Wrong Way: Do Not Enter
Truth.
What a loaded word. It's deep, wide, rich, complex, life giving. Discovering truth also takes work - often lots of hard work. It also requires suffering, wounds, and labor. It requires a dying of something inauthentic so that something more authentic can be born.
In my last post I wrote about truth, and how it is so much more than a list of doctrines or rules by which we should live, or even how well we can explain the Gospel. Instead, truth is about an internalization of the righteousness of God, of who He is, and who we are in light of that. It's leaning into the fact that we cannot save ourselves. Truth is about aligning the things we know in our head with the oft-broken beliefs in our heart, as those those two are aligned with the richness of God's Word.
This semester I am co-leading a group of women from my church as we work through Chuck DeGroat's book Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self. In the introduction, DeGroat states,
"Wholeness is essential to the Christian tradition. Admittedly, we who call ourselves "Christian" are fairly poor examples of wholeness. I suppose we offer examples of shaming and blaming far more than we offer examples of flourishing. . . . We're a messy bunch who proclaim grace but pursue perfectionism, who long for wholeness but seek to achieve it through a distorted form of holiness." (p. 5)
The connection to truth here is astounding.
Psalm 86:11 in Eugene Peterson's THE MESSAGE hits at the heart of this:
Train me, God, to walk straight;
then I’ll follow your true path.
Put me together, one heart and mind;
then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.
The connection of head and heart, the aligning of the two, cannot be overemphasized or over-sought. So many things can stand in the way of this alignment, as DeGroat states, leaving us with inner chaos, brokenness, and the inability to sustain the appearance of something that looks like life:
Intentions
Motives
Attitudes
Image
Desired outcomes
Appearances
Perfectionism
I've thought a lot lately about Christian traditions that put so much emphasis on outward appearance, on words coming out of a person's mouth, of deeds one does, or acts of service. These traditions approach truth from the wrong direction, I think. Instead of beginning where Jesus began - on the inside. In fact, Jesus rarely talked about the outward appearance of a person. Instead he spoke repeatedly about the intentions and motivations of the heart:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. (Matt23:25-27)
Here Jesus is upbraiding the Pharisees for avoiding the "weightier matters of the law": justice and mercy and faithfulness. (v. 23) These things which flow from the hidden, inward places - the heart - must be tended to if the outward things, such as tithing emphasized by the Pharisees, and other actions which can be seen by others are to be meaning-filled. In other words, their heads and hearts were not aligned. All of the emphasis on outward appearances left almost no room for the inner work so desperately needed.
Truth was nowhere to be found.
Chuck DeGroat continues in his book, writing,
"We learn wholeness, more often than not, when our boundaries are shattered, when our disciplines fail us, when our theologies stump us, when our supposedly wise choices betray us. We learn by un-learning, by stumbling and falling into the very thing we attempted to gain on our own terms." (emphasis mine) (p. 7)
"On our own terms."
I don't know about you, but lately God has been about some deep work in my heart. DeGroat's words about "proclaiming grace but pursuing perfectionism" strike deeply inside me. At times I find myself shaking my head as though clearing my vision and my mind of things I've believed for so long, but suddenly realize are far from Jesus' brand of truth. I've spent so long trying to get the outside right that I didn't even realize my heart was barely breathing.
In Psalm 51:6, David prays,
What you’re after is truth from the inside out.
Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.
Truth has to come from the inside. The only thing - the only One - who can enter from the outside is Jesus as he brings us truth and new life. He is "after truth from the inside out," and the only way this can be born is if He conceives it inside us; we are incapable on our own. Standards won't do it. Appearances won't conceive it. Acts of service or exhausting ourselves doing so-called righteous acts won't birth it. No, only the work of One who was broken, of One who bears wounds can plant the seed of truth that will grow inside us. And once this seed is planted it cannot help but manifest outwardly. This is the right direction. No "wrong way" sign needed here.
As truth grows within us, the kind of wholeheartedness that God longs for us to know will change our motivations, will peel away layers of perfectionism that exhaust us with their weight. Appearances and attitudes of authenticity and grace will bubble to the surface and overflow into a world that so desperately longs for such things, but so often seeks them in ways which only result in more brokenness, requiring yet another layer of lacquer to hold things together.
The flourishing of which DeGroat writes cannot be accomplished through shaming and blaming, as though herding human hearts like cattle, forcing them to go in a certain direction. This was never Jesus' way. Never. Instead, he peeled away layer after layer of human effort with the offer of living water, the offer of new life. Did he speak boldly, even harshly at times? Yes. But he never did so from a motivation of fear or shame. Instead, he wrapped his admonitions in love, because he knew the only way to truth is through love - Godly, perfect, forgiving love.
I for one am ready to lay aside the exhaustion and busyness DeGroat writes about in his book. I long for truth and authenticity to fill me. I long to daily turn my face to the Cross, to see there the life-giving wounds of Christ who so consistently calls to my heart to move closer, closer to his wounds, closer to life.
Train me, God, to walk straight;
then I’ll follow your true path.
Put me together, one heart and mind;
then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.