Our deep, dark, terrible need isn’t a secret, but the way we as the Church have acted about it has made it seem like one at times. Instead of meditating on the goodness of God, many of us have been taught to revel in shame, the very force Jesus gave up his breath to ensure we wouldn’t have to shoulder.
Doctrines of sin can vary but at the core of most of them is this idea that we as humans have a deep and inescapable need, a hole that cannot be filled. In our individualistic, egocentric culture we might be tempted to believe that this need is a terror. Instead, I want to encourage us to think about our sin as the need of a child seeking a loving parent. There should be no shame or embarrassment of a child approaching a parent with their human needs: to be held, to be tucked in for bed, to be fed. Many people have not had that experience with their earthly parents, but know this, your heavenly Father wants to be the shameless filling to your deep and yearning need. As Strahan Coleman writes in his book Thirsting, “We thirst because we’re thirsted for. Deep calling to deep. Love is a tale of two longings.”
Many Christian leaders have rightly denounced the role of pride in perpetuating our sin, but we as a Body have been less cognizant of the way shame perpetuates our sin. As Mike Donehey said at an October concert with his band Tenth Avenue North, “We miss God’s grace when we think we don’t need it or when we think we can’t get it.” Lacking a need for God’s grace, pride, is dangerous, but not more or less dangerous than the shame of thinking we’ve strayed too far for God to want to redeem us.
How can we know that we have this need?
I think, first, we just simply need to look around. There are widows whose husbands are torn violently from them in the middle of the night. There are orphans whose parents’ bodies have never been recovered. There is generational warfare, and maybe worse, leaders who believe they have the secret to peace that has evaded all of their predecessors. There are also the ordinary calamities – chronic pain, depression, car problems, rent money that is needed monthly. It is easier to ask where we cannot see evidence of our need than where we can.
From a Christian epistemology, we might think of the second creation story, the one in which God makes two earthlings – christened in the modern world as Adam and Eve. We were made to live in a garden that endlessly supplies our needs. We were made, not only for human companionship so as to not be alone, but also for companionship and tangible relationship with God.
Because sin entered the world, we not only struggle with the effects of sin, we feel the very longing in the absence of God and perfection. The story of sin, then, is also the story of separation. The story of salvation is then not just the story of apologizing for what we’ve done wrong, but also a running back into whose arms we have left. We as the modern Church can put too much emphasis on running away from sin that we forget who it is we are supposed to be running towards.
In Christian tradition, there is a word of instruction that tells us to “Seek God’s face, not just God’s hand.” The mystic, anonymous author of the medieval text The Cloud of Unknowing once wrote an echo or forebodance of this idea when he wrote: “For although it be good to think upon the kindness of God, and to love Him and praise Him for it, yet it is far better to think upon the naked being of Him, and to love Him and praise Him for Himself.”
So, as we embark on this week-long exploration of sin, its effects, and salvation, let us think of sin less as something to escape from and more as something to escape to.
One practical way we can do this is described in Jesus’ triumphant entrance to the city of Jerusalem on the back of a commandeered donkey. As he rides in, a crowd of people surround him:
saying,
“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Luke 19:38-40 NRSVue
As people did in Jesus’ day, we can simply praise the LORD, before God even does anything praiseworthy. God’s simple being, and God’s being with and among us, is worthy enough of our praise. Indeed, we are not alone in our need for God. As Jesus points out, if we as God’s children are silent, creation itself, even inanimate creation, will rise up to praise God. Parallel to our need to have God fill our empty void is our need to praise God simply for who God is.
As Paul notes:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Romans 8:22-23 NRSVue
A final way, then, for us to acknowledge our need may simply be not to acknowledge it. If we refuse, if we stay resolute that we do not need God, or that we are more powerful than God in our own power to sin, then we will remain silent, and all of the rest of creation will groan without us for redemption.
Our need is not a secret nor is our need shameful. Rather, our need simply is. It just exists. And a man on the back of a donkey is headed into town to fully and completely meet this need.
NOTES:
This post borrows wisdom from Strahan Coleman, Mike Donehey, and The Cloud of Unknowing. We encourage you to check out these resources. Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Bryce Van Vleet is the #1 selling author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He also hosts the podcast Death in Dakota, sells poetry art here, and masquerades as the spoken word artist Liihey. You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).
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