The beauty of unlearned things

I was a good kid.

And being a good kid is a good thing when your dad is a preacher. It avoids a lot of embarrassment for everyone.  It's too bad that not all of my siblings could toe the line like me.  I was born last of the four of us, and all of the birth order books tell me I should be highly social, irresponsible, and pushing the edge of boundaries.  They are wrong.  Instead, I have grown up and into a people-pleasing, rule-following, conscientious decision maker who feels safe within defined boundaries.

I did, on occasion, get into enough trouble to find myself on the receiving end of a wooden spoon or a leather belt.

I remember one night as I was tucked into bed next to my older, boundary testing sister our parents came into the room to deliver such a consequence.  I can’t remember what we had done wrong, but I surely remember that a spanking was our punishment.  Broken and crying I climbed into bed.  My parents tucked us back in and tried to hug us goodnight, but I didn't have it in me to pretend I was okay with that.  I crossed my arms and turned my face away.

My obvious rejection of their offered love earned me another round of spanking, and when a second hug was expected I quickly gave in.  But my heart wasn’t behind it, my fear of punishment was.

And I grew up learning in an unintentional way that guilt and fear were strong and effective motivators for desired behavior.  They were also the perfect tools to build walls of resentment and anger.  Because it seemed that the heart behind the behavior didn’t matter as much as actually following the obedience of it.  The kid I was knew that there was something wrong with this formula.  I just didn't have the knowledge to name it or challenge it.

We grow up, a good bit of us, determining the character of God based on the examples of authority over us.  If we are perfectly loved, it is not so hard to see God as loving.  If we are loved based on what we do and how we behave, then we tend to see God’s goodness and love as gifts that waver with his degree of pleasure over our choices.

I have spent the entirety of my adulthood unlearning who I have believed God is and who I have believed he isn't.  I have walked the longest road attempting to separate the legalism of religion from a relationship with Jesus Christ, and it continues to be a journey of discovery for me.  I have made mistakes as I have worked out my salvation, but in those moments I have seen a God who gently, patiently, lovingly guides me back to the truth of himself.  I have learned that our wise God wants something more valuable than our perfect obedience, he wants our hearts.

We find in the 34th chapter of Exodus, the Lord revealing his character to Moses.  He comes down in a cloud on Mt. Sinai to speak his name, "The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out,

'Yaweh! The Lord!  The God of compassion and mercy!  I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.  I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations.  I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin.  But I do not excuse the guilty.  I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and their grandchildren; the entire family is affected-- even children in the third and fourth generations.'"

Whoa!  How do we respond to this overwhelming and powerful God who is both loving and just?  Verse 8 tells us, "Moses immediately threw himself to the ground and worshiped."

I long to know a God who calls me out of fear and guilt and shame into a life that is laid out and surrendered before him.  I long to know a God who elicits my guarded heart to open wide in a position of worship.  I am desperate to know a God who disciplines me in love, and leaves me with my face turned fully towards him and my arms reaching for his embrace, because i am secure in the knowledge that I am his and he is mine.

I believe we do not trust God, we do not worship God, we do not love God as he deserves, because we do not know him.

But God is here with us.  He is full of mystery and wonder and questions that cannot be fully answered, but he is not hidden.  He longs to be known, and he promises us in his word that if we seek him with all of our heart, we will surely find him.  God is here in our struggle to know him, our struggle through doubt and fear and trying to unlearn things that those who love us never meant to teach.

Can we lay down what we think we know about God so that we can actually get to know him?  Can we open our eyes and our ears and our minds to what he wants to reveal to us through his Word and his Spirit?  Can we cast away our flawed ideas, our pride, our pain, our fear of messing up and being punished to cling wholly to the truth of a God who is holy?

The truth says that if we seek him, we will find him.  If we know him, we will love him.

God is here.  He is here still choosing our hearts as our hearts are learning to choose him.