Separation Anxiety
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been taught or heard the phrase that “sin separates us from God” ?
Yeah me too.
Like many other things, I was also told how to understand this saying.
It was explained to me that God is so holy and good that when we screw up, which we all do, he can’t be around us. Like bubble boy and germs or a snowman and the sun, I was told that God can’t be around sin in any shape or form.
And I was told, because God can’t be in the presence of sin, we have this big separation between us and God.
And here’s where I have to be honest. I don’t believe that. I was taught that, like I was taught to count but honestly, I don’t buy it.
If I’m honest, this is what I think…
Our brokenness is NOT a magical kryptonite that repels God and drives God away. Our brokenness separate US from God. It doesn’t separate God from us. God is still right here. Our brokenness does nothing TO God (other than perhaps sadden him), it does a whole lot to US.
In the beginning of the Bible we’re given this story of Adam and Eve, and what happened when they disobeyed.
Perhaps if we wrote the story now we would say that God saw them sin from afar, up in the clouds and said to himself, that’s it, now they’ve done it. I can’t walk with them in the garden anymore, I can’t talk to them, they’ve dirtied them self with sin and I’m all holy and clean and pure and now they’ll make me dirty, so now I can’t walk with them…
But that’s not the story we have.
We are told the opposite. The story goes that God still showed up in the garden, he still wanted to walk and talk and hang out with them..
But ADAM AND EVE HAD CHANGED. Their guilt did something to them, that caused them to hide from God. God still showed up.
As most of us know, when we harbor anger, un-forgiveness, bitterness, resentment and so on - it doesn’t do anything to the person you haven’t forgiven, it hurts you and does something to you. It keeps you awake at night, not them.
In the same way, our evil, our guilt, it didn’t repel God like kryptonite, it damaged us and our ability to really see God and connect with him, as individuals and as communities.
God still shows up in the garden, while we hide in the bushes.
Mankind choses to live in broken, unloving, selfish ways all the time, but God still shows up and establishes relationships with us, with Noah, with Abraham and the Israelites. They were just as messed up as ever, but God entered into our brokenness to show us a different way to be.
When David, who was called “a man after Gods own heart”, saw his neighbor's wife bathing, and liked what he saw, and had an affair with her and then got her husband killed - God didn’t wash his hands of David.
God didn’t write him off because of his brokenness, he stepped into the situation and sent another man to talk to him and tell him the grave reality and repercussions of what he’d done.
And David repented. (Just read Psalm 51)
Centuries before, when Moses let his rage at injustice overpower him and murdered an Egyptian who was beating a slave. God didn’t give up on him. God did not separate himself from Moses. God showed up in the most random of places, a burning bush and reached out to him.
At a different time, a man called Elijah freaked out when he got a death threat from the Queen, and ran away, depressed, giving up on his goals and begging God to let him die. And God, did not give up or separate himself from him. He showed up, not with an angry voice, a roaring wind or consuming fire, but with a gentle calm whisper.
Once you start looking, there are countless examples of God showing up where we’ve messed up and offering help. Not separating and quarantining himself from us and our messiness, but entering into it.
The ultimate way God stepped down into our brokenness is by taking on humanness as Jesus.
Our brokenness and our mess has separated us from God and his way of being, and so God came to us in the most tangible, humble, human way possible. As Jesus.
Soon after, around 56AD a guy named Paul wrote to a community in Rome saying;
I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created.
Nothing can separate us from God’s love…
God came as Jesus “to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed”.
We had made a mess of things and so God came down and became one of us to show us the way. Jesus came and showed us how to live. But people were threatened by him. People betrayed him. People crucified him.
God came with a good news of merciful, selfless love, and then we responded by killing him.
Paul wrote about this to a community in Philipi saying;
Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings.
When he found himself in the form of a human, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
As a man, Jesus showed us God’s message and life of love and forgiveness even up to the point of torture and death.
Rather than replying to our vengeance and violence in kind, Jesus lives out his own message of love by forgiving us for his murder.
We’re told by an author around 80AD that;
This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into, the kind of life Jesus lived. He suffered everything that came his way so you would know that it could be done, and also know how to do it, step-by-step. He never did one thing wrong, Not once did he say anything deceptive. When he was insulted, he did not reply with insults. When he suffered, he did not threaten revenge. Instead, he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. . He carried our sins in his body on the Cross so we could be rid of sin, free to live the right way. His wounds became your healing.
When people hated him, betrayed him, tortured him and nailed Jesus to the cross to die he said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t understand what they’re doing."
That day God showed us his true character.
He showed us that when things get messy, and dirty and painful and broken, he does not separate himself from us. He does not surround himself in a bubble of protection. He enters into our mess and he faces our hate, and he neutralizes and conquers our violence and sin with his perfect love, mercy and forgiveness.
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- tiffanyjane-blog posted this