‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking.  ‘Are you afraid?’

‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.  ‘Afraid!  Of Him?  O, never, never!  And yet – and yet – O, Mole, I am afraid!’

–The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

Over the last few weeks I have found thinking about gender to be a dangerous thing.  On the one hand I may move too far toward a disparaging view of masculinity and femininity, supposing that the differences I see there are merely characteristic, much as melancholic and sanguine may merely be descriptive of one’s personality; and on the other hand I may ascribe too much meaning to our maleness and femaleness, reducing our fundamental being to the level of our sex.  It does not seem that I can arrive at a balanced view of other people, or even of myself; in an effort to comprehend the full scope of the subject I always swing the pendulum too far.  There is, I believe, a vision growing in my mind of the men and women around me who will one day rule angels in the new heavens and the new earth, but it is still in its nascency (a dream strayed into daylight, as somebody once said), and will probably not be realized until I am also fully known.

But for that reason the problem remains difficult.  Relating to others is the area in our lives where the Gospel is first put to work, for we cannot serve God together until we are truly together.  And what is service to God, if not loving our brother as ourselves?  And how can we love our brother, unless we first love God?  On these hang all the Law and the Prophets.  But that is a mighty load.  It is difficult for me to love my brothers because their calling is so much like my own: we are to go out into the world and subdue it, laying hold of the Kingdom forcefully.  It is difficult for me to love my sisters because their calling is so much different from my own: they are to create a home where rough-hewn timbers stood before, a warm and inviting place of refuge that is a blessing to all those who are welcomed in.  When similarity and dissimilarity produce equally disastrous results, it begins to dawn on me that perhaps the problem does not lie with those with whom I am trying to relate, but with myself.  And I do not need to ask the question why, even rhetorically, because I already know the answer: it is because I am afraid.

I am afraid that the guys I am close to will prove to be stronger than me, turning things in a direction I had not anticipated and exercising their will over against mine.  I am afraid they are more intellectually astute than I, upstaging my most profound remarks and revealing the degree to which the presumption of my ignorance extends.  I am afraid they care more than I do, demonstrating their superior fitness to lead.  I am afraid my friends will discover my deepest, darkest secrets: things I have not even admitted to myself.  I am afraid that, having come to know me completely, they will reject me as unfit to be known at all.  And greatest of all, throughout my life I have cast myself as the guy who is willing and able to do whatever is necessary to win; I am ultimately afraid of losing.

I am afraid that I cannot really be friends with the girls around me, that the beauty they share with me will be taken away because it is too wonderful to be true.  I am afraid that they show love to me and welcome me either because they feel sorry for me or because they are just being polite, not really because I am worthy of being cared for in such a way.  I am afraid of where the boundaries are in those relationships, that I will step over them and be dropped like a hot rock.  I am afraid the women God has me close to will actually need me to be a man, that they will look for a Christian brother and find masquerading in his place a well-intentioned fraud.  I am afraid that the closer we get, they will discover what everyone else has discovered about me: that I am as shallow in reality as I am deep in my outward pretensions.  I have always imagined myself as the guy who can conquer the affections of everyone he meets and win their favor, even their love; I am ultimately afraid of being shut out.

In the Gospel fear is always answered with two things: a) God moving close to us and b) God showing us what is really going on.  The first is called revelation and the second is called faith.  We see this in Genesis where God came to Abram with a vision; we see it again when Moses told the Israelites at the Red Sea to stand firm in the Lord and see his salvation; again at Dothan when the man of God showed his servant that those who are with us are more than those who are with them; when David spoke by the Spirit of God’s everlasting covenant with him, ordered in all things and secure; when Isaiah bound up the testimony among the disciples in the presence of Him who was a sanctuary to His people; when Jesus said to the Church in Philadelphia that he set before them an open door, which no one is able to shut, that the wicked might learn that Jesus has loved his people.  This is the comfort that God offers, even to a list of fears as numerous and as annoyingly self-centered as mine.

And what a comfort it is!  The first thing God says to me, as gently as possible, is: This is not about you.  The implications of this truth are endless and earth-shattering.  If it is not about me, then the answers to my questions above will vary widely.  I may be weak and foolish and insensitive and fatally flawed, yet still be called to shepherd the flock as an officer in Christ’s church.  My sin may be exposed and I may (not unreasonably) suffer the direst of consequences for it, yet Jesus has promised to walk with me even through that extremity.  I may find that because I am in a church where the Gospel is lifted high, my visible brokenness may be seen as the one thing which qualifies me for Christian credibility.  And in the final hour, having fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith, I may just discover that the crown of righteousness that was laid up for me will also be awarded to all those that have loved the appearing of the Lord, the righteous judge.

The second thing God says to me, with some greater amount of emphasis, is: You need to look around.  The purpose of beauty is not the Beholder, but the relationship that the Beautiful offers.  If I suppose that the depth of the wonder I experience in these relationships is cause for a surly response from He who is the Bright and Morning Star, jerking the jewel away from me lest I admire it too much, I show first that I know nothing of the heart of Jesus, and second that I have no concept of what he has in store for me when he comes into his kingdom.  While we speak of cluelessness I am ashamed even to have to treat with the idea of whether I am actually worthy of someone else’s love, since the nature of love is to bestow worth where it was not found before; but I felt that doubt, and I had to write it.  The problem of boundaries is worse yet.  If we want God’s glory and the good of his people, God will give us what we want; if we want to feed our lusts and destroy those we are close to, we must take that for ourselves.  The question I have to ask myself then becomes, “What do I want?”  The honest answer to that moves back and forth on a daily, even hourly basis along the arc I described in the first paragraph, but thanks be to God that it is slowly – ever so slowly, even imperceptibly at times – moving toward his Kingdom come and his will done.  This motion is in itself the answer to my fear, for it declares that there is a Spirit governing my heart who does not change as I do.

My fears about others needing me to be a man, and not only a man but a godly man, are faithfully addressed by the Gospel as well.  It goes back to the definition of necessity that we gave thought to some weeks ago.  If people truly “needed” me to be able to continue in their Christian walk, not only would they not make it over the finish line, they would never have started to begin with.  There is one thing needful, and my sisters have chosen that good part, and it shall not be taken away from them.  It is as I share with them in that one thing that I am secure in my position.  If our lives are hidden with Christ in God, then, when he who is our life appears we will surely appear with him in glory.  This is the promise God makes to me, reestablishing the vertical component of my assurance and setting the standard by which the solidarity that exists between me and my fellow Christians is to be judged.

The pendulum swings, and then falls back again.  It falters in its path one moment and continues smoothly the next.  From unbelief to holy zeal, hatred to fondness, foolishness to wisdom, woe to weal, weakness to strength, I move in the pattern that is so humanly serpentine in shape and yet by grace is centered on the straight and narrow way, a path that was traveled by so many saints before me.  Because I cannot keep fear from overtaking my heart it seems that I am constantly losing, yet we are told that we are not lost until we refuse to saved, that the story is not over until the pendulum stops swinging at all.  I would that my fears could be done away with forever, but that is not what the pattern looks like when a soul that loves Jesus walks through a world poisoned with self-sufficiency.  If God took away my fears instead of speaking to them, what would we have in common?  But by my fears he teaches me that he will always be with me (so emphatically the subject of that divine sentence), and he teaches me that I am part of a family.  And if these things are true, the day will come when my fear will be redeemed into a holy reverence that makes all my most sincere worship right now look like tasteless adulation, and a righteous passion that makes my firmest commitments as splintering reeds.

JV

Photo credit: Braveheart

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