On truth in the inward being

Since I started writing this blog earlier this year, I have shared with you my own points of clarity about things I have believed about God, things I have been taught, and the ways in which I have often "caught" these teachings. As the beliefs that have shaped my life have been deconstructed over the past few years, the reconstruction work has brought moments of profound joy, as well as times of profound grief as my view of who God is has been, well, cleansed in a way from many things that have heretofore muddied that view.

Above all, my eyes have been opened afresh to the profoundly complex beauty of God's Word, and particularly the beauty found in the Psalms, which have set me free in myriad ways. God really does give us things as he knows we can process and handle them, doesn't he? He demonstrated this patient, attentive love in Exodus 23:29-30:

But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you.

Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.

"Little by little." God's love is astounding. It is, indeed, hesed: steadfast.

For the past several weeks I've been wrestling with the a statement in Psalm 51:6, "Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being."

I'm so struck by that statement, bowed down under the weight of it. This isn't just an admonishment to know stuff about God, or for us today, to be able to tick off a list of doctrines, or even what we believe about the Gospel. To me, this is an internalization of the righteousness of God, of who God is, and who we are in light of that. It is an acknowledgement of God's intense desire to really save and restore us, body and soul, to plant within us a peace and groundedness that we have scarcely imagined.

While pondering this, I was reminded of an excerpt from Dr. Curt Thompson's book, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising connections between neuroscience and spiritual practices that can transform your life and relationships. Thompson teaches readers about how our brains can become "disintegrated" through trauma of all types, and can leave us unable to cope with, process, or respond to life in a healthy way. Sadly, nearly every person alive has experienced some level of disintegration that must be restored through patient work. This disintegration, according to Thompson, leads to a divided heart, and a disintegrated prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that performs myriad functions including emotional balance, empathy, insight, fear modulation, attuned communication, and morality, as in the ability to look out for the good of others as well as our own. This one tiny part of the brain does all that and more! Profound.

Magically, Thompson connects this idea of reintegration, or literal "rewiring" of the brain to an ancient Psalm text in which the writer (probably David) asks God to do just that for him. Psalm 86:11 states,

Teach me your way, LORD,

that I may rely on your faithfulness;

give me an undivided heart,

that I might fear your name.

Commenting on this verse, Thompson writes,

"The psalmist initially asks God to "teach me your way." This is not a request for a list of dos and dont's. This is not about memorizing the Ten Commandments. It is a request for God to reveal what true living is all about, for God to teach David how to love him, as Jesus commanded, with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his mind."

Thompson continues,

"Notice that David's first request points to the greater hope of deeper relationship ("that I may rely on your faithfulness"). Next he requests that God create in him an undivided heart -- one that is united, knit together, or, again in the language of neuroscience, integrated. The first two lines of this verse indicate that this knitting together is a process involving two minds, God's and David's. Notice that David is not asking God to make him more independent, but rather to enable him to connect with God. The heart -- our deepest emotional/cognitive/conscious/unconscious self -- is manifested most profoundly at the level of the prefrontal cortex."

Thompson suggests that the Psalmist's conclusion, "that I may fear your name," is the desire to be "overwhelmed with awe in the presence of God's power and beauty." This conclusion, Thompson believes, allows us to become "agents of mercy and justice where they are so desperately needed."

I'm so struck by the way Scripture continually calls us to unite head and heart, to see life through such a profoundly different lens from the one to which our human nature naturally resorts.

"Make a good impression."

"Don't let them see you are weak."

"Don't let him/her think you are afraid."

"Fake it until you make it."

"Be true to yourself. That's all that matters."

"You have to look out for yourself; no one else will."

How very opposite of the Psalms which cry out for reliance on God and others, for purity of intention, for honesty, for integrity. I have come to see that God's desire that truth fill and inhabit us is one I so desperately need, something I can only have through his mercy and faithfulness, through his help.

Commenting on Psalm 51, Walter Brueggemann writes in his book, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary,

"The full psalm shows that one cannot ask for lips to praise until one has engaged in a profound yielding and emptying. That is because the God of this psalm wants no religious conventions (the kind often given after the liturgical prayer) but only a dismantled self. The dismantled self, characterized in verse 17, requires a shattering of one's spirit, a brokenness of one's heart (cf. Isa 57:15). . . . But the brokenness may not be a psychological dismantling. It may as well be an economic unburdening, a political risking, a stepping away from whatever form of power we have used by which to secure ourselves."

When I read that last line, "a stepping away from whatever form of power we have used by which to secure ourselves," I conclude once again:

We cannot save ourselves.

Not through posturing, or posing, or postulating, or pontificating. Not through illusion or subterfuge. No, this kind of saving - of reintegrating as Thompson writes - can only come through a heart transformed from the inside so that truth in all its pure beauty can manifest outwardly.

No wonder the psalmist wrote what he did about truth in the middle of a Psalm about profound, sorrow-filled repentance. It is at the heart of the matter, literally and figuratively. And no wonder Jesus focused almost exclusively on the heart, of what flowed from it, and what filled it up. How sad that so often within the Christian church such emphasis has been placed on outward appearance that the "truth in the inward being" is lost or not even considered. This is crippling, and creates confusion, forcing many people to work harder to save themselves or to gain God's favor.

Lately, I've found myself muttering to God throughout my day, "God, help me live from an inward place of truth." Admittedly, I struggle with how I am perceived, with the desire to be loved by all, with the fear of being pushed away or rejected. And often these fears drive me away from truth - the inward truth the psalmist wrote about. Brueggemann concludes,

"The Bible is not interested in making lists of what is acceptable, as much as it is interested in transformed intentionality."

Truth, Lord. Inward truth. Help me live from an inward place of truth.