Sunday Reflection: An Idolator Color Codes Her Pencils

Sunday morning confession: I keep getting sucked into those Facebook quizzes which I’m sure are used to just profile me for more advertising but which are impossible not to click on anyway. You see all your friends’ Meyers Briggs letters and whether they are right or left brained and you think, oh just this once. And then you toil through the questions. And for me, every time, I come away angry because always I am dissatisfied with all of the provided responses. I resent very much having to pick between two untrue answers. And then, every time, the test tells me something obviously false. Like yesterday, that dumb left brain right brain one told me that I am more left brain (as if it could even know) when I know perfectly well that I am very flexible and creative and free flowing and artsy or something.

I tried to explain this to Matt, waving my arms and ranting about the idiocy of the universe. And, wretched man, he snickered. ‘I don’t know about the test’ he said, ‘or what kind of brain you have, but there’s no way that you are flexible and free flowing. Artsy, maybe, but only if that means that nothing is ever out of place.’

I was shocked and appalled by this information. Sure, the arrangement of the pictures on the wall has to be precisely balanced in order for me to sit comfortably in my own living room, and, yes, I do color code all the children’s drawing materials, and yes, when a chair is out of place, or the floor is covered in bits of paper I can’t sit down until I’ve righted the chair and yelled at a child to come pick up, and it may be that when two wrong colors of flowers are planted next to each other in the garden I have paroxysms of uncomfortability until I’ve moved one or the other. ‘Also,’ said Matt, wretched man, ‘you have to have a lot of warning if something is going to change in your schedule’.

‘Oh be quiet’ I said, and slunk away to consider if the person I imagine myself to be bears any resemblance to the person I really am.

Which is kind of my problem with the bible over all. I’m not a very emotional person. Well–that also must be a lie, I probably am, but I don’t like to deal with emotions between people. It’s better, I always think, to keep everything pretty well bottled up. People, and God especially, should keep in good, balanced order, like the pictures on my wall, not jumbling their emotions in a mess, and not disrupting anything, if possible.

So of course, every time I toil through the major and minor prophets I am exhausted by how emotionally and personally and, and this is a word I try never to use, passionately God speaks to the prophet and through the prophet to Israel and Judah. It’s so uncomfortably emotional–by degrees angry, pleading, forgiving. Whenever I’m in these long sections I flinch, very desirous of backing away from a God who can apparently get that close.

I don’t understand the appeal of a close personal Jesus who wants to know you, and be with you–you and Jesus together, forever. He is so close that you can hear the whispers of his love in the depths of your soul.

I read stuff like that and shudder. I don’t want anyone that close to me. It’s disruptive to my carefully ordered ways. And someone who whispers or who is jealous and then angry, or who appears needy–not my cup of tea. People, and God, should maintain a properly respectful distance and we will talk about the weather and make funny jokes. I will keep up my end of that bargain by being morally pure and keeping my house clean. God will keep suffering at bay and not bother me too much.

And in this I am not the least bit alone, even amongst people who say they want Jesus to live in their hearts and know the depths of their insides. Else why would we all spend so much emotional energy worrying about the future, or our circumstances, or the physical comfort of our personal environments–how much money we have and when we will be able to buy a new iPhone. Humanity is a waste land of gnostic attempts to keep God at bay, at arm’s length. We might do it one way or another, but we use every faculty of our personality, our brains, our preferences, our physical hands to organize our lives so that he will stay in the proper realm.

It is a great blessing, of course, that he won’t stay there, and insists on breaking through into the most intimate parts of the human mind and heart. But it is not surprising that he had to die to be able to do it, so fanatical was our desire never to be with him or know him. The Christian life often feels like the death of a thousand cuts, a never-ending breaking up of things I think I need to be happy, the spilling of my pencils all over the school room floor so that I am forced to see the desolation of my own spirit and stop averting my rebellious eyes from the maker of the universe who is jealous of my affections, angry over my rejection of him, and patiently enduring to be in perfect communion with me. I guess I could stop complaining and put the pencils in their jars any old way.