This, as Seamands says in the beginning of this chapter, is the great stumbling block for all other religions. “The figure of the crucified Christ, says Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘is a very painful image to me. It does not contain joy or peace, and this does not do justice to Jesus.’”
But those of us who know Him, glory in the cross: “Around AD 200, Tertullian, a North African theologian, described Christian practice like this: ‘At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign (the cross).’”
After Christ’s death, God removed all evidence of the violence done to Jesus except the scars (John 20:20). A poem written after WW I by Edward Shillito ends with this final verse:
The other gods were strong; but Thou was weak;
They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne;
But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak,
And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone.
The reason Christians glory in the cross is that “we believe God’s solution to the problem of suffering and evil is not to eliminate it, nor be insulated from it, but to participate in it and then, having participated in it, to transform it into his instrument for redeeming the world...God overcomes evil not through passive resignation or brute strength, not through coercion or a dazzling display of force, but through the power of suffering love. God uses suffering redemptively to accomplish His will and purpose in the world. That’s why Christ’s scars are still there even when He returns with a glorified body after His triumphant resurrection. And they will always be there, but with one crucial difference: now they are radiant scars…bearers of divine glory, radiating the light of God’s presence, which tranforms everything it encounters. His scars are now instruments of healing (Isa. 53:5).”
Strength Made Perfect in Weakness
The previous 3 chapters have dealt with what the cross says about healing our emotional hurts, and it can be summed up in three words: embracing, forgiving, loving. “The cross reveals that healing comes through embracing, not avoiding, the pain of our hurts; through forgiving, not resenting, those who have wronged us; and through loving, not hating, those who have treated us like enemies.”
The author suggests that in the light of the Lord’s radiant scars, there is a fourth word: offering.
The Apostle Paul learned to offer his weakness (scars) to God for His glory (II Cor. 12:7). The Greek word for “thorn” can mean “either a stake that actually pegged a person to the ground or a splinter that was constantly irritating. According to H. Minn, it conveyed ‘the notion of something sharp and painful which sticks deep in the flesh and in the will of God defies extraction. The effect of its presence was to cripple Paul’s enjoyment of life, and to frustrate his full efficiency by draining his energies.’”
So whatever Paul’s thorn was, it was a hindrance to “his full efficiency by draining his energies.” God chose not to remove this hindrance but rather to perfect His power through Paul’s weakness; and Paul eventually, after begging to be freed of it, was able to reach a place of saying, “I am content with weakness…” (II Cor. 12:10).
How Our Scars Become Radiant
We too can reach the place of viewing our emotional scars with the same attitude that Paul viewed his “thorn in the flesh.” But at first in the healing process we must genuinely look at and embrace the pain, honestly face the havoc wreaked in our lives by these wounds; we must view them first as enemies – “messengers of Satan” – sent to destroy us and see them as something to fight against and overcome.
“But”, Seamands says, “there comes a point in the healing process where we are called to face our wounds in a different way, viewing them this time not as enemies but as friends. While recognizing their evil intent, we actually come to glory in them like Paul did because of what they produce in us (weakness) and consequently what they release through us (God’s power). God builds his kingdom on human weakness, not human strength.”
I have seen time after time that the very area in which a person has most suffered, when healed and then offered to God, becomes the area of ministry to others. The decision to offer God our scars for the healing of others isn’t always an easy decision, so the author suggests two things we can do to help us embrace this redemptive step:
1. First, having honestly recognized we’re not ready to offer our wounds to God to use, we must give God permission to bring us to that point….the most important thing we can offer to God is our willingness (but) we will never overcome this resistance by talking ourselves out of it…Jesus must do it. But he needs our permission…The following is a simple prayer that can be made along these lines: “Lord, we want to be able to glory in our weaknesses. We want you to use our wounds. You have permission to do whatever is necessary to bring us to the place where that can happen.”
2. Second, we need to consider our scars in the light of Christ’s radiant scars. "Picture Him standing before us as he stood before his disciples that first Easter. Like he did then, he shows us the scars from the wounds he received on the cross. Now, however, light floods out from them, transforming everything it touches and filling them with life. As we gaze at his wounds and consider ours in relation to his, we can offer our wounds to him, asking him to touch them with his and to transform them into radian scars.”
The Lord be with you as you open your heart to Him more and more. He is the Good Shepherd who will shepherd your heart, leading you to the places He has prepared for you; and even if some of those places may uncover buried hurts and wounds, the green pastures and still waters of His presence and His wounds will enable you to face them and ultimately offer them to Him for blessing to others and for His glory.
Next week we will begin the book Enjoying God by S.J.Hill. So read chapter one (The Drawing of the Human Heart) this week before my posting, if possible. I’m finding that the more I dare to freely receive God’s unrelenting and unconditional love, the more I realize how offensive His love is to the world, the flesh (my flesh), and the devil. My prayer, as we read this book, is that the Holy Spirit will open our understanding more fully to the radical love of God for weak people and that in that revelation, we will be confident in Him and be empowered to love Him and others. Have a blessed week in Him!
I have been strangely affected by this chapter. I read it earlier (I just had to see how the story ended) but it didn’t affect me then like it did now.
ReplyDeleteI think it came across to me as HOPE!! There is much for hope in this chapter. As we find ourselves in the midst of healing personally, corporately, and all, it seems so overwhelmingly warm to think of “hope.”
Hope? Glorify God with our wounds? Sounds so contradictory and unattainable. Aren’t we to minimize our weaknesses and want God to maximize our areas of strengths. However, I think often we can be discouraged, overcome, and paralyzed with our weakness. And, so we can’t get through to allowing God to do the very thing He wants to do. Why do we tend to ignore and forget that “strength is made perfect in weakness”? That’s where we find ourselves…in that paradox.
Hope? To be able to view our hurts as evil? As stated, Paul’s “thorn” was from the “messenger of Satan to torment me”, or to destroy us. Glory in that? Yes, because it produces that “weakness” in us (the end of ourselves) and that makes way for the release of the presence of God and His power in our life.
Hope? To view the garbage in the compost (the things dealt with, pulled out, and cast away)? We must give thought to the fact that His character is being built in us as this is being done. We have to release it to Him. The accumulative effect in us again is that this is what brings healing to our souls to make it possible to bring healing and freedom to another.
Simone Weil’s quote is helpful: “The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it.”
I have felt that if I talked of woundedness or hurts, it was an occasion for self-pity or being a “victim”. I realize this had a lot to do with my upbringing. You just didn’t talk about those things. But in reality, it is part of the process of becoming the “gold”.
How can it be? God, through the cross “absorbs opposition to His will and then…. neutralizes it by forgiving love….and uses it to accomplish the very purpose it was originally designed to thwart.” We can’t do it. Our scars are too deep for us. Only Jesus can do it.
Hope? “Be ye holy, as I am holy? What? With these scars and personality quirks? It’s like trying to wipe off ticks that have embedded themselves…can’t be done…they are attached. Being holy, pure gold, or perfect …they all require no scars, no marks of impurity or imperfection in its quality. Although the scars of Jesus were still there, yet He remained pure, doesn’t that give hope? It is the promise of our becoming holy, pure and perfect…only in Christ. Yes, and even with scars!!
During this necessary process of honesty, embracing pain, letting go of the pride/perfectionism, being able to view our hurts as the enemy that is out to destroy us, and by forgiving and loving, our souls are being purified….
…or can I say that the sanctification process is really blooming. How was it stated? We are to “participate” in the suffering and “having participated in it, to transform it into his instrument for redeeming the world…”
…but to our wounds only
God’s wounds can speak;
And not a god has wounds,
but Thou alone.
Why was I affected? The weaknesses that I experience and have experienced are the reality that I have to share with others because I can tell the story of the power of His love that redeems (and that isn’t exactly a “negative”). I don’t have to find myself dawdling in the fact of having a weakness (or two!!), but to be continually found drawn deeper into His love.
This chapter speaks of HOPE. Our repulsive scars are becoming radiant scars.