TURBULENCE

I spent several days thinking about what my grandmother had written in her notebook.  She was commenting about people and stories I’d heard of in passing as I was growing up, but I’d never heard anyone talk about them the way she did.  And not just her thoughts about Adam and Eve.  I also came across this intriguing bit concerning Noah.

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Survivor’s guilt.

There’s no way Noah didn’t suffer from it.

Doesn’t matter that he spent one hundred and twenty years warning people.

Sure, he did his part.

But I imagine that was small comfort in the wee hours of the night.

How did he deal?

The weight must’ve been unbearable at times.

No coincidence what the first thing is that we’re told about him after he gets off the ark.

He plants a vineyard, and as soon as humanly possible, he gets plastered.

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My mind kept conjuring these images of cartoon animals stuffed into a wooden ark, their heads craning out the top.  A pretty far cry from dealing with survivor’s guilt.  Where did she get this stuff, anyway?  Was she some kind of mystic or something?

Nah, that didn’t seem right.  Her thoughts weren’t “woo-woo” at all.  They were grounded.  More grounded than anything I’d ever heard anyone say about the Bible.

I continued working my way through Granny’s notebooks not even realizing I was also working my way through the Bible itself.  When I got to the Gospels, I came across some stuff that really threw me for a loop.  I knew people believed that Jesus was God and that He was crucified and supposedly came back to life.  Reading Granny’s words, though, left me completely stunned and unsure what to think.

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Heard a sermon on Sunday that did NOT sit right with me.

The pastor started waxing eloquent about the disintegration of the Trinity.

He boldly stated that in the moment Jesus quoted Psalm 22, the Trinity ceased to exist.

With absolute certainty he proclaimed that God turned His back on Jesus.

He had to because Jesus was sin and evil incarnate at that point.

And God cannot look on sin and evil.

Wow.

I truly mean no disrespect, but I’m not sure what Bible he’s been reading.

First of all, the thing about Jesus being sin and evil incarnate.

That one really made my blood boil.

I can think of only one place where he could have gotten that.

Paul said that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us.

I know it’s hard for some people to go there right away, but Paul did use a lot of metaphor.

And poetic imagery.

Jesus said He was a Vine, a Door, a Lamb…all poetic imagery.

I think Paul was just taking after his rabbi.

Literal sin incarnate?

Don’t think that’s what Paul was getting at.

And I’m sorry but nothing in the Bible can justify saying Jesus was evil incarnate.

As for God not being able to look on sin, think about it.

If He couldn’t look on sin, He’d have to stop looking at, you know, the entire world.

I know Habakkuk states that God cannot look on evil.

But here’s the thing.

He wasn’t saying that every time evil rears its ugly head, God has to turn away.

As a wise person once pointed out to me, you need to look at the parallelism in the poetry.

“Your eyes are too pure to look on evil…why do You tolerate those who deal treacherously…”

Gotta love parallelism!

And poetry!

The prophet was saying the same thing just in two different ways.

He was basically asking God why He was putting up with people who do wicked, evil things.

Not saying it was as bad as Noah’s day.

But Israel was getting up to some pretty unsavory stuff.

And God didn’t seem to be lifting a finger to do anything about it.

Which led to Habakkuk crying out to God in frustration and confusion and anger.

Speaking of crying out to God…

Psalm 22.

I’ve done a whole lot of thinking and studying and meditating about that one.

Definitely jumped on the Psalm 22 train in the past.

Even taught that Jesus had the whole psalm in mind.

Suffering and lament give way to triumphant victory!

Except, yeah, now I’m not so sure.

Can I say for sure that Jesus intended for people to think of the whole psalm?

I cannot.

Nor, for that matter, can anyone else.

Here’s what I can say.

Jesus was every atom a human being.

And no, I don’t think He became sin incarnate.

But I do believe the entire weight of sin and evil came crashing down on His head.

With every ounce of brutality, maliciousness, cruelty, contempt, and loathing it possibly could.

And the Father on whom Jesus depended for His very breath WOULD NOT COMFORT HIM.

Certainly not because He didn’t care.

Definitely not because He couldn’t look upon evil.

Because if the sacrifice was to accomplish what it needed to, Jesus need to feel it ALL.

Every single scrap of excruciating agony.

Every nightmare of suffering.

Everything that human beings throughout time have ever felt when enduring the abuse of evil.

He had to be plunged into the blackest abyss without the comfort of God.

Anything less and His sacrifice would have been rendered meaningless.

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I really couldn’t wrap my mind around what my grandmother was saying.  Jesus was a baby in a manger.  He was a spouter of moral directives.  He was maybe even a good guy, but all this?  My brain rebelled.

What in the world were you hoping for, Granny?  That I’d have this brilliant flash of revelation and suddenly fall head over heels for this Jesus character?  Yeah, nice try.

The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed.  She wanted to win me over to her side and tell my mother to take a flying leap.  Well, I was coming close to saying just that to my mother, but certainly not for the sake of Granny’s religion.

I became increasingly agitated and infuriated.

Who do you think you are?!  Who do you think I am, some wimpy sop who can be swayed by some nonsense — albeit well-written nonsense — you penned decades ago?

Okay, I had no idea when she actually wrote what she did, but I wasn’t in a very rational frame of mind at the moment.  All I could feel was the fury.

And why, if this was so all-fire important to you, why didn’t you say anything to me when you were still alive???  I know, I know.  My mother.

My rage shifted to my mother and things went downhill very far and very fast.

A few hours and half a box of tissues later, I picked up Granny’s notebook that I’d savagely flung across the room.  Some of the pages had been partially torn out.  A flood of guilt and remorse washed over me and I spent the next half hour trying to tape the thing back together.  When I had done the best I could, I laid it gently back in its box.  A tear splashed on the cover.

I’m sorry, Granny.  I…I just can’t.  I’m sorry.