Getting to Gold: Separated

Tragedy strikes.  Darkness falls.  The Garden Door is nudged open, the apple is eaten, and Paradise is lost.  The Golden City lies empty.

         

The genealogy of every scar and sorrow can be traced back to this moment.  A choice was given: remain close or walk away.  When mankind walked away from God, as when Terrance walked away from Ahavi, the weight of His mighty heartbreak bled down from generation to generation.  We bear the consequences of it, even now.

         

“And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)

         

“And God said, “Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? The man said, “The woman you put here with me - she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”

(Genesis 3:11-12)

         

“Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12)

         

“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard”

(Romans 3:23)

         

Much has been made of the word “sin”.  It conjures up thoughts of shameful deeds, of murder and adultery, greed and rebellion.  Some of us have felt the humiliation of wagging fingers, the label “sinner” burning us like a fiery brand; some of us know we are the ones who have pointed the finger and condemned with the scarlet letter.   

Some claim to be above it, others wink at it or recklessly revel in the thrill of it.  It is both the stench in the nostrils of the righteous and the cloak of the heroic rebel thumbing his nose at stiff-necked puritans hell-bent on squelching every attempt at fun.

         

Sin, simply put, is a deliberate refusal of God’s design for our lives.  It is the wickweed that creeps in, seemingly harmless at first, but, left alone, will choke the lifeblood out of us.  

None of us is immune.

         

I found out recently that I have a killer personality. Literally. I took a personality test−you know the kind.  You're asked if you’d rather be a goat farmer or a hot air balloon maintenance worker and the results somehow pinpoint precisely how you act at parties and conclude awkward phone conversations. At first, I was pleased with the outcome: I am primarily self-directed, prefer creative freedom to strict structural guidelines, and am readily adaptable to changing conditions…no real surprises there. Then I met with the consultant.

         

The purpose of meeting was to discuss how to use my strengths and weaknesses in my everyday life and career. The test indicated which career I was best suited for, and with more than a bit of self-satisfaction, I discovered that I should have gone to law school.  Apparently, I'm built to be an attorney. When I pointed this out to the consultant, he laughed and said, “What they don’t tell you, is that same score indicates your aptitude for becoming a career criminal.”

         

Lawyer jokes aside, that was a bit disheartening. More than a bit, actually. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more indignant I got. A criminal personality? Me? No way! At least I was mildly comforted by the fact that my high score revealed I would have a fair amount of success at a life of felony–no light criminal hobbies for me. I could make a career out of being a villain.

         

I shrugged it off and forgot about it. Or tried to. Unfortunately, that little fugitive flaw of mine shows itself more frequently than I thought. Being 'self-directed' slides easily into being self-centered; having 'creative freedom' means I go around people and boundaries to get what I want, and 'readily adaptable'? That just means I’m good at it.

         

On the whole (before this delinquent discovery) I generally felt pretty good about my surface self–I try to be nice (because it’s nice to be nice), I try to give people what they need, and try not to complain when they don’t do the same for me. I do everything I can to act like a good person.

         

The problem is that I’m not.  

I’ve always known my shady little secret. I just hoped that hiding it would make it go away. How could I have known that innocuous questions about goat farmers would have brought it out into the open?

         

Once my 'under-the-surface self' stood blinking in the light, I was horrified. Bitterness, anger, malicious motives, and selfish self-centered self-righteousness clung to her like putrid rags–and that was just this week.

         

Do you know how I feel? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you never have those days when you’re just sick of being you, suffocated by all your secret weaknesses and failures. I don’t know. I suspect we each have an 'under-the-surface self', tucked away behind smiles and right answers and 'being good'. If we’re honest, we’re all criminals, con artists to the core−defacing the reputation of others with snide comments, stabbing the truth with lies, raping the purity of an unselfish motive.

         

The thing I’m trying to prevent us all from saying is that overused breezy cliché: “I’m a good person”. What we actually mean is that we think we’re better people than others we know. Being better than someone else (by our own estimation) doesn’t make us good people by default. It just makes us better actors.

         

The truth is, we all know sin better than we want to admit.  We know the thrill of it it; we know the aftertaste of sting and shame.  It burrows through us, creating the pockets of emptiness we futilely try to ignore; it warps us, bending us in ways we weren’t meant to be, leaving us with limping hearts and souls scarred by a river of tears we should have never known. Worst of all, it separates us from the One who has treasured us more than any other being in existence.

         

We are as separated from God by our sin as Terrance and the Mud Men were separated from Ahavi by wickweed.  Terrance lost his inheritance of the Golden City just as Adam and Eve lost their places as King and Queen of paradise.  Isaiah, a Jewish prophet, lays out the bitter truth:

         

“Your sins have separated you from your God.” (Isaiah 59:2)

         

Very few things break us like separation.  

The crippling sting of death, the shredding of emotions by divorce, the heartbreak of any severed relationship−the singular agony of each is rooted in separation from those we love.

         

The more beautiful the relationship, the more painful the tearing apart of two once-bonded hearts.  Sweet memories of laughter and love run sour through our veins as we face the dreaded reality of never tasting those moments again.  The greater the love shared, the deeper the nostalgic pangs of longing to relive those memories.

         

We have all been separated from someone important to us at one time or another in our lives.  Perhaps separation was our choice, perhaps it was thrust upon us.  No matter who or what is to blame, it never fades without leaving a gash, a silent steady hole that no other can fill.  The Albanians have a great phrase that sums it up.  When they miss someone they say, “Po ndej mungesen tende”−“I feel your absence”.  How many times has your heart felt the absence of someone you dearly loved? 

         

Four months ago I took a trip with five friends.  Our friendships had been building for several years; we had lived in the same town and jostled within the same social spheres.  We had collected many memories between us, and the bonds we shared were as unique as our own personal quirks and personalities.  We went abroad to visit other friends dear to us in a place we had long loved, and although the trip was short, I clung to each moment.  I knew that when it was over, we would head in six different directions, beginning six separate lives with six sets of new friends.  What we had known for five years would end, never to be re-visited in the same way again.

         

As I sit alone now, tangled in all the implications of my new life, the absence of my friends still sometimes causes the knees of my heart to buckle.  Our trip revealed more qualities to miss about them, birthed more memories we would mourn the impossibility of reliving. The sweetness of those days makes the bitterness of our separation even more stringent.

         

God knows this pain on a greater scale than we can even imagine.

         

He remembers our moments together on the stone table; He fashioned our frame and willed us into existence.  He knows well every quality worth missing about us−He placed it there.  And perhaps, like Ahavi, as He ran His fingers through the strands of our hair, He just happened to count them.

  

We were purposely designed to love and be loved by a Being who said,

"How gladly would I treat you like sons and give you a desirable land, 
the most beautiful inheritance of any nation. I thought you would call Me 'Father' 
and not turn away from following Me... (Jeremiah 3:19)

         

How did we arrive in this state that breaks God’s heart and leaves us scarred?

         

Just as Ahavi’s allergy to wickweed makes it impossible for the Mud Men to come near to him, our sin makes it impossible for us to encroach on the perfection of God.

         

“Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
 He is the Rock, His works are perfect, 
and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, 
upright and just is He” (Deuteronomy 32:3-4)
         

“...You were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior” (Colossians 1:21)

         

Ahavi's separation from the Mud Men was caused by an allergy, but our separation from God comes from an impossibility rooted in the laws of physics.  A room is dark, not because of the presence of darkness, but because of an absence of light.  A space is cold, not because of the presence of cold, but because of the absence of heat.  Heat and cold, just as light and darkness, cannot occupy the same space because one only exists in the absence of the other. If sin is the absence of God's presence then it, therefore, cannot possibly exist in any place where God is. 

So, just as God's presence means life, His absence means death.

         

“For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)         

“Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.  You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.  All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.”  (Ephesians 2:1-3)

         

We are not only separated from God and dead in our sin, we are also slaves to it:

         

“Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin”

(John 8:34)         

“But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin...” (Galatians 3:22)         

“When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!” (Romans 6:20-21)         

Where does sin come from?  

Surprisingly, it was born out of the rallying cry of mankind.   More men and women have fought and died for it than any other cause in history.  It is our highest standard, our deepest right.  It is the very soil this country was seeded in and founded upon:  Freedom. 

         

We feel entitled to freedom; we want to make our own decisions, to set the course of our own lives.  We stubbornly hold that our mistakes are ours to make, our successes ours to determine.

         

Contrary to popular belief, freedom is one of God’s greatest priorities. 

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.”

(Psalm 119:32)         

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.”  (Galatians 5:1)         

“You, my brothers were called to be free.”  (Galatians 5:13)     

Freedom is important because without it, love could not exist. The Grand Plan has always been for us to know and experience love.  Ahavi placed a door to the forbidden garden in the Golden City; God placed the forbidden tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden.  Why?  Because they loved, and they valued the freedom of the objects of their love.  They knew neither we nor the Mud Men could love without it.  Ahavi explains: 

“Love–real love, love worth living and dying for–cannot be forced. Real love is rooted in freedom. If it was impossible for Terrance to leave my company or the Golden City then he never truly belonged, to the City or to me. You cannot love something unless you have the option not to love it. If I kept him in a cage, he would be a pet, and a miserable one at that. I never intended for Terrance to be miserable."

We are not pets.  We are not robots.  We are not fated to a destiny we are powerless to avoid.  We are free to love or not to love.  Would you want to go on a date with someone who lost a bet and was forced to spend time with you?  God doesn’t either.  Obligation cannot birth love.  Obedience and submission−yes.  Love?  Never.  Allowing us the freedom to reject Him was a risky move on God’s part.  Ahavi demonstrates why the risk was necessary:

“Love has been the greatest experience of your life–it is the greatest experience of my life. Why would I create a being capable of anything less? If Terrance could not love, it would have been cruel to give him life–what else is life for?” 

Life is for love, and love is, without a doubt, one of God’s greatest priorities.  He proclaims His own attributes to Moses in terms that would seem arrogant if they were not true:     

“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands...”

(Exodus 34:6-7) 

 Repeatedly (eight times), the words of the Bible describe God as abounding in love; He does not simply posses it, it appears to posses Him.  He chooses to love us−He is neither forced nor obligated.  And neither are we.