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Changes of the Season

A new bottom line.

Posted Thursday, April 13, 2006 by Brian Beers

Through my grief God turned my understanding of him on its side. Before my baptism of grief, I may have said that “sin” or “his glory” was God’s bottom line. Yes. I may have considered God’s glory to be the organizing principle of God’s activity in the world and in history. I viewed God, first and foremost, as transcendent, abstracted from the world—unfamiliar with sorrow. This appears obvious to me now in the question I voiced one night in that first year after Nancy’s death. The answer I received changed my relationship with God.

I kept a journal during that first year, each entry addressed to God. One evening as I wrote in it my emotions were particularly turbulent, and I struggled, unable to write. I finally cocked my head to one side as though God were standing behind me and asked out-loud, “Do you have any idea what this feels like?” The final consonant hadn’t even left my throat when I almost heard him answer, “The garden.” Suddenly I knew. Adam—Eve—sin—death. Death! No longer did I wonder if my God understood the pain of my loss. I was privileged to glance into the depth of God’s broken heart. There, in the Garden of Eden, God’s true love died.

As understanding dawned “relationship” became the foundational theme in my theology. And it has remained so to this day. This new “bottom line” for my theology recast everything in terms of relationship and passion. While writing this I realize that “Love” may be the attribute of God that I mean when I write of relationship. Years of Sunday school, however, all but ruined “God’s Love” else I would have recognized it. God’s Love as described in Sunday school was never True Love in the Westley-and-Buttercup sense. It was more like Grandmotherly Love—stately and sure, but never stirring the blood. 

One night some months later, I realized that the cross wasn’t just judicially satisfying. It was emotionally satisfying. As I stared at my lone reflection in a pool where Nancy and I had once reflected together, I wondered what I would give to have even one more hour with my true love. Moments later I looked up from that pool, filled with wonder, for the God who, in response to that same question, gave up his life.

This new bottom line has colored my every perception about God, why he does things, and why he doesn't. It doesn't mean that I like what happens. It doesn't mean that my sorrow is less, but I am comforted knowing that God viscerally understands grief and my grief. The deepest comfort comes in knowing that God doesn't have some different set of perceptions in which grief and sorrow don't hurt.

Sunday, April 16, 2006 9:35 PM

Charlie wrote:  Thanks for your thoughts, Brian. I think I'm going to print out a copy of this post and keep for people that I might counsel in the future.

Monday, April 17, 2006 7:49 AM

Brian wrote:  Thank you, but I suggest caution in using it in counseling. Even now this understanding of God still seems like a poor exchange for my wife. If I believed that God allowed the death of my wife and unborn child in order to teach me that he hurts too, I would consider him heartless and cruelly selfish.

Monday, April 17, 2006 2:44 PM

Charlie wrote:  That is very true. But I think that to teach you was one (of many) reasons for why he organized things as he did. Every event has a plethora of reasons which we will never quite comprehend, but it is helpful to know at least a reason or two so that we can trust God with the other reasons.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006 8:20 AM

Sam wrote: 
I just wanted to chime in.  I have lost two unborn daughters, and now have to face what is essentially barreness (i say this not for you, Brian and Charlie, but for the readers who may not know me).  I have seen in myself a desire that God show himself and answer for his ill treatment of me.  I too have struggled with the "why in the ---- did this happen to me?" question.  I have not really come to any great specific reasons.
 
2 Cor 1:3-5 says:
 
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort; who comforts us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, even so our comfort also abounds through Christ.
 
This passage doesn't say that God afflicts us, but that when we are afflicted he comforts us so that we might be useful to others who are afflicted.  God certainly has comforted me (through Brian, among many others - Adam and Josh must be mentioned here too), and I hope that I have been at times a comfort back to Brian and others as a result.  Due to the relational give and take that was intensified during recovery from grief, I grew closer to these brothers.  Would I give up my daughters to have closer friendships?  No, but it is not I who knows what I need...the only one who knows that is the Great Three-in-One, and I believe these persons do what is best for me always.  In the end, I have decided to rely upon the wisdom and goodness of God, forgiving whatever faults I might attribute to him at times because I know he has no faults.  I believe perception fails me, and the more like me I make God, the more likely I am to be making a god-too-small.
 
In the end I would venture to say that I think we hardly ever understand why anything happens.  Paul says, and i use it quite out of context:
 
But if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he doesn't yet know as he ought to know.  But if anyone loves God, the same is known by him. (1 Corinthians 8:1)

Along the same lines is the idea that God's ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts above our thoughts.  I don't rest in some new awareness of why a bad thing happens, I rest in God.
 
I too, like Brian, am comforted in the knowledge that God suffers, and that he weeps with me, and I love the image of a fiery love.  The more I live, the more mystery I see.  When I was a young theologian I believed that I could discovery everything if i thought and read enough.  But more and more I find myself willing to roll with the mystery: laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and God weeps with you.  Perhaps there is something to the proverb, "it is better to go to the house of mourning, than the house of feasting."
 
It strikes me that God works with each of us in different ways.  Some would not be comforted by the thoughts I offer, others would not by Brian's.  But I tend to think that this is part of how God works.  He knows our make-up (he made us after all) and knows what we need.  Enough rambling.  Sorry.  Thanks for bringing all this up, Brian.  And thanks for sharing  your grief and comfort...it is good to hear again.  Soft words from a warrior are emboldening.  I have more questions about your post, but I will save them. 
 

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