his letters (more noticeable at this faster paced reading) is obviously about Jesus and His Spirit being the new everything. If you are all about Jesus the Christ, the actual living person who is perfect love, chances are your theology will be just fine, and your morality will be in some sort of check. Don’t get me wrong, Paul had to tell a couple of the early churches to stop whoring around, but hey nobody’s perfect.
Paul was also crystal clear about the message, the Good Tidings, which he and the other apostles proclaim, coming not from human ingenuity or flesh originated eloquence, but rather from God directly. That’s why the words have so much power. You can be as clever as can be with four and five syllable words strung together brilliantly according to human measurements, but unless they are dripping with Spirit, they cannot penetrate into the innermost parts of the human soul, I don’t care how sesquipedalian you are. But Spirit-drenched single syllable words are able to go where others simply cannot reach. Paul admitted to not being the best speaker, but that didn’t really matter due to the supernaturally charged message he was bringing.
Well, speaking of words, I see I’m already nearing 900, so let’s wrap this Ripple up. Last thought I’ll share is that the books which really popped for me on this read-thru were the letters to Timothy and Titus, as well as the two Peter letters and the three from John. I’d love to drill down further on those in the near future. I love how Paul told Timothy and Titus not to get pulled into verbal battles and endless debates which are absolutely pointless-unless you’re looking to do damage and bring catastrophe. Great word for an election year!
I hope this sparks some good thoughts and meditation for you!
O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. ~Psalm 63:1
So I was out with some friends for lunch last Friday, and one of the guys shares how he is trying to “reset his algorithms” on the internet because he is getting so much political news invading his feeds that he doesn’t want.
A little bit of context, which is kind of humorous. My buddy admits that he likes following politics when it is especially ridiculous because he really enjoys train wrecks. The presidential debate he deemed to fall into this category and was therefore blissfully going down the rabbit holes. As we know, the more we click, the more we are fed accordingly. He was having a ball, but then the political climate changed, and the news went back to more seriousness in his opinion and was not fun anymore. That’s when he said that he’s been clicking on as many sports and nonpolitical humorous stories as he can in order to reset his algorithms, but he’s still getting more political news coming at him than he wants. Apparently he’s got a lot of resetting to do to change that algorithm!
Almost immediately the apropos metaphor hit me.
Whatever we search for most earnestly, that is just what our mind will more and more easily feed to us without even trying.
Put differently, what we think about the most shapes our neural pathways in such ways that those thoughts start to come at us more naturally and with less and less effort.
If we have bad thought habits, it is going to take quite a bit of “clicking” on other material to reset those algorithms to make whatever is good, true, and beautiful become the default.
By the way, I also like this metaphor of “clicking” on material. We all have many thoughts entering our minds throughout the day which we do not necessarily want. We are human, and invasive thoughts do happen. We get “pop-ups” as they were called in the earlier internet days. But we do not need to “click” on them. We can choose which thoughts we follow down the rabbit hole. This takes me back to one of my all-time favorite quotes which I never tire of sharing; it is from Dallas Willard:
The ultimate freedom we have as human beings is the power to select what we will allow or require our minds to dwell upon.
Let’s get super practical. One simple way I have found to help in the resetting of my algorithms is that ancient practice of memorizing Scripture. I recently re-memorized Psalm 63, and it is slowly but surely becoming a welcomed invader of my thoughts. Something “radical” I did about a dozen years ago was to read the entire Sermon on the Mount three times a day for thirty days. My goodness, I can’t tell you how good this was to do. It crowded out so much unhealthy thinking simply by taking up more and more neurological real estate. I found myself having significant portions of the sermon memorized without even trying. There’s also the efficacious practice of praying in specifically meaningful ways for those closest to you everyday…
These are just a few ideas out of thousands that we can use to reset our algorithms and rewire our minds in healthier ways. I hope this metaphor is helpful for you as it is for me!
In this my “Year of Review”, I have utterly enjoyed revisiting some readings which have been the most influential on me. There are a few not-so-long books that I have read, digested, and absorbed which are so very pithy that I chose not to even take the cap off my highlighter, for every single word is such gold and worthy of highlighting, that there was no point to do so. One such book which I am re-reading right now is A Testament Of Devotion by the 20th century Quaker Thomas Kelly, published in 1941.
I think I had somewhat forgotten just how much this little work has shaped me. Spending time in it again after several years away from it has gloriously reminded me of the deep resonance I originally felt with it, as well as the beautiful language therein which I adopted as wonderfully accurate descriptions of the Christ life.
Some books come along which present a bare-bones distillation of the Gospel, give the core truth of Christ, and the foundation of our faith so well and with no fluff, that you feel as if you could simply lodge there for many years and be absolutely content and better off for it. A central and repeated message of this particular book is the vital importance of listening to the living, speaking Spirit every moment in all circumstances.
So of course I need to give you an example, and I shall give a somewhat lengthy excerpt which I read last week and have been marinating in. This is from the chapter entitled “The Eternal Now and Social Concern”. For context sake, Kelly has been writing about how our sense of time is shifted after we truly discover that God is present in each moment, how right now holds eternity. Oh how poignantly lovely!
But now let us examine the ordinary experience of time, unrevised by this great discovery of the Eternal Life springing up within it. The ordinary man, busy earning a living, exercises care, caution, foresight. He calculates probabilities. He studies the past in order to predict and control the future. Then when he has weighed all his factors and plotted the outcome, with energy and industry he wills himself into persistent activity along the lines of calculated wisdom.
And much religious work is carried on in just this same way. With shrewd and canny foresight religious people study the past, examine all the factors in the situation which they can foresee, and then decide what is wisest to undertake, or what is most congruous with the Christian life described in the Gospels. Then they breathe a prayer to God to reinforce their wills and keep them strong in executing their resolve.
In this process, time spreads itself out like a ribbon, stretching away from the now into the past, and forward from the now into the future, at the far end of which stands the New Jerusalem. In this ribbon of time we live, anxiously surveying the past in order to learn how to manage the most important part of the ribbon, the future. The now is merely an incidental dividing point, unstable, non-important, except as by its unstaying migration we move ahead into the richer meadows and the greener pastures of the future. This, I fear, is the all-too-familiar world of all too many religious men and women, when a deeper and a richer experience is possible.
The experience of Divine Presence changes all this familiar picture. There come times when the Presence steals upon us, all unexpected, not the product of agonized effort, and we live in a new dimension of life. You who have experienced such plateaus of glory know what I mean….The sense of Presence!
In the immediate experience of the Presence, the Now is no mere nodal point between the past and the future. It is the seat and region of the Divine Presence itself. No longer is the ribbon spread out with equal vividness before one, for the past matters less and the future matters less, for the Now contains all that is needed for the absolute satisfaction of our deepest cravings. Why want, and yearn, and struggle, when the Now contains all one could ever wish for, and more? The present Now is not something from which we hurriedly escape, toward what is hoped will be a better future. Instead of anxiety lest the future never yield all we have hoped, lest we fail to contribute our full stint before the shadows of the evening fall upon our lives, we only breathe a quiet prayer to the Now and say, “Stay, thou art so sweet.” Instead of anxiety lest our past, our past defects, our long-standing deficiencies blight our well-intentioned future efforts, all our past sense of weakness falls away and we stand erect, in this holy Now, joyous, serene, assured, unafraid. Between the relinquished past and the untrodden future stands this holy Now, whose bulk has swelled to cosmic size, for within the Now is the dwelling place of God Himself. In the Now we are at home at last….
Instead of being the active, hurrying church worker and the anxious, careful planner of shrewd moves toward the good life, we become pliant creatures, less brittle, less obstinately rational. The energizing, dynamic center is not in us but in the Divine Presence in which we share. Religion is not our concern; it is God’s concern. The sooner we stop thinking we are the energetic operators of religion and discover that God is at work, as the Aggressor, the Invader, the Initiator, so much the sooner do we discover that our task is to call men to be still and know, listen, hearken in quiet invitation to the subtle promptings of the Divine. Our task is to encourage others first to let go, to cease striving, to give over this fevered effort of the self-sufficient religionist trying to please an external deity. Count on God knocking on the doors of time. God is the seeker, and not we alone; He is anxious to swell out our time-nows into an Eternal Now by filling them with a sense of Presence. I am persuaded that religious people do not with sufficient seriousness count on God as an active factor in the affairs of the world. “Behold I stand at the door and knock,” but too many well-intentioned people are so preoccupied with the clatter of effort to do something for God that they don’t hear Him asking that He might do something throughthem. We may admire the heaven-scaling desires of the tower-builders on the Plain of Shinar, but they would have done better to listen and not drown out the call from heaven with the clang of the mason’s trowel and the creaking of the scaffolding.
For once people have been enlightened–when they’ve tasted the heavenly gift and have had a share in the holy spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the coming age–it’s impossible to restore them again to repentance if they fall away, since they are crucifying God’s son all over again, on their own account, and holding him up to contempt. ~HEBREWS 6:4-6
Thankfully, this is not a controversial or particularly complex passage of Scripture in the least bit…
Ok, ok, so it’s one of the most difficult ever. Let’s dive in.
The first point to note is who these verses are specifically written to. This is for those who have tasted of the goodness of Life with God. It’s not for those who have merely dabbled, but those who have fully experienced the abundant life God offers and then turned away from it. The 4-syllable word for this is apostasy.
Instead of getting all controversial and attempting to define precisely what the unpardonable sin is, or just exactly who’s in and who’s out, it seems to me that we can use this passage more effectively for it’s likely intent: to spur us on to keep growing in our relationship with Christ and advance onward into the richer experience of the Spirit-drenched life.
Here, in my observation, is the basic take-away from Luke Timothy Johnson, one of my favorite scholarly commentators [Schommentalor?]:
Not moving forward is the same as falling backward. Failure to grow is tantamount to regression.
That, to me, is our poignant warning.
The old Interpreter’s Bible puts it flatly: “The danger is acute. If they will not advance, they are in danger of apostasy. Once over that cliff, nothing remains but death.” Similarly, Andrew Murray wrote that “Anything like sloth, and resting content in our beginnings, is unspeakably dangerous.”
Are you maturing?
Are you deeper in intimate relationship with God than you were ten years ago?
Are you a more loving person today than when you were a new Christ-follower?
Andrew Murray offers a succinct self-test: “The only sure mark of our being true Christians, of our really loving Christ, is the deep longing and the steady effort to know more of Him.”
Here’s more from schommentalor LTJ to give some deeper context:
The effect of apostasy is so devastating because of the extraordinary character of the gift received and the cost to Christ of its giving…The main point is perfectly straightforward: the enormity of apostasy is measured by the greatness of the experience of God it abandons. That is why it is impossible to “renew to repentance” people who have proven capable of turning away from their own most powerful and transforming experience.
Sitting in extended silence with this passage, here is what rose to the surface, which I trust and hope is from the Holy Spirit, the Great Wind of God:
What is the most offensive offense to Jesus? Not enjoying Him, or His gifts, Presence, life with Him, being Spirit-led. That is the greatest mockery. Behind every sin, every evil act, is the ignoring of Abundant Life offered. You think of what God has done to show us His unfathomable love and care for us: Becoming one of us–human! Serving, learning, dying cruelly, all for breaking down every possible barrier to enjoy being together. You taste of that beautiful life of Spirit-intimacy, and then turn away from it? Pursue other “gods”? It will be most difficult to turn back. Darn near impossible. Literally impossible? As it seems to imply here in Hebrews 6? Oh God, I pray not!
Once more, let’s travel just a little further down this staircase of mystical truth. I say “once more” because we will keep in Trinitarian Spirit and close this meditation out with three parts. (Otherwise this will turn into one of those 17 month sermon series on Lamentations like I sat through growing up :D)
In continuing to reflect upon what we talked about last time, with regard to that aspect of suffering which results from the learning of new ideas that necessarily causes the death of old ones, my thoughts were drawn to Jesus’s famous “Sermon on the Mount”. Specifically, I pondered Jesus’s refrain, “You have heard that it was said…But I say to you…” How long did it take Jesus to develop these thoughts? To formulate these ideas and make them presentable in this memorable manner? How much searching and pondering he must have done!
In his incomprehensibly loving incarnation, Jesus went through the process of internalizing the Scriptures, and also spent time observing how they were playing out externally in real life. It’s interesting to note that his public ministry did not begin when he was 10, or even 20. Why is this interesting? Well, if he had held on to his omniscience as a human on earth, he very well could have begun his brilliant teachings when he was, say, 5 years old. Heck, he could have started as soon as he was able to talk I guess, at 2-ish, right?
But he had to learn. He had to learn because he really took on human form and mind and heart and limitations, identifying with us at the quantum level. At 12 years old he was listening and asking questions of the religious leaders, not instructing them (Luke 2:42). Afterward he went home with his parents and was obedient to them (v.51). This is the one childhood example we have of him learning what it means to obey. He learned what was involved with obedience the way any of us do–by the experiences of life.
Here is a provocative word from a Bible reference book called Hard Sayings of the Bible that kind of took me aback:
there are some things that even God can experience only by becoming a human being with all of our human limitations. Obedience in the face of suffering is one of them.
Jesus memorized, studied, and prayed the Hebrew Scriptures, always seeking his Father and His will in them. He then took note of how the religious people were interpreting them and living them. That was not always pretty, as we know.
So when the time was right, he delivered his big sermon, showing the people of his day, and us, what we’ve all heard before, and in contrast, what God’s heart truly is. He showed us where we have strayed from the agape of God and missed the point of it all.
There had to be some suffering involved with this process. The ancient Greeks had a saying–Mathein Pathein–Learning is suffering. Suffering is learning. Surely it broke Jesus’s heart to see the holy teachings being misused; to witness poor, oppressed, and broken-hearted people not being cared for properly. Then there was the volatile opposition from the synagogue leaders who claimed to be on his Father’s side! Stressful indeed.
Jesus saw how we humans desperately try to define the undefinable, to tame it, and box it up; how we tend to attach ourselves to systems more than God. We systematize the mystery out of religion, out of GOD. Adopting systems of theology, abiding in them, leads us away from intimacy with our Lord. Jesus said, “Abide in ME.” How quickly do systems replace personal interaction with the Divine. Dogma swallows up prayer. Letting go of techniques is tough. You may have to sacrifice familiar and comfortable teachings for….the Voice–the Spirit speaking now. We of course have boundaries, and follow the teachings of Jesus and Holy Scripture, but we must fight the urge to define it all in the neatest little package that is never again opened. When did Jesus ever say the narrow gate would be a conveniently systematized, easily defined formula? If anything, he taught the opposite with his parables showing just how undefinable, and awesome, the Kingdom of God really is (see Mt.13).
It’s no wonder so many people these days say, “I’m spiritual, not religious.” With so much institutionalizing of the mystery, joy, and care for people, animals, and earth out of everything, can you blame them?
Alrighty then, let’s try to bring this back around full circle. Matthew Henry said in his commentary on Hebrews 5:8 that “We need affliction, to teach us submission.” And William Barclay, in his commentary on our verse, wrote, “God speaks to [us] in many experiences of life, and not least in those which try [our] hearts and souls. But we can hear his voice only when we accept in reverence what comes to us. If we accept it with resentment, the rebellious cries of our heart make us deaf to the voice of God.”
We follow the living Presence of God, brought to us by Jesus, and available now in the Spirit. Mathein pathein. We learn through suffering–when we submit to the Voice. Submission is the soul’s silence, giving it the ability to hear. Resistance is the soul’s screaming and yelling, drowning out the voices of Pneuma (Spirit) and Sophia (wisdom).
Let’s go just a little deeper down the rabbit hole, shall we?
I’ve been intensely fascinated by the idea of Jesus arriving at new stages of experience as one commentator put it. One road of Hebrews 5:8 we could journey down is that Jesus learned obedience through a particular kind of suffering which we do not normally think of. Suffering is, as we know, not limited to physical pain. Pain is a part of growth as a human being. As Luke Timothy Johnson astutely points out in his commentary on this passage,
“intellectually, the learning of new ideas is a form of growth: our minds expand to include new realities of which we had not previously been aware. The growth is good. But it is also painful, since it implies the disruption and rearrangement–and often the abandonment–of our previous mental furnishings. To enter into new mental territory means at least a partial death to old mental territory. Stretching the mind to encompass new truth means suffering the pain of mental disequilibrium.”
Can you wrap your head around the fact that Jesus, taking on our humanity to the fullest degree, likely leaned new ideas which stretched him?
Perhaps he grew up hearing some corrupt religious teachings which he later found out, through seeing more of the light of God, were unhealthy and not truly from the heart of Yahweh. To shed something we’ve been taught, or simply heard and absorbed most of our life, is indeed a death, a suffering. We’ve all had to drop certain ways of thought which we discovered were unlovingly judgmental, and it does kind of hurt to admit to ourselves that we ever harbored such views.
Of course I am not saying Jesus ever sinned, nor will I ever. I’m merely pointing out this fascinating aspect which shows how deeply he can relate to us because of his great sacrifice and service to humanity that is no doubt greater than we’ve probably previously imagined.
The word “learned” in this verse is not conveying that Jesus went from disobedience to obedience, but rather has the connotation of coming to know something firsthand through personal experience. This is why I love the First Nations Version (a wonderfully fresh Indigenous translation of the New Testament) of this verse: Even though he was Creator’s Son, he still had to learn, through suffering, what it means to stay true to the ways of the Great Spirit.
Maybe Jesus had to experientially learn as a kid that life is not about pleasing people or trying to look good, but about pleasing God and serving people. At some point he probably recognized that we cannot transform others; we can possibly inspire them. Even God’s Son did not have a 100% conversion rate. Therefore, we can say with a little more certainty that Jesus experienced the suffering that comes with people not accepting what you are offering them, of people not really listening to you, and perhaps the most confusingly painful of all–people misunderstanding you and your intentions. How horrible is that?
But he had to keep obeying his Father anyway, through all of this suffering.
Despite the inevitable unmet expectations and desires that come with being human, he still had to trust in God. Gee, that’s always easy.
And remember, obeying is deeper than simply keeping the rules, as efficacious as that might be. Did you know that the Latin root of the word “obey” means to listen, to hearken to, to pay attention to? Despite suffering, we must keep listening to the One who designed us. We must keep our attention focused upon our Creator who is perfect love and knows us better than we know ourselves and wants the absolute best for us at all times. And not only listening and paying attention, but saying yes–every time.
Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. ~HEBREWS 5:8
This verse has intrigued me for many years.
Jesus learned obedience through suffering.
I have sat with this single sentence for almost three weeks now, and feel that my thoughts still have yet to coalesce into any sort of non-ambiguous distilled formation worthy of sharing.
But there’s so much here, so much I’ve poured over, thought about, prayed through that I desire to share….so I will simply start putting down thoughts in hopes that Spirit will move if this is of God, and stop me if it is not.
I’m blown away by the fact that Jesus had to learn what it meant to be obedient. Think about that thought alone for a second! He became acquainted with what it was to obey in the face of suffering, to obey even when that very obedience was the cause of harm to Himself.
He had to overcome and override His (God-given?) human desires whenever they were at odds with the Father’s will and plan for His life. He took on human desires to fully identify with us. Along with humanity came temptation and weakness. So it seems there must have been times when he humanly wanted something other than what the Father had in store for Him. The most obvious scenario we could point to is having to override that innate sense of survival when He was called upon to give up His life, and in a most cruel manner.
In my study of this verse, one theme that kept coming up across the different commentaries was this idea of reverential submission. William Barclay had a really thoughtful insight on this topic: “Jesus learned from all His experiences because he met them all with reverence.” I don’t believe I have ever thought of that exact idea before. Jesus was always, without fail, looking to His Father, deferring, trusting, obeying. So therefore, in every situation of His earthly life He was learning since he greeted each and every circumstance with reverence and submission. His human mind and body must have possessed urges, because of how complete was His identification with us flesh and blood beings. Urges to play it safe, to do whatever His flesh messaged Him was good to do and pleasing for Himself. Temptation and weakness are not sins. But they are challenging to deal with as humans. And He dealt. So focused was He on Father in every situation, and on learning His will more completely, that He never succumbed to allowing Himself to be overwhelmed with what this life threw at Him.
In thinking of this, I was reminded of what C.S. Lewis said about temptation with regard to Christ in his book Mere Christianity. If you think Jesus does not understand our plight because He never sinned, think again:
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is….A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means–the only complete realist.
It’s like if there was a CrossFit contest with a 40 day course, Jesus would have been the only one to ever finish it. How foolish it would be for someone who tapped out after day 6 to say, “You don’t know what this course is like; you don’t understand how hard this is!”
