The grand lie….The Great Truth
I grew up in the holiness tradition. Without going into great historical detail, there were American revivals in the early 1900s when the Churches of God, the Assemblies of God and the Church of the Nazarene all began. I was dedicated as a baby in the Nazarene church.
What I heard as a child was how very holy God was—so holy that sin was absolutely abhorrent to Him, that there was great distance between Him and sin of any sort. Similar to the Temple in Jerusalem and the Holy of Holies, no one gets in the Holy of Holies other than the High Priest and even that is once a year. So, deductive reasoning told me that as a frequent flyer sinner, I was way away from God and words like abhorrent or abominable was how he saw me. My heart, when I heard was his abode, had a revolving door that spun so often the bearings were white hot. God was ‘IN’ and ‘OUT’ in a flash--mostly out.
Then in the multiple revivals (Sunday mornings, Sunday and Wednesday nights weren’t enough) we had several days of ‘renewal’, camp meetings and ‘getting back to Jesus’ during the year, stoking the flames of restoration. The fire and brimstone of hell was the heat we really felt. The unpardonable sin was frequently preached. These holiness traditions seldom had preachers that were seminary trained. They were guys that had just felt the Spirit move (pizza, Italian or otherwise), got ‘the call’ and walked into a pulpit. As church attenders most of us believed the worst of our personal sins was the unpardonable one. The ‘hot sins’ were of course the very worst, those of the flesh, anything sexual.
Whatever you had done was the ‘biggie’ so you were on the outs with God or at least on very thin ice so you’d better be at the altar every possible chance you get. And in our church, there were no kneeling pads at the altar or soft seated pews. The hardness was intentional to drive home how God felt about you (not really, we just couldn’t afford those luxuries).
As I matured although well into adulthood I came to understand what scripture really said about the unpardonable sin; it was the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. What that is saying was that being cut off from God was not his doing, it was/is my own. Its rather like destroying the electric power line coming into my home and then wondering why my appliances don’t work. I cut the power. Hello. It was not the power companies doing. The cutesy question “When you feel distant from God, who moved?” speaks to it. You moved, He didn’t. It FEELS like He did but what you also learn as you grow up ‘feel like’ and ‘what really is’ are often two very different things.
God does not move. He is not surprised, shocked our abhorred by my actions, thoughts or ‘sin’. Sin is even redefined in the process of Love. Sin is not about damnation, some cosmic game of making a list and checking it twice. Sin is about my education, about change, about growth. Better yet, God does not shrink back or pull away. It’s just the opposite. As Francis Thompson wrote in the 1893 poem The Hound of Heaven, He pursues me down the labyrinth of my ways with ‘unperturbed pace’ and with ‘deliberate speed’. Or as David tells us in Psalm 139, though I make my bed in hell, he pursues me even there.
Then the promise comes that God will never, ever leave us. We are not abandoned. We are sought after, the very nature of all Loves. Love always pursues the object of its affection. And all this is ‘no charge’, not ‘on sale’ but literally free (maybe because He know how bankrupt we are in being able to come up with the cosmic cash). Hello! This is grace at its finest. It is often seen as too good to be true, particularly for those of us super sinners, yet unlike so many other situations too good to be true--this one IS true.
The grand lie, the BIG one, is that separation from the Creator is possible. No way. In Him we live, and move and have our very being. The Spirit of God resides within you, all around you. Cutting the power line, turning off the spigot doesn’t obliterate the Source. I may feel lost, cut off and alone for the moment but I’m never really separated.
I know my Creator, my God so differently now. I know those early preachers and revivalists were only preaching what they wanted to believe personally. I’m grateful for the growth I’ve experienced (knowing some would see my ‘growth’ differently). I’m trusting that growth and new ways of seeing will continue.
Grace, love and mercy lavished all over me--a stark difference to that distant, so holy, unreachable God. His throne is within my own being, he’s not like Santa at the North Pole making a list of all I do wrong. He is not off in some distance universe. He’s literally closer than my own breath, the breath He gave me—and gave you.
His love pursued and captured me. The relationship He desired is mine.
It’s yours too. Take hold. Be glad. Be thankful. And Love back.
As a counselor, I’ve found myself saying the same things repeatedly to clients. So, at the encouragement of good friends, particularly Harold Ivan Smith and Barbara Johnson (more recently my Silas Robert and then Carmen Berry), here is a blog of my thoughts over the years. Harold is still around as I edit this 2001 entry as are Robert and Carmen. Barbara has been gone now several years. She was a great help to so many by just opening her life up to others. So in an effort to do similarly, as honest and transparent as I can…here are multiple entries.
(I have left dates on my writings since I have always wished King David would have ‘carbon dated’ his Psalms so we’d know the order in which they were written. In my naivety I thought the Psalms that cried out with his troubles to God were the older ones. The Psalms of praise and wonder were the last. NOPE. They were more likely morning and afternoon of the same day. If you personally have not had days like that…you must be on something. It was great comfort to me to see that David cycled…he was not always up on the mountaintop. He’s one of the first I hope to see in the next realm—if he’s still doing book signings by then).
First writing 9/9/2001
Edit 2/27/2021