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I am a pastor and a clinical psychotherapist. My life's passion is defining healthiness from a human perspective and paralleling it to the holiness of God, divine perspective. Shifting perspectives creates a paradigm that is alongside of rather than over and against. The parakalein of God and the paradoxes of humanity are redefined. Humanity is all about winning and yet we are losing ground everywhere. Divinity is all about letting go of the desire to win and the fear of loss. The Divine embraces the world with loving care regardless of anything.

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An image transformed: A boot for stomping or a boot for walking

Posted by Don Paine

Imagine an image of a boot stomping on your throat as if it wanted to kill you.  As you looked at it you were curious about why it wanted to kill you and what you needed to do to get it to ease off, let you up, or just.

As I think about that boot as a part and am curious toward it I begin to realize that it did not want to kill me or even choke me or scare me even though that was its effect.  It was a part of the boot that felt like I needed to be punished, judged and it felt that I did not deserve to live, I deserved to die.  Then suddenly another part of the boot spoke.  It said "I am just trying to protect you to prevent you from being hurt, to provide a sense of fear and an experience of love". This part did not want to hurt me but help me.  It wanted to protect me and provide for me.  It was holding me down until I learned how to protect me in a different way but until then it would continue to do its job of protecting me in the only way it knew how.

Suddenly, I sensed that this was a picture of the duality of God that is perplexing and paralyzing.  As a sinner I deserve to die and the God of wrath has to be appeased or I have to die.  But is that true?  Is there another angle?  Is God a wrathful vengeful God whose anger and wrath must be appeased by a sacrifice?  Or is it a sacrifice to realize that this God is a God of love, who wants to bestow on us the gift of his love, and to do so requires us to sacrifice the idea that we are undeserving, and unloveable?  God is teaching us to sacrifice give up. He gives up who he is, becomes who we are,  to convince us that we can become as he is!  God is eternal love.

Suddenly I saw an old Bible verse in a new way.  As if a lens had shifted in my eyes and I saw something I had never seen before.  I saw it from the inside out.

Romans 3:23  "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life".

The part of me that feels guilty, wrong, undeserving, and confused feels like the boot is made to stomp on me and I deserve to die and not to live.  Every part of me seems to agree except the inner core that knows that I was created in the image of God and created to model that image to my self.  While it is true that the wages, that which I have earned and deserve, of sin is death, it is also true that the gift, which I cannot earn and yet deserve is already in me for me.  The gift of eternal life is the constant living free of the sense of punishment, guilt and un-deservedness and with the sense of loving-presence, grace and deservedness that God provides.

It is not, exclusively, that the wages of sin is death until we confess our sin and receive God;s free gift of eternal life.  It is inclusively, that the wages of sin what we deserve is death, but also that the gift, for which God created us to receive and which we deserve, is eternal life.  Free of fear and punishment we are gifted to live in grace and providence, protected from the internal judge and critic by the internal sense of love and care, which is eternal.

When it seems like God is punishing or wrathful it is the part of us that is feeling undeserving so it feels like punishment and wrath.  In reality it is the God of Love wanting to get our attention so that we not continue to live under the fear of loss or death. Rather live with the gift of love, with the confidence that we cannot lose it for we know we are loved.

I recall a moment when I screamed at my oldest daughter as she was going near the rode with her new bike.  I sacred her and she felt I was angry at her, that she had done something. In that moment she did not feel loved she felt she had done something wrong and was about to be punished. That was her reality. In my reality, I saw danger and was trying to keep her safe, to protect her, to love and care for her.

God is not a punitive angry God whose wrath needs to be appeased.  God is a loving God who wants us to know his love.  What happens in life may seem like our failures, we may feel we are being punished for wrong, but the reality is that God is attempting to lead us in the way everlasting.

The boot that is on our neck wants us to see that it is made for walking in love not for stomping in wrath.


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