Tag: Genesis

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The Fear of Death

Death is the last topic I thought I’d be writing about to kick off my blog’s second year. Yet, here we are; the highest highs always seem to bring to my mind the lowest lows right along with them. And perhaps that’s just as it should be. 

I’ve been taking morning walks lately, and one morning this week I walked to a park I haven’t been to for years, just outside of a well-manicured neighborhood. The park is all woodland, with a creek running through it. Once inside under the completely shaded canopy, I saw that the park itself seemed a completely different world from the sunny neighborhood just beyond. Instead of neatly trimmed grass, there was a mess of moss and fungi blanketing rotting logs. Instead of bushes full of blooms, there were downed trees with their roots exposed, brutally ripped up from the earth beneath. Instead of small blue jays or cardinals hopping about, there were two large, hulking black vultures, still and silent, perched in a pile of fallen leaves above the creek. 

These starkly different scenes just yards from each other perfectly illustrate how death and reminders of it are consciously kept out of sight and ignored as much as possible. 

Death is uncomfortable to think about.

Given how prevalent and obvious death is in this world, I’m interested in why this remains so. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do know that we all have an innate sense of the fragility of our lives and our loved ones’ lives. 

Even so, we have to keep surviving, right? No time to think about death when we’re trying to survive. However, there comes a point at which facing death becomes absolutely key to fully embracing our humanity.    

According to the Bible, humans gave up the option to ignore the knowledge of good and evil long ago (Genesis 3:6); we simply don’t have the luxury anymore of being unconscious of it. In a podcast interview, psychologist Jordan Peterson posed the idea that perhaps the remedy now is to be fully or “all the way” conscious of good and evil, since we can’t go back to being “unconscious.” I like this idea, but whether it’s correct or not I think it holds true with the Good News of Christ.

Along with the knowledge of good and evil comes a responsibility to face the good and evil in us.

To face the evil in us could also be described as becoming conscious of our own sin. This is exactly what we must understand before we can sincerely repent; C.S. Lewis talks about this in Mere Christianity. We realize the extent of our sin (evil) and the extent to which we need God’s grace (good) to free us from death’s grip. 

For repentance to come, we need to do something God didn’t design us to do–to stare death in the face. It is when we really see that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23)–and that death forces us into something we were not created for–that we can understand all that we’ve been saved from by Jesus and how truly amazing His grace really is. 

Turning from our willful ignorance of death to follow Jesus, the Master of death, means we will stop avoiding it and trust that He’s bigger than death itself, as well as every one of our fears.

If we knew the Master of death better, we wouldn’t be so afraid of our own death. 

Jesus came to master death and set us free. To use the woodland analogy, Jesus came to lay His life down, like a fallen tree in the forest, that we might live like a newly sprouted seed from the soil He provided by His act of love. 

Yet, death is still worthy of being sad about, something to deeply mourn and to grieve. Separation from loved ones, though temporary for believers in Jesus, is still deeply painful and still very much a loss. I want to be very clear that it is okay to grieve, mourn, and be sad when it comes to death, no matter who it is, whether or not they were believers. Grief is not something to be brushed aside or ignored.  

When my Jewish grandfather passed away years ago, I was able to experience a community that faced death together in a beautiful way. The love and support of my grandmother’s friends and family was hugely beneficial, even for me in my own grieving process, as they came to simply be present and literally “sit” with her. Shiva following a Jewish burial typically lasts for seven days, providing not only community support but food for the grieving first-degree relatives. 

There is great value in appreciating the seriousness and weight of death and taking time to acknowledge what our hearts are feeling. 

While our culture has lost the skill of being open about death and understanding of grief, we don’t have to when we stay close to Jesus and understand the truth He brings–that death is not the end. Jesus Himself spoke openly about death. He was not afraid to do so, predicting his own death several times. People who had experienced death also came to him in a state of grief. He didn’t turn them away but even grieved with them (John 11:35). He even chose to raise the sick girl (Matthew 9:25), and His friend Lazarus (John 11:44) back to life. 

While I don’t think it is healthy for death to be excessively avoided as a topic of conversation, I also want to make a point to say that an excessive focus on death is not the answer to any problems either. It is only by understanding how God intended life that we can understand death and see it for what it is, no more, and no less. Romanticization of death glorifies the wrong god. 

Life is a gift from God. 

Examining our feelings about death along with the truth of the Bible can give us a deeper appreciation of life and its meaning. Reading Genesis, we find that death as we know it was never meant to be. We were not built for it! We were created to walk with God and eat from the Tree of Life. Death was not in the original plan. 

It is no wonder that it can be so devastating to us psychologically, physically, and spiritually! Knowing this, it is completely natural to avoid death, and it makes perfect sense that we would brush traces of death aside because innately we know what we were intended for.  

Facing death is so hard because God never intended for us to experience it in the first place. 

Death may never stop being hard to face, but it need not take us by surprise, as it so often does. With Jesus’ wisdom and grace, we can explore our knowledge of good and evil. 

We can let Him help us through to the other side of fear as we examine what He says about life and death. We can begin to safely open ourselves up to facing the realities of death when we trust Jesus and His love for us, for there is no fear in love (1 John 4:18). 

Christ and His love sets us free.

The bigger the debt of sin we have been forgiven from, the more we will love Jesus for canceling it. The story in Luke 7 gets me every time, when Jesus forgave the sinful woman with the alabaster jar of perfume. 

Her display of gratitude for forgiveness led Jesus to tell those in His company, “...Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little” (Luke 7:47). When we are conscious and aware of our sins, fully acknowledging our need like this woman, gratitude for our canceled debt leads us to a life full of love and peace. 

As I was headed back from that morning walk in the decaying woodland park, walking once again past neatly spaced out trees and colorful blossoms, these words came to my heart, “All that was lost will be restored to you.” 

That is what God does; He restores what is lost, damaged, sick, even dead, in and for us. 

The very first book of the Bible that was written was Job, which speaks to and confirms this simply, “If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored . . .” (Job 22:23).

The last book of the Bible speaks of the restored life that God will bring to His people: “[His servants] will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads” (Revelation 22:4). How amazing that the story (which is not ours but God’s) that is unfolding will end in God calling us, servants created to glorify and enjoy Him, by His own name. 

Think of the intimacy of giving someone else your name, or of taking someone else’s. That is the intimacy God intends for us to have with Him. What vulnerability and trust to be called by His name! Death is not the end, but rather this beautiful picture of restored, everlasting life in the family of God.

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:5). 

Thank you for spending some of your time journeying with me. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to the blog, it helps me continue writing about Life with the King. Grace and peace.  

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Royal Identity

Happy 2020! I’m so excited to finally dive into the topic of identity. Understanding my identity and identity as God defines it changed everything for me in 2015. Identity was the key to regaining faith in God after I had lost every last drop of it. I used to define myself in all kinds of ways–by how good I was at my job, how I saw myself, how others saw me, what I knew and the kinds of questions I asked, the places I’d been . . . you get the idea. I’d also “try on” new identities when I found them to see if they’d fit. Nothing ever satisfied for long. It wasn’t until I realized I didn’t actually understand God or who He really is or the truth about why He made humans to begin with. Once I discovered that for myself in my own time, my identity became much more clear. Did you know that royalty is in our blood? (Genesis 1:26, 1:28). I certainly didn’t. But it’s True!

God made humans to rule the Earth. 

We all have a deep-seated desire to rule, to bring order, to make something out of the world and our place in it. That’s not by accident. In John Mark Comer’s book Garden City, he unpacks this idea that we were always meant to reign, to work, make culture, build cities, and help people and animals thrive. We are actually designed as rulers of the Earth–we are kings and queens by birth. 

We were never meant to die or leave this Earth but instead to rule it, reign over it, and enjoy it. Comer writes that it’s in our blood to desire greatness, because that’s who we really are. We descend from kings and queens, and we are designed to be kings and queens. How often do we live like we believe that?

You don’t have to strive to become somebody because you already ARE somebody. 

Awareness of my sin blinded me to this identity for myself, and sometimes still does. I used to believe that if God was real, He had made me a sinner. From a very young age I recognized the pain I caused to myself and others and resented it and myself for it. In other words, I believed it was God’s fault that I was born “bad,” so why would I want to try to be anything better than I was? Shouldn’t I just embrace who I am, push others to do the same, and leave it at that? After all, that’s what Western culture fights for and tells us we should fight for too. Why would I want or need forgiveness from God like Christianity teaches if I couldn’t help but to be “bad” in the first place? Seemed pretty unfair to me. How could a good God send anyone to hell if He set us up to fail by making us sinful? But that’s a lie I believed. The truth is that God made us to rule. 

Discovering and knowing that God didn’t set us up to fail was everything for me. 

I knew there was a disconnect in holding this belief but no answers made sense to me for years. Eventually I asked the question, “Do I really know who God is?” The answer was a resounding no. Instead of a God of mixed and confusing messages, I slowly came to know God as the Creator of a beautiful Earth and the Creator of humans to rule over it, take care of it, and thrive. I came to know God as a loving, holy Father who always intended the best for us, and who created us good, in His Good image, to represent Him on Earth. I came to know God as the good, loving, merciful, faithful, sacrificial, kind, and patient God He is. Understanding Him not as the condemner to hell but as the Savior of souls that have wandered away from God’s design, longing for rest and peace. Instead of focusing on what confusion my pain caused, my thinking started to transform when focusing on the loving heart of God and His original intentions for us. 

Knowing God’s love, all the pain, sin, and shame of my past just doesn’t matter anymore.

I mean, it still really sucks that we can’t rule as God originally designed. While royalty is in our DNA, sin crept into our hearts at the Fall and has been around ever since. In other words, we messed up our chance to rule the world as our natures predispose us to do. Instead, we were given a second chance by God in the form of a choice. That’s where the best news comes in.  God allows us to choose whether or not to submit to His authority to get back to His design. Jesus, God in the flesh, took on our sin by His amazing grace and He now rules the Earth in our place, because we could not. Now, we must let God take care of the world. We can no longer rule the Earth on our own because sin entered into the world and our egos twisted the desire to rule for common good into the desire to rule for personal glory. But we may reign with Jesus over the Earth for all eternity as God’s design intended. All He asks is to trust in Him. 

The end of the story is hopeful! Nothing could ever stop God’s design, it will come about regardless of human decisions. But God gives us the chance to reenter His design through believing in Jesus’ sacrifice covering the debt of sin we are responsible for. God in the flesh, Jesus, came to save our souls from separation from God. He fulfilled the human’s purpose to rule the world where Adam and Eve could not rule. 

We are kings and queens because the King of all made it so. Not because of anything we’ve done, not because we deserved it, but because of the grace of the one True King. 

Sometimes it takes hitting a low point like I did to realize there’s more to life than being born, working, maybe marrying or procreating, and definitely dying. There’s not only pain. Love is here. No amount of sin could wipe it out. Love is the reason you are here, and God doesn’t leave you alone in the mess of pain and suffering. He loved us so much He was willing to do anything to get us out of the mess and cycle of destruction we inherited from our ancestors, the human kings and queens of old. He doesn’t just show us kindness once in a while, when things in life seem to be going well, He doesn’t only think about us when we think about Him or pray to Him. He is kind and good to us all the time. He thinks about us always, wanting the best for us. Jesus provided the Way for us to get out of the mess of sin that distracts, destroys, and deceives us and allows us to live in the peace and joy of knowing Him and following His Way, his plan for your identity. 

We were not made to suffer and die. We were made to rule. 

You have purpose. You have value. You ARE somebody. You are precious, valued, and loved beyond what you or I or any human being can comprehend. 

The King of kings has given us an identity, a name, a purpose that no doubt or sin can ever erase. 

May we live as the kings and queens God made us to be, now and for eternity. 

Further suggested reading: Garden City by John Mark Comer

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Ireland: Part I

Have you ever traveled to a new place that felt like you were coming home for the first time in your life? That was Ireland to me. I always get nostalgic for Ireland in September; this year marks 7 years since the September I entered my first international terminal. I took this trip alone. I was 24 and I needed to get away. I needed a fresh start. I needed to find out who I was away from everyone I knew. 

To Ireland, alone?

It all started several months before the trip, when I got a very clear, strong nudge, that I could only conclude was God’s nudge, to go to Ireland. The idea to go to a place I didn’t know alone was kind of crazy to me and my logical mind, but this nudge in my heart told me that doing this was the right choice. From that point on, I felt a strange peace about it. I did the unthinkable, and bought my plane ticket without a plan, “Who even am I?” I thought at the time. But there was a huge grin on my face. 

When the time came to board my plane, I had my nightly stops planned out, but enough room to wander if I wanted. This was not a jam-packed trip, as those tourist-filled trips tended to make me anxious; instead each stop was intentional, deliberate, and without rush. Perfect. I needed to slow down and take unhurried time to figure out what God had for me in Ireland. I didn’t know anything about it other than a few of my aunt’s stories from her trip years before, but all of her stories sounded like exactly what I needed–greenery, kind people, and a simple love for the earth and for life itself. I hoped her stories would be true for me too. 

On the plane I marveled at how calm I was. I was sitting next to strangers, many of them Irish, bolting through the air across the Atlantic Ocean all night long toward Shannon International Airport. Once I arrived, I would have no way to contact anyone I knew, and they wouldn’t be able to contact me, until I got a little Irish prepaid phone for emergencies. I planned to post Facebook updates and update my travel blog when I could find an internet cafe or library so that my family knew I wasn’t dead. But I was okay with all of that. What a delicious new freedom it was to have so little safety net! I had to rely on God to take care of me and keep me from harm. I was so happy, despite the jet-lag, when I arrived early in the Irish morning. It was sunny.

Limerick

At my hotel in Limerick, the man behind the bar who served me coffee said that it had rained quite solidly with no sun in months, the wettest summer they’d had in 50 years, and that it must have had something to do with me. I knew he was teasing, but something about it struck me. To me, it was a sign that God was taking care of me here already. Even tottering around on the brick walkways in town jet-lagged, I didn’t fall, twist an ankle, or get mugged (which I later learned was a real possibility in that part of town).

Before I headed to my next stop, I needed to charge my camera because I planned to take copious amounts of pictures of everything, but the electric converter I had brought from home didn’t work. So, I set out again in seedy Limerick to find a converter. The first place I went I met Marcus, a Chilean man with an Irish accent. He was one of the first angels God sent to take care of me, even though he didn’t have any converters to sell me. Instead, he told me exactly where to go to find one, and warned me to be careful in there. Once I left, I knew what he meant, but I got what I needed and went back to show him. He made sure that it worked for me and sent me off. The kindness of people in Ireland just astounded me. I wouldn’t be as trusting of anyone in the US, but everyone I encountered truly was kind. What a gift!

Limerick was the very first place I went in my trip, and the most developed, but it held one of the most beautiful spots. I wandered onto the greenest church grounds you’ve ever seen at St. Mary’s cathedral in the evening, right before it closed. I only had time to peek inside for a moment. The stained glass, curved ceiling, and gold chandeliers made quite an impression on me. I thought quite a bit about God and what His role was in my life during this trip and in general. But He met me in the garden at St. Mary’s. I lingered on the church grounds after the doors closed. The gardens were quiet, lined with stone, and alive. The atmosphere tingled with life and the wisdom of a long history. Then I saw it. There was a quote on the wall that said, “One never feels closer to God’s heart than when in a garden.” 

Walking with God in the garden

It wasn’t just another quote, this one was different. In the spiritual sense, these words shimmered and danced. They struck me as if God was speaking these words directly to me. I paused there a while. I knew God wanted me close. He invited me to get to know His heart, and here in this moment He knew I was ready to hear that invitation. He invites you to the same, but in your own time. He will invite us all in His way that uniquely stirs our heart to find His. This experience established the Ireland trip in my mind as walking on holy ground with God. He would be teaching me as we walked. 

I later came to treasure Genesis 3:8-9, because it speaks of the holy ground I was actually on walking in the little Irish garden. “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3:8-9). This passage makes me ache knowing the longing in God’s heart. He longs to enjoy the garden with us. He wants to walk with us as we walk, to see our delight in being where we are, living the life He gave us. How often do I truly remember that His intention was always to walk alongside us? How often do I invite Him along for my walk? Finally, how often do I feel too “busy” to spend time with God in the first place?

There is something about travel that heightens awareness, that allows us to tap into something that we have numbed ourselves to in our everyday surroundings. Back then during the trip, I wrote in my journal, “I think travel is and will continue to be a great opportunity to seek God, finding Him and His love everywhere, in everything, no matter what country I happen to be in.” In Ireland, I was so nimbly able to see God’s love working. The spiritual experience that travel can be is truly amazing and worthwhile. Getting out of my comfort zone and trusting God with the trip is one of my favorite memories. I would encourage anyone to go to a country of great natural beauty and take unhurried time to talk to God and marvel at His incredible creation. 

This past spring, I was fortunate enough to go on a silent retreat to be alone with God. For the first time since that day in Ireland, I felt that same invitation from God as I was walking in the woods past the green leaves of the trees. Suddenly, I knew I was walking with God here. That wood became sacred ground. And this time, I cried tears of joy.  

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Human Goodness: Why We’re Worth It

If you’ve ever thought that you’re not worth saving, I can relate. 

There was a time not so long ago when I thought 100% that I was doomed to fail. I had examined my patterns of thought and behavior long enough to recognize I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do or even wanted to do all the time, even when I tried. I was selfish, rude, prideful, impulsive, and I couldn’t stop. I thought, 

“The way I’m made, I just naturally do wrong things, and choose ‘bad,’ so what is the point of trying to be so ‘good’ all the time? Why would we need Jesus in the first place if there is nothing about us worth redeeming?”  

Lately I’ve been learning about Christian perspectives of mental health, and I was disturbed to find that some counselors assume that humans are not good. Their perspective would have lined up with this hopeless thought; I’m so glad I didn’t know this back then! It is true that some parts of the Bible seem to teach that humans are not basically good, when read at the surface level and the context is not taken into account. The Bible isn’t shy about admitting that humanity has messed up a lot. But I want to set the record straight. The Truth is that we were made good, meaning we have goodness within us as given by God our Creator. The Bible totally backs this, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good…” (Genesis 1:31). We humans have goodness in our very beings.

We are inherently good.

To ignore this is to ignore the very essence of our humanity. Origin stories matter. Especially if you’re a fan of superheroes, we love a good origin story; “all he had made” includes humankind, male and female (Genesis 1:27). God’s intention and original purpose for us still matters today, and should not be written off as an obscure detail or overlooked because of the messes that have followed, but instead remain a powerful source of great hope. 

While we all have sin in our hearts and are not all good, the battle between the flesh and the spirit ever-waging within us, God did not make us bad. To believe that we are all bad—where is the hope in that? This is not what the Word of God teaches. The Truth is, His intention was for us to be fully capable to choose goodness, righteousness, and self-control.  

God’s intentions for all humanity were good. No matter what happened afterward, we must remember that He set humanity up in our place of origin and called us good. How amazing! Today, we are still capable of choosing good. God did not intend for us to be dead in sin, but instead to be raised in life with Jesus (Romans 6:11-12). 

Goodness is part of our origin story. 

If God had truly made us entirely “bad” (not good), He would have set us up to fail, and you would have found me today in a hopeless state still thinking my hopeless thoughts. It would have been our ultimate death sentence of doom and despair. Not only is doing that to His Creation not in His loving nature, but what would ever make us able to choose good, to choose the way of His Spirit within us, if we were inherently bad in the first place? How could anyone choose the goodness of Jesus if nothing in our being recognizes, longs for, and cries out for it?

This mirror image effect brings me to my next point, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). If we were created in God’s image as this verse says, and we know He is good (Psalm 116:12, 2 Peter 1:3), Biblical counselors, Christian psychologists, and the like need to take great care. We cannot say to anyone, especially someone seeking help with their mental health, that humans are not at all good. It’s simply untrue.

We were made in God’s image.

It is important to note here that this does not mean that we can redeem ourselves. We still cannot choose only goodness and holiness if left to our own facilities; that story is also illustrated in Genesis. We all still have sin to wrestle with, for we all have a sinful nature. We need God to overcome what is not good in us. Even so, there is still hope for us because God saw the value in us and made a Way to save us through Jesus. Jesus brings us back to the goodness we lost so that we can be found again in the family of God. Jesus acknowledged that we are worth saving by His work on the cross. Our origins in Genesis 1:31 show that we were intended for good. Our original identity, no matter what you choose thereafter, is in the family of God. 

Jesus makes a Way back to the family of God. 

Particularly for those of us who struggle with mental health, we must remember that God provides hope. The beauty of God’s intention for us and the identity of goodness He gave us need to be recognized in the field of mental health, both from Christian and secular practitioners. We all desperately need hope, particularly those who seek psychological help for disorders that perpetuate unhelpful thoughts about ourselves and our identity. Mental health practitioners cannot afford to overlook the hope found in God’s character and what He’s given each one of us. To do so actually means putting their vulnerable patients at risk.

God created us to have hope and created reason for hope.

How hopeful is it that our Creator created us in His very image of goodness! Evil could not fully erase it from us, for God and His goodness is above all things.   

Finding a source of hope that doesn’t depend on a treatment, medication, or doctor is everything. To have hope you do not have to behave a certain way or think a certain way. You simply are worth saving because God made you so, and He made you good. 

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.” -Romans 6:11-12

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