theExperiment

God's will/my will

2011-10-30T18:58:00.002-05:00

I got to thinking after a recent sermon about a typical religious phrase ...

“Empty yourself of your will…”

This phrase hits a core wound in me that responds with fear. The terminology is confusing and possibly heretical.It sounds as if it's calling us to empty ourselves of the ability to choose freely.

The confusion
There are real situations in which demons or human perpetrators literally try to “empty” someone of their will (i.e. suspend or destroy the ability to choose) and impose the perpetrator’s own will via mind control. If successful, this destroys huge regions of the victim’s self. It is a violation of the essence of what it means to be human and a tragedy. God made us free to choose. If that freedom is taken from us by force, subterfuge, manipulation or other means, it is a violation of that essence. Further, if I of my own initiative “empty myself of my will,” i.e. give up the freedom to choose --even to God, I would argue -- I abdicate both the responsibility and the glory of who He made me to be. I believe, in fact, that the enemy seeks to destroy human will, because in the end our freedom to choose is our only true ability to act against him. When we freely choose God, the enemy can do nothing to stop us. He can abuse, violate, hurt, taunt…but he can’t overcome us when we align ourselves by choice with God.

Part of the confusion stems from the word “will”. The word can refer to either intentions that are the target of the act of willing (“God’s will for my life…”) OR the faculty of will/choice itself. “God’s will” and “my will” can mean either God’s or my ability to will/to choose, OR the intentions that God or I choose to focus our wills upon.

Short “theology of will”
A: God IS Reality; He IS Love. He created humans as real free agents. When we Fall, we choose (“my will” i.e. ability to choose) to believe that Reality is not real/true, that God is not really God, and that His intention (God’s will) for us is not Love. We choose ( my will)– and then become bound – to believe we can live on our own, without resorting to God for anything. We actively separate ourselves from relating to God, even though He is the one who created us and everything that sustains us. We presume on His creative act and pretend that we somehow made it happen, or at the very least, can continue to make it happen, now that He’s gotten everything up and running.

B: What we have really done, though, is abdicated our place in the creation as both benefiters of and servants to the whole. We in many ways gave our wills (ability to choose) and ourselves over into the hands of the enemy. By separating ourselves from God, we effectively made survival our primary intention (“my will”), and found that we can’t make even that happen without help. The enemy has been more than willing to take advantage of our need for help, thwart our freedom and drive us even further from God through active oppression, piling up lies, distortion and their consequences through time.

C: In all of this, we gave up the intentions God had (God’s will)… to create with us and continually release us into unimaginably brilliant futures in and with Him. Who knows how many stars we might now inhabit, how many space-time dimensions we might be playing in, how many creatures we may be interacting and talking with now had we chosen to remain in Him? God weeps at His loss and our long separation. He continually reveals what is Real to us. His commands are an urgent Lover’s call, warnings to the beloved as we flirt with disaster, instructions for how to align ourselves with what is Real, not just to avoid disaster, but to Really Thrive.
Unfortunately, stubbornly clinging to and helplessly bound by the lies that blind us, we continually run along – even eagerly step over -- the edge of deadly cliffs. As our Primary Lover, desperate to save us, God shouts commands intended to save us from death. His laws are directions, instructions for lives that really work because they are founded on what is Real (True), free from distortion. Finally, He sent/became a Rescuer, Himself in human form, to woo, entice, call and draw us back from death so He could re-make us, make us Real again.

The Core: God implores us to choose (my will) Him freely, to be and to do in committed, loving unison/union with Him. However, we cannot do this if we have been “emptied of our will” (i.e. the faculty to choose). Rather we need our wills to be healed of lies, brokenness and bondage so we can increasingly choose Him, and freely align our intentions (my will) with His intentions (God’s will).

So, reading Colossians 1 in this context:
The “knowledge of God’s will” refers to more than which “path” God might want us to take, what choices he might want us to make (God’s will).
It does not refer to letting God actively suspend our ability to choose and use it directly to impose His choices (“possess” us like a demon might).
It refers first and foremost to the Primal Fact that His intentions(God’s will) toward us and for us are LOVE, that His choices (God’s will) regarding us are all motivated by LOVE.
As we “get” this in our core, and increasingly let it in, we will find our own intentions (my will) beginning to untangle from the lies and find the grace to align them with what is Real – God.
In this way, we increasingly “put to death” our old (i.e. former) intentions (my will), our old self.
Our ability to choose (“my will”) begins to be healed from its multiple bondages and brokenness.

Addendum:
Hearing God by Dallas Willard has a lot to say about God’s will, as does Greg Boyd in books like Is God to Blame. And here is C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

“…I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up yourself to Him you will not have a real self. But there must be a real giving up of the [illusory/old] self. You must throw it away “blindly” so to speak … Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” (Mere Christianity, from pp. 218-227)

Food for Thought...

2011-10-30T18:28:00.001-05:00

From the novel Middlemarch by George Elliot.

"Notions and scruples [are] like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating."
---
"They [Evangelicalists] are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to make their neighbors uncomfortable than to make them better....Their system is a sort of worldly-spiritual cliqueism. They really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven"
---
Do these quotes describe anyone you know? Do they describe you?

Willard, Boyd, and the lowliness of God

2011-10-09T19:20:00.000-05:00

"God allowed [Elisha's] young man to see the powers of his realm that interpenetrated and upheld all the visible normal reality around him." (p79 Hearing God, Willard)

"In him [Christ] all things hold together" Col 1:17

"[He is] sustaining all things by his word" Heb 1:3

"God accomodates himself to our fallenness." Greg Boyd - paraphrase

All of reality is held in place and empowered by God. All natural law is God's law, the word with which he continuously speaks the universe into being and by which he holds it in existence. But-the key is that he uses the reality thus created and sustained as a cradle and crucible of love. He gives all sentient beings the freedom to choose for or against him WHILE HE SUSTAINS THEM. He holds himself so faithfully to his word that the natural laws work as if he didn't exist, and those he holds together by the word of his power can choose as they will, even to his detriment.

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First Story 4

2011-03-25T16:47:00.039-05:00

When he turned, Elyssa was brushing the hair out of her eyes with one hand, the other still clutching her doll by one foot. Her brother grinned, glanced over his shoulder to make sure Ruby was actually up. In two noiseless steps he crossed the tiny room to a low table along the opposite wall. A steaming bowl of porridge sat in the middle of it, two spoons alongside with a couple of cracked mugs and a tiny ceramic cup. Ruby's eyes followed him to the spread, and her face lit up.

"Honey!" her voice started as a delighted squeal and dropped precipitously as the young man's head snapped around in alarm. Ruby threw her hands over her mouth, eyes wide and scared. For the space of three heart beats, all three stood stock still, silent as herons stalking dinner....
Elyssa released her doll from the chest hold she'd applied at the sound of Ruby's voice. The youth began to breathe again, softly, and his shoulders relaxed.

"Sorry," Ruby whispered. "I forgot..."

"No harm done, far as I can tell" he whispered back. "Just don't forget again, please!"

Subdued, she joined him next to the table. Elyssa tiptoed over gingerly, still looking a little rattled. They all froze again at the sound of a slight rustling at the door behind them.

The rustling stopped. Silence hung low in the air like a thick coat, deadening all but the sound of their hearts pounding in their ears. Fifteen, twenty, thirty beats. The youth crept just to right of the door, lay on the ground and listened, first with his ear pressed against the door and then against the dirt floor. Another heavy, silent pause, then he rose, his face resolute, returned and sat on the ground between the two little girls. Motioning to them to continue their silence, he patted the ground on each side of him, signaling them to sit down with him.

First he gave each of them a spoon. He poured honey from the ceramic cup into the porridge, stirred it with a clean stick stripped of bark, then held the bowl so each in turn could reach in with their spoon. Ruby took a few bites as quickly as she could without touching the bowl itself . Elyssa took one look at the bowl and handed her spoon to her brother. His grin back, intact, he fed her silently until she shook her head at him and rubbed her stomach in content. He offered Ruby a second round.

Ruby shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. With a shattered glance at the youth's face, Ruby threw her arms around his neck, her slight body shuddering with pent up silent sobs. He gently stroked her dark hair and held her tight until the quivering slowed. Taking her arms from around his neck, he looked into her face. With playful disgust, he mimed wiping a wet patch off his shoulder with exaggerated care and put a finger to his lips. He tweaked her nose, tousled her hair and set her back in place. This time when he offered the porridge, she ate eagerly, always careful not to click her spoon against the bowl. After she had finished, the youth rinsed her spoon with the water in one of the cups, wiped it dry with a clean corner of the cloth that lay under the dishes, and used it to finish the porridge himself.

Musing: The Civil Wars

2011-02-06T10:01:00.000-06:00

My cousin is a singer/songwriter whose first mainstream album was just released to rave reviews this week. I love what she and her co-writer/singer are doing with their music! Honesty in art is so powerful. With songs like "Poison and Wine" and "Barton Hollow," they gently, even joyfully lift the veil from the insatiable thirst that is at the core of what it means to be human...the "intractable vulnerability of what it means to be human," to quote CS Lewis. Their art is an invitation to experience human relationships honestly, to see them for what they are...glorious, frightening, full of promise, pain, and never quite enough. For each one, beloved as may be, is merely a signpost showing us that we have not quite found the One we look for.

Http://www.thecivilwars.com

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First Story 3

2011-02-03T22:21:00.001-06:00

"Elyssa!" an urgent whisper jerked the little girl awake, wide-eyed.

"Elyssa, we have to get up. The sky is starting to get light." Blond hair tousled, small hands the color of honey clutching a dilapidated rag doll, Elyssa's short legs kicked from underneath the thin blanket. There was a faint rustling as she tumbled upright next to the small straw pallet on the floor.

A bundle of dark hair lay like a tangled shadow on the pallet just above the blanket. A thin knee poked out from beneath the blanket where Elyssa had kicked it aside. The youth who'd called Elyssa poked his finger through the hair and wiggled it until he found skin. The knee jerked a little, and stilled. He did it again, harder, and the hair tossed up, revealing dark eyelashes and a pout.

"You too, Ruby!" he whispered, a little louder this time.

Grace

2011-02-01T20:48:00.003-06:00

Grace in Mercy goes

a kitten on the backs of chairs I set in rows

to keep the wonder out.

From backs to seats to backs again

she L-E-A-P-S---

a grace of laughter

that embraces

all

woes

First Story 2

2011-01-31T19:20:00.007-06:00

Stars raced overhead behind a slipping lace of tree limbs, clouds blowing like rags across their gleam, a moonless silver-etched gossamer high in the clear air. She could hear nothing beyond the hum of her blood and the catching sigh of the leaves and twigs as she ran. There was so little time.

In a little while, the twigs below and leaves beside her gave way to a fine sand and free air. The sound beneath became a tiny rhythmic scratching and the constant hiss of a stiff breeze flicked her hair against the sack she carried on her right shoulder. The shine of starlight glinted from ripples along a riverside beach. She veered slightly to her left, avoiding wet sand and the slight sucking sound it would add to her footsteps. A few more lengths and she was scrabbling one-handed over a rounded grassy bank ...

...into a hollow surrounded on all sides by reeds taller and more supple than she. Like a whisper she glided through them into a cavity beneath the roots of a huge fallen tree. The reeds closed behind her like a curtain, leaving no trace. She drew the scarf around her neck over her mouth and nose. Her chest heaving, she silently satisfied her burning need for air and let her body quiet itself.

The noise of little creatures re-asserted itself quickly in her aftermath, and with the soughing breeze would drown the rise and fall of her breathing under the tree. Although she had been quiet, not even she could entirely escape the notice of crickets, frogs and other minor dignitaries of a woodland night. She hoped the interruption was slight enough to escape the notice of more sinister creatures. With luck, this little hiatus in woodland conversation would escape detection in the sighing wind, or would be attributed to the passing of a neighborhood predator, and deemed unworthy of notice. Within the hour, as the light grew to day, the tide would rise, the wind would turn landward, and the water would roll up from the river's mouth past the beach near her tree to the salt marshes beyond. Her footprints would disappear, and she could sleep until night fall.

First Story Begins

2011-01-29T10:36:00.003-06:00

She ran without breathing, her lungs burning for lack of air. The rush of wind past her face sang in her ears, the sound punctuated with the sibilance of passing leaves, the faint snap of dry twigs under her flying feet. All around her the darkness rushed with her, a palpable presence quiet, full of meaning, redolent with summer, presaging dread