Returning To Trust
Van Gogh, The Church At Auvers, 1890
I’ve been trying to spot the good things in life and in our world. That’s not an easy task for people like me, always reaching for more of whatever I think will make things better. I’m a big scrutinizer of myself, noticing all the flaws, the limitations, the failures, the covered-up selfishness. I think we’re doing that same thing in our communities, our churches, our organizations, our nation. Patience has never been my strong suit, but I’m in a moment in my life where I’m trying to figure out how simply to accept myself and the good things that God spreads around lavishly.
I remember back to Cardinal Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, making the case that here in the West
there is a strange form of self-hate we can only consider pathological. . . . It no longer loves itself. All it sees in its own history is what is disgraceful and destructive, while it no longer seems able to perceive what is great and pure. In order to survive, Europe [and America, we must add] needs a new, critical and humble acceptance of itself.
And then he adds provocatively: “But only if it really wishes to survive.”
If we’re going to survive as a civilization, if we are going to thrive in our personal lives, we’ve got to build on a critical and humble acceptance of ourselves. Of course we need to be aware of the failures and the flaws, but surely we must begin to celebrate what has been great and pure and noble in our history and even our lives. We’ve simply got to begin to accept ourselves.
I remember Tom Petty singing wistfully through the seventies: “It's good to be king, if just for a while. / To be there in velvet, yeah, to give 'em a smile.” He also “thought to myself / Wouldn’t it be great / If just for one moment / Everything was all right.” We all remember this dreaming. The problem is we thought we were, each one of us, a king. And so, when things didn’t turn out “all right,” we blamed ourselves, mercilessly. This is the source of all our excruciating self-flagellation.
We lost sight of another king in the world. We erected a new religion. We drifted into a new kind of Puritanism, a new fundamentalism, as vicious and dogmatic as anything ever experienced. We thought, each one of us, that we had a corner on the truth. Those who didn’t agree were worse than heathens. They were enemies, needing to be airbrushed off the map. We have been punishing toward those with whom we disagree.
What if God really is the king of the universe? Might then we be able to let go of our obsessive need to be king, in control of it all? Might we then be able to step out of the argument? The real king knows what he is doing. We can let go of always needing to be on the defensive.
After wrestling with all of this for a longtime—this crippling guilt, this paralyzing self-flagellation, this obsessive need to make things perfect—the question has come down to something very simple: God really is the king of the universe. I need to figure out how to join his kingdom.
Think back on that waiting father, gazing patiently down the lane for his prodigal, wandering son to return home. This father is not standing on that porch obsessing about how much his son has failed, though his son has failed miserably. Even as the son falls on his knees in confession and humility, the father is laying plans for a big party. The father patiently waits because he loves his boy. This is a father who runs the farm on love. We need desperately to live on that farm. We need desperately to adopt that father. Let go—this farmer is in control. We need a party.
I am wondering what would happen, to me, to our world, if we could turn once again in deep trust of the king of the universe. What if we could surrender ourselves fully? What if we could lean heavily on this father who redefines the basic presuppositions of life on the farm, this time informed by love. This would free us up to examine the reasons we constantly gravitate toward guilt and hatred instead of love. We just might be released into a new freedom of acceptance.