I tried to give it back to her, but she wouldn’t take it.

“You can take it all.  You can pay me back.  Bring it to the play.”

“How much is it, for God’s sake?”

“Eight dollars and eighty-five cents.  Sixty-five cents.  I spent some.”

Then, all of a sudden, I began to cry.  I couldn’t help it.  I did it so nobody could hear me, but I did it.

–The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

I am delving into a book Stephanie lent me.  It is a small paperback, The Knowledge of the Holy by AW Tozer, and seems to have been thoroughly appreciated, underlined with purple ink in all the most thoughtful places and lovingly dog-eared.  I took it up tonight thinking to move quickly through it in my usual voracious fashion, but was pulled up short in the very first chapter.  It is going to take longer to read this book than I thought.  The book said, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?”

I love the apparent simplicity of that question.  I could give the list of pat answers to it in thirty seconds and still not scratch the surface of its true intent, that is, what is going on in my soul.  So much is tied up in the idea of me (not just anyone, but me) thinking about God that it defies explanation.  It speaks to my createdness, my need for worship, my spiritual nature, my desire for intellectual comprehension, my state of exile, my quest for meaning, my sense of guilt, my longing for glory, my hope for redemption – the list can go on as long as I am willing to be honest and transparent.

So to that end, enough stalling.  When I think about God, what unconsciously comes into my mind is a picture of some glorious guy on a throne with bright light and angels milling all around.  I have this vague sense that I am in pretty serious trouble for something, and that He knows all about it and is gleefully waiting around for the chance to out me for it in front of the whole entire universe.  I don’t see Him as an integral part of the world I live in every day – I am far more concerned with making sure my friends don’t find out what an ass I am – but rather I see Him as a temporarily inactive authority who keeps looking at His stopwatch waiting for the allotted time to run, so He can haul everyone into court and have it all out.  That is a pitiful confession and not in keeping with the truth I know about the God of the Bible, but in my heart it is often the case.

Maybe pitiable is a better word.  We are exhorted in the Scriptures to be still, and know that he is God.  That is neither suggestion nor whimsy.  That is a command given in the context of God’s exercising his dominion over the earth, and it is given to his people so that we might know the joy of beholding his works.  To come face-to-face with the God of Jacob and to find out that he is our fortress is the final joy of the Christian.  To lift our thought to his courts and to come back with an image of a singularly vindictive, maledictory, disconnected despot is to have completely wasted that particular span of time in our lives.  It is like walking a long way through a desert to a well, and coming back without any water.  It is like dreaming that you married the girl of your dreams and waking up to find that it’s not true.  In such an anemic view of the Lord of Hosts I am truly to be pitied, and it is well that no one is more willing or able to extend Pity to me than is God himself.  And it is also well that his compassion toward me means that he desires me to come into his presence, to learn his ways, to be with him forever.

It is not that the picture of God presiding over the court is wholly inaccurate.  He does sit as judge both because he is entitled to and because it needs to be done.  He gave us a universe full of good things when we were created that we were supposed to bring together into a world that reflected his glory.  When we rebelled against him and set our lives on a course dedicated to twisting and ruining and striving against him with every stick and stone that readily came to our hand, it was necessary that an accounting be demanded.  Just as following God’s instructions would have brought about a world where unimaginable benefit resulted from obedience, so disregarding his instructions has brought about one where unimaginable detriment results from disobedience.  In his judiciary role God is simply sorting out the elements that will endure (our souls, love, his Church) from those that must pass away (prophecies, tongues, knowledge, this world in its present form), so that the lordship of Christ may be all and in all.  He is pronouncing the sentence of destruction on that which is temporal and the sentence of redemption on that which is eternal.  For it is impossible ever to go back to a world where righteousness is merely the absence of evil and eternal life is to be found growing on an inaccessible tree.  Instead there is being prepared for us a place where righteousness is to be found in Jesus’ triumph over the grave, and where that tree is for the healing of the nations.

Such a redemption comes at a cost.  For us it comes at the cost of our own utility.  We are brought into a great and good city that we did not build, houses full of good things that we did not fill, cisterns that we did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that we did not plant.  It is truly salvation by grace through faith, and it is only for those who accept it as such.  But for God this redemption came at the cost of his own self.  Jesus is not a judge who pronounces sentence on us and then smacks his gavel for all eternity, closing the books and turning his back from us.  He got up off the judicial bench and took off his robes of office, exchanging them for the garments of a working-class Jew in the first century.  He made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

A friend who gives us good things for no other reason than that they enjoy being with us, and that they want us to flourish – even while we are foolishly imagining our own selves to be the glue that holds that relationship together – is the ultimate face of love.  It is the eight dollars and sixty-five cents offered up in complete and reckless abandon for something that is worth far more than money.  In search of such pursuit we meander around this world alternating between the horror and the enticement of the brokenness we see around us, and there is that within us which wants to see it redeemed even as we are; but it is no more within us to accomplish that redemption than it is within a chain-smoking dropout from prep school to take into himself the grief and the glory of a city long jaded with innocence.  And although we know that the wistful picture of a small boy walking by the curb and singing “if a body catch a body” cannot encapsulate what we know to be our God-given responsibility (am I not my brother’s keeper?) toward each other, yet something resonates inside us when we hear it.  Something we have kept hidden for fear that we might not be able to deal with the delight of its realization, something that is as much for our benefit as it is for those for whom it was intended, something that is the whisper of hope to a soul in exile: My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.  What is the truth if not the Logos himself, if not eternal meaning personified in our Saviour?  This is the great judgment to which we continually bring back those we love, and to which we ourselves are continually drawn by their reciprocal faithfulness to us: that in Christ we are declared righteous in the sight of God.  This is the true picture of God we have in Jesus.  For all the promises of God in him are Yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV