Not As Orphans

....I remember going to dances as a boy (in the middle of the last century) where we began with the girls lined up on one side of the dance floor and the boys on the other. When the excitedly anticipated and fearfully dreaded hour was ripe, some giddy adult would cheerfully yell something like “All right gentlemen, get over there and choose your partner!” Many painful, exciting, disappointing, shaming, joy-filled, embarrassing things could happen at this point, but let’s look at it in the friendliest light possible and suppose that the girl who inspires my almost-lethal heart palpitations is still there when I arrive on the other side and she is actually glad to see me approaching. I say “May I have the honour of the… I mean would you care if… could we… uh… would…uh…” and she says, smiling, “sure!”, being adept at translating masculine, dance-decision-drivel by this time, and I take her hand (thereby losing almost all functional consciousness) as we head for the middle of the dance floor.

Now this is what choosing looks like! Nothing less will do. If I approach the young lady and say “Well I’m here and that’s really you and this is really exciting… bye now!” and walk away to someone else, then as far as my choosing the girl in question is concerned, this falls a bit short. I may be deluded into thinking I have chosen her, but here is the test: as I walk away, would she say that she has been chosen?

So I have not completed choosing God’s word simply because I have chosen to believe that this thought I have had, or this word I have read, etc, is God’s word. Important as that choice is, it is only the equivalent of my saying, “well I’m here and that’s really you, God, and this is really exciting.” I haven’t completed choosing God’s word until my hand is in his and we’re dancing.

First I choose to believe that this word God is speaking is for me, personally, and I receive his word in my heart. Now my hand is in his. Then I choose to examine my life in its light and I begin to choose to respond in obedience—concretely—to his word in me. Now we’re dancing.

Unless we understand the necessity of choosing God’s word, we are apt to believe any number of lies about ourselves, and (especially) about God. I described two ancient deceptions earlier. Another very common one is this: “Because of who I am, God can’t speak to me. It is all my fault. I try to listen but I never ‘get’ anything because God has given up on me, and I probably didn’t try hard enough anyway, which God can’t endure, so he stops talking in disgust.” This lie appears to be a belief about who I am, but it may reveal more about who I believe God to be. What sort of a view of God does this present? Poor God: he created the universe but he can’t get through to me. And he’s petulant, and petty.

We must acknowledge that this false understanding can be there in spite of some genuine attempts to listen to God and to hear his word—efforts that have met with little or no apparent success. This could be the result of our having adopted a passive posture relative to God’s word—a stance that is totally at odds with the nature of the relationship he calls us to. It is within the context of an intimate relationship that he calls us to hear and respond to his voice.

Jesus does not invite us into a relationship in which we passively have things done to us. Our progress into intimacy with the Father is furthered by receptivity, not passivity. The primary difference between the two comes in the area of the engagement of my will. When I am passive, things “happen to me.” I can remain completely disconnected from the source of what is happening: in this case, God. Because God’s eternal word is always about relationship [John 17:3], it cannot be received passively. Passivity is not the stuff of intimate relationship—not the stuff of relationship at all—rather it is a protective barrier against it. When I am passive, I do not have to be open for receiving or giving. I do not have to be vulnerable. The things that happen to me happen outside my will, without my choosing them, so I reserve my right to disavow any responsibility for, or association with, anything that follows as a consequence. Passivity is the stuff of disconnection. It serves estrangement.

When I am receptive, I am engaged, actively and vulnerably, with the one who comes to give and to receive. I don’t just stand there and “take it,” I choose. Jesus is our model: he was not the passive victim of people who took his life from him. He chose to give his life—to lay it down for us [John 10:17–18].

Now we can see what was missing in the rich man who lived with the word of God through Moses: though he lived with the word of God very near him, he never chose it. He stood passively alongside the word. Certainly he may have done all kinds of things that looked active in response to that word—he may have been a scrupulous observer of the letter of the law. But he would have confined his ‘choosing’ and his “obeying”—all his action—to some selected external things only. He would have done some of the outward things, but only in order to make it easier to fend off the word and prevent it from affecting his heart. He never chose to receive the word inwardly. His heart was safe from the word of costly compassion. I have no doubt he knew the compassionate word of scripture and that he believed it was from God. “I’m really here and that’s really you in your word, Lord,” he would say, “and I’m really excited about the compassion thing (I weep when I hear it).” But he did not know the feel of his Father’s hand, and he did not know the steps of choosing that lead to life.

How wonderful that Jesus has lived and spoken the truth: there is always going to be a choice that must be made. The obedience God requires of me is never going to be the result of God overpowering my will with his own, as though his irresistible Word has finally been delivered and I’m swept up beyond my ability to run from it. It is important that we do not underestimate the sinfulness and rebellion of our hearts: in this life, you and I will always have the capacity to turn away from any truth, including the One who is Truth. That will remain the case until judgement day. If you do not chose to believe and to act on the tiny, still, mistakable voice that comes to you today, then, in spite of whatever delusions you may harbour, you are not going to believe even a cedar-shattering thunderbolt of a voice. Even if that voice comes from one who has risen from the dead.