I'm somewhere between incarnation and eternal life. The Gospel of John and First John is an awkward tightrope. Both of them contain "chapter one" prologues, but for very different reasons. One stresses the fleshy and earthy appearance of God into our world, while the other sends us careening into a heavenly eternal life. And let's not get to Revelation just yet. The summer is young, after all.
I'm also somewhere between joy and discomfort. Thanks to Brene Brown's psychological research on shame, I cannot get this image out of my mind that we are currently raising a generation of children (and grownups) who we do not allow to experience discomfort. The only problem with achieving such a goal for our children is that it does nothing to prepare them for the real world. Sorry, but second place doesn't get a trophy during a job interview.
Dr. Brown's work, in a fascinating way, shows that the only way we know joy is to know discomfort. Unfortunately our culture is conditioning us to embrace vicarious discomfort. We want to watch others experience it for us. In a recent speech, Dr. Brown gave the example of how we would never be open about getting in trouble at work, but that we will rush home to watch who gets voted off the island. I was shocked to find out that the highest rated television these days is shame-based programming viz-a-viz people getting humiliated before millions. (Think "American Idol" auditions.)
So how do we as Christians live in such a world while avoiding being of such a world? I think it goes back to the Johannine tightrope. We live with one foot in an eternal, joyful heaven where there are no tears, no tears up there; and we live with one foot on the same damned messy terra firma upon which the creator of heaven and earth humbled himself and became one of us. Not "like" one of us, but one of us. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. That's the tightrope. That's the story. That's where grace and truth reside. Not in the shallow theology of everything's-gonna-be-alright-everything-happens-for-a-reason cliches that fill the majority of drive-by church marquees. But rather, the visions of the New Testament writings of John that call us as followers of the Word to endure, be patient, and cultivate the kind of faithfulness to God and one another that the eternal throne flows down to us each day.
We as Christians are doing ourselves a disservice by pretending everything is going to be okay. It's not. We live with one foot in discomfort, and one foot in joy. Brene Brown says that those who do not have a capacity for pain/shame and empathy are easy to spot: They are called "psychopaths." Funny, I've never thought about contemporary American evangelical Christianity as nurturing a sort of theopathology... but now that I think about it...
I will fess up and give credit to my wife: I have become a fan of Brene Brown since my wife is a fan of Brene Brown. I'm kind of like Jules Winfield who says his girlfriend's a vegetarian, which pretty much makes him a vegetarian. But like Jules, I do love a tasty burger. And I do love good truth. And we know deep down that when it comes to joy and pain, it's hard to define/know one without the other. Perhaps to know both is to experience true discipleship, the kind the Bible warns brings suffering.
Pain in the darkness.
Joy comes in the morning.
There is no shadow of turning with Thee.
