If This Was the Last Thing I Could Post on the Spiritual Life

I recently gave a talk during a retreat weekend about agape, the unconditional love of God. As I prepared this talk, I realized this was the core of everything I’d ever want to say about God and the life of faith up to this point in my life. Here is a modified version of what I shared.

Agape is the unconditional love and acceptance of God. It has saved me and continues to save me. I’m going to be vulnerable and honest about some of my journey and share how the love of God has brought healing into my life. I hope it will encourage you on your spiritual journey.

I grew up in a conservative and fundamentalist religious culture, and many of the things I was taught about God and myself were hurtful. I’m still recovering from some of them even to this day. I remember one time when my pastor was explaining his understanding of the message of Jesus to our church using a whiteboard. There was a small stick figure on one side of the board that represented humanity, and on the other side there was a bigger stick figure wearing a crown that represented God. Each of the stick figures was on a little cliff, separated from each other by a jagged line of fire which represented hell. My pastor then drew a large cross that bridged the gap between me and God and wrote the word “Jesus” on it.

I was taught that God was so holy God couldn’t even look at me because of my sins. We were separated and I belonged in that fire forever, but God also loved me and sent his son so that I didn’t have to go to hell. It was very confusing because I was being told that the deepest truth about me was that God would send me to hell, while at the same time God loved me enough to send Jesus so I wouldn’t go there. So I felt love towards God as I grew up, but I was also very scared. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but I was filled with a deep and secret terror when I thought about God. The basic understanding of my identity and my place in the universe was that I was in trouble.

This story I was given about God told me that, as soon as I was born into the world, God already had a hand up letting me know that I didn’t make the cut. Because of this terrible picture I was given of God, I have been filled with a deep sense of shame and a sense of worthlessness for most of my life. Most of my spiritual journey has been an effort to close the distance between those stick figures, the distance between me and God.

There is a book that I really love called The Shack by William Paul Young. I’ve read that book a handful of times and I recommend it to you. I guess I like the book so much because William Paul Young also grew up with a very damaging image of God. He has gone through a very deep journey of inner healing and he has experienced God to be very different than what he was taught, and this comes through in his writing. Speaking of his relationship with his dad and the effect it had on his view of God, he says, “It took me 50 years to wipe the face of my father off the face of God.”

I love the idea of wiping away hurtful and damaging ideas of God to able to see more clearly who God is. I believe that the most important thing in our life is what we see when we think about the face of God. It has implications for everything including our identity, vocation, and relationships because we become like what we worship.

One of the most powerful things in my journey of healing is a statement I heard a preacher make: “Don’t try to fit Jesus around your idea of God. See Jesus as God and shape your view of God around him.” This has been life-saving for me as I’ve been able to slowly wipe the face of the small-minded, scary god who terrorized me off the face of Jesus Christ.

In Jesus, I see a God who rejoices over the one lost sheep he has found. I see a God who isn’t afraid to touch unclean lepers with the healing power of love. I see a God who stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of his saving embrace, as a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer states. And little by little, as I have learned to let go of my fear and learned to trust in the goodness of God, I am able to see the face of God in Jesus Christ who rejoices over me, touches my uncleanness with the healing power of love, and stretches his arms of love on the hardwood of the cross towards me so that I might come within the reach of his saving embrace.

I read a very powerful story in Brennan Manning’s book The Ragamuffin Gospel that I came across during a very difficult time in my spiritual journey. It has stayed with me and has come in and out of my consciousness throughout the years. Manning quotes a story from a surgeon, Richard Selzer:
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of the flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
“Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.
“Yes, I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.
​​“I like it,” he says, “It is kind of cute.”
All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

Manning reflects on this story: “Since reading this passage, the image of the husband contorting his mouth and twisting his lips for an intimate kiss with his palsied wife haunted me. Yet something eluded me until, one day in prayer, it exploded anew in my memory of the violence on a hill outside the city wall of old Jerusalem.” Manning goes on to meditate on how “Jesus has journeyed to the far reaches of loneliness. In His broken body He has carried your sins and mine, every separation and loss, every heart broken, every wound of the spirit that refuses to close, all the riven experiences of men, women, and children across the bands of time. Jesus is God. You and I were fashioned from the clay of the earth and the kiss of His mouth.”

Have you ever opened yourself up to the crooked kiss of God’s love? I believe this opening of ourselves to the healing love of God is our primary calling in life. It is the vulnerability of trusting that you are loved by God in this moment without any conditions or strings attached, that the very core of your identity is one who is loved by God in unfathomable ways. Opening ourselves up to the love of God isn’t an attempt to get a certain feeling; it is more than that. It is a way of being in the world. It is to live into the freedom of the safety of being totally accepted in the love of God. It is to see the love of God and to form your life as a response to it. This is our truest identity and calling in life. It leads us to wholeness and offers an alternative to the destructive ways in which we try to establish our identities and senses of self-worth.

In his book Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller recounts a time when his elementary school teacher asked the class a question, “If there were a lifeboat adrift at sea, and in the lifeboat were a male lawyer, a female doctor, a crippled child, a stay-at-home mom, and a garbageman, and one person had to be thrown overboard to save the others, which person would we choose?” After alluding to how disturbing it was to watch his classmates answer this question, Miller goes on to explain how this analogy illustrates a lot of human behavior. I have thought about his lifeboat theory often and it has been very insightful for me. It seems most of us are living like we are in the lifeboat, trying to prove to others that we belong, that someone else should be thrown overboard instead of us. We try to prove our worth through many different ways and it does so much damage to ourselves and to others. For some it is looking a certain way, being smart, making good grades, being better than other people, making a lot of money, being cool, impressing others, not being like everyone else, intimidating others, obtaining a status symbol. The list goes on and it can even include trying to prove to God that we belong in the lifeboat–that we are worthy of love.

But the good news of Jesus Christ is that we no longer have to live in the lifeboat. It’s a game we don’t have to play anymore. You and I are accepted as we are, right now, in this moment. We are worthy. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any less. What is true of Jesus at his baptism is true for you and me: We are God’s beloved children in whom God is well pleased. Wherever you are in life, whatever you are spending your time, energy, and passion on – don’t let it be because you are trying to prove that you are worthy. Do it because you already know you are loved beyond comprehension, and as a child of God, you are free to live the life that God is calling you to: a life shaped by the agape love of God.

The last thing I want to share with you is this: be vulnerable. I recently read something from the author and speaker Brene Brown that went like this: “Faith minus vulnerability is no faith at all.” There is no connection with God or with others if we aren’t vulnerable. I’m not sure where you may be in your life. I don’t know what your unresolved questions are. I don’t know what your secret pain is that you may be carrying, and your spiritual journey may look nothing like mine. But I do want to encourage you to be vulnerable and open yourself up to grace. I want you to dare to believe that the good news of Jesus is true, that what the Apostle Paul said of himself is true for you: “And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Open yourself up to hearing the story of God’s love week in and week out at church; let it go deeper in you and form you. When you go to Eucharist, be present in the room with Jesus during his last meal and see him offering himself to you in the bread and the wine. Make room in your life for prayer. Read books and scripture about grace. Talk with people who can help you along in your journey with Christ. Be kind and gentle with yourself. And don’t get discouraged. And as you experience the love of God, continue to find ways to share that with other people.
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You matter to God. You are loved. No matter how you have been mistreated, overlooked, or neglected. No matter what someone else or you yourself may have said about your worth as a person: the deepest truth about you is that you are a beloved child of God.