Roots of Bitterness - 5

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us..., fixing our eyes on Jesus, .... For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. (Hebrews 12:1-4)

With so much attention drawn to Jesus and His life in this passage it seems unavoidable that this reference to resistance to the point of shedding blood has some connection with the torture and death of Jesus. But I am still trying to comprehend just how I am to correctly correlate that to my own life.

Is Paul really saying that it is our destiny as a Christian to repeat the shedding of blood like Jesus endured? And just what is meant by the word “sin” that is he talking about here that we are supposed to be resisting – if the assumption is drawn from these words that that is what we are supposed to be doing at all? How does this relate to the words of Jesus, But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:39-42) How much difference is there between resisting an evil person and resisting sin? External vs. internal?

It looks to me like there is a lot of attention here directing us as to where to focus our attention. Even though we are living in the context of this great cloud of witnesses we are not told to focus on them, we are to fix our eyes on Jesus. Then almost immediately again we are told to consider Him... so that we will not grow weary and lose heart. That seems to be the main thrust of the background for this verse about resisting and shedding blood. It seems to me that understanding our focus properly will shed light on the real intent of these words. They must be viewed in context of the intent of the verses before and after.

I have to be careful to not get carried away in trying to figure this out with my head more than my heart. It is so easy to get on a roll here and forget that my heart is not keeping up and may be starting to see something very different than the logical assumptions that naturally result from intellectual analysis. I need to stop and allow my spirit to listen both to my heart and for promptings that may be coming from God's Spirit. I must avoid the tyranny of the urgent. I am on no schedule to cover so much in a certain amount of time. I am here to hear, to interact with God's Spirit and to grow in knowledge of Him and His ways. I must always keep that in priority above my pursuit of “answers”.

I sense that maybe the application of this verse may very well be duel and may potentially seem to be contradictory. I believe that we often get our thinking into a small box unnecessarily sometimes by insisting on coming up with only one interpretation for a prophecy or text when God's word is much more versatile than we care to allow.

Following my original hunch that this may be highlighting a contrast between the legalism that he has been addressing throughout the book up to this point and a family-style connection within the body of Christ that he has been introducing, I think this is reinforced by the next verse drawing attention to our true position from God's viewpoint. We are to see ourselves as sons and daughters of God, not independent humans trying to impress or appease a King from a slavish mentality. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you. (Hebrews 12:5 NIV)

These key words remind me to focus very much on Jesus and remember that I am a son of God in favor with Him. This is the paradigm that I need to properly relate to experiences that seem painful or unexplainable. That is one of the messages that I am getting in the following verses.

And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children-- "My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts." Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children. Moreover, we had human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:5-11 NRSV)

As I read this passage in various versions I cannot avoid my discomfort with the conflict between what I have been learning about the character of God over the past few years and this picture of a God who punishes and chastises. I know there are many who would be quick to point out that everything I have been learning is bogus because this text discounts it all. But I simply do not buy that line, not because I want to twist this passage to fit my preconceived ideas but because I believe that I must better understand the bigger picture and strive to understand how certain passages like this that on the surface seem contradictory may actually enhance the beauty and truth about God when properly explained.

I realize that most of my discomfort with this passage is due to the distorted experiences of discipline and punishment embedded in my mind, like many others, through the abuses of these concepts while I was growing up. When parents and authority figures justify their infliction of pain on a child, especially when done with any degree of anger, excusing their abuse as discipline or punishment when in fact it is really their own baggage and unresolved pain being passed on to another generation, it becomes very hard if not impossible for that child to have a proper concept of what constitutes legitimate discipline.

These children grow up believing that God, like their earthly abusers, has a lot of unresolved anger that He occasionally vents upon His children just like the angry parent that unknowingly misrepresented God earlier in their life. That person forms a very fear-bonded concept of God in their heart and belief system that poisons their experience and prevents them from being able to really believe the rumors about God's love for them that may come around. What they have experienced in abusive situations far outweighs any theological riff-raff about a loving God who is humble and gentle and loving. In their heart they are always waiting for that God to unexpectedly lash out at them if He happens to get offended by some mistake or misstep by His children.

Those are the feelings that stir around inside of me uncomfortably when I read this passage and at that point I have to listen more to my left brain logic that has assembled some counteractive knowledge over the recent years to sustain a better view of God than parts of my heart feel like believing. I do want to know what God has to say to me in this passage, but I also want to be careful not to allow a myriad of false assumptions to influence the real meaning of this text. What may seem to be obvious due to my own background may in fact be quite misleading due to false pictures of God from my own early experiences and those around me. I must be careful to bring to bear on every passage the overarching truths about God that are needed as filters to interpret other areas that seem to present an opposite view.

I have been led for a number of years now by the Spirit of God to begin to see Him as being a consistent God of love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness. That is not to say He excuses or overlooks sin as some would assume or accuse me of believing whenever this assertion is put forward. But I have come to believe that God's mercy is so strong and His love is so passionate that if we were exposed to its full intensity with the lies we presently still have about Him in our hearts that it would destroy us. In light of this revelation about the danger of exposure to the intensity of God, I believe that I might be able to better understand these references to discipline and chastening. I need to consider these words in the context of the truth about God as He has already been showing me over the past few years, not from a context of twisted, human uses of these terms.

My whole reason for immersing myself in this chapter is to uncover the truth about bitterness and the roots that create it. This section about discipline and punishment is a major source of bitterness that I suspect is still affecting my life in ways I am not even aware of. Therefore it is important for me to hear clearly whatever it is that God wants to reveal to my mind and heart about this issue. I want Him to uproot all the roots, even the little tendrils connected to any of those roots, to that they will never spring up again and spread their deadly poison.

I want to have a clearer picture of God as a Father whom I can trust implicitly without fear. That is going to have to be a major shift of perception of fatherhood for my heart that has known mostly fear, apprehension and resentment toward one labeled as father. Yes, my father did the best he knew how and I want to be quick to honor and admire him for that. I too, followed in the same path of mistaken ideas about fatherhood and produced similar results in my own children. But somewhere this pattern of messed up lives and screwed up perceptions has to come to an end and the real truth, the glory of the real Father must come into view and transform and heal all of us and our brokenness.

God, show me the truths that I need to see in this passage. Bring me the healing truth for my heart that You want me to see here. Address my fears and false ideas about discipline and punishment and chastening. I don't want to just paste together a plausible-sounding explanation of these verses, I want to know the real truth about You and discover a much more powerful, transcendent and uplifting picture of what a real Father is from this passage. I want to see things as I have never seen them before. I want to see the consistency of Your character and Your word as I meditate on this chapter. Reveal the roots that continue to poison my life and relationships and deal with them in healing and restoration to wholeness. I suspect that it might involve some discipline and chastening to the extent that I mistakenly resist Your grace. But continue the work You started in me and made more plain 37 years ago this morning. I commit myself to rest in the peace of being Your son and all that that implies for our relationship.

(next in series)

Roots of Bitterness - 4

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; (Hebrews 12:3-4)

I am struggling with this phrase, not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. I am praying for insight and wisdom from God because I don't think I am capable of just figuring out an acceptable explanation for this.

I now remember that I am in Hebrews and that this book talks quite a bit about the shedding of blood and the whole Old Testament system in contrast to the real system that God is trying to reveal to us. So I look back a few pages to see what I can find to shed light on this verse.

After saying above, "SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them" (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, "BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL." He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:8-10)

And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. (Hebrews 9:22)

It is not real clear to me yet but it seems that this verse may have something to do with shifting my thinking away from viewing my life through the paradigm of Law and seeing life through the paradigm of being in Christ and in relationship with God. Now that I think of it that way it would make sense that possibly all bitterness is rooted in having the paradigm of Law and legal perceptions rather than God-based relationships with a proper perspective of reality and my value in God's eyes.

If Jesus had for a moment based His perception of His own value on legal thinking, the hostility by sinners against Him would have exploited instantly the weakening effects of that faulty logic and would have created an opportunity for bitterness that would have taken Him down. As I am learning elsewhere, the whole system of Law, of sacrifices and blood and appeasement, etc. that humans insist on believing in in relation to God is basically erroneous and man-made – or at least man-appeasing. But because we cannot think outside of that box, God sent His Son into our system to go through our requirements and satisfy our demand for the shedding of blood according to our perception of justice under the artificial concept of law from our perspective – He did all of this, not to satisfy God's thirst for satiating blood but for our thirst to see someone pay for sin.

But He did not do all that He did for us just to leave us to continue wallowing around in our misconceptions about law and justice and reality. He did all of that to draw us away from that self-destructive mode of thinking and into a whole new paradigm of reality where love and mercy and wholeness and joy make up the atmosphere in which to think and to live and to reason. He did all that to unlock our hearts by satisfying the demands of our view of justice so that we could then move beyond our messed up perception of reality and allow Him to reveal to us the real truth about Himself and His love for us.

How does this fit into an understanding of this verse, You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. I think there might be a number of ways to apply these words, but I am not satisfied with many of them. I think there is a great deal more to be seen here than what we typically have drawn from it. It seems to be saying something about shifting our focus from striving against sin to considering Him instead. If our life focus is all about striving against sin we will be stuck in the legal mode of thinking and that will inevitably result in conclusions that include the need for someone to shed blood, even if it is ourselves.

I know this sounds like a twisting of a text that has long been used to prove the very opposite point. I am not saying that I am completely right or wrong here, but I have to consider this and listen to the Spirit closely on this to see if maybe our preconceptions and assumptions held for so many years may have at least blocked our perception of something much deeper if not outright misled us. Because the usual take that we have on this verse in my opinion has always resulted in greater human effort to resist sin on our part even to the point of shedding our own blood – as if the shedding of the blood of the Son of God was not enough for us. Something is seriously faulty about that kind of reasoning.

The following verses very clearly build on these past two and I do not yet know how it all fits together. I want the Spirit to continue to teach me what I need to know and see here because I want to be free of the roots of bitterness that have poisoned my life, my family and my church for far too long.

Next time I will take a closer look at the next phase and apparently Paul's choice of direction to go to answer the questions raised in these verses. He says, and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, "MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM. (Hebrews 12:5)

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Flogging God's Sons

O.K. I am running into a problem here. I just got done going over Romans 12:2 that says I should not be squeezed into the world's mold and now I read in Hebrews 12:6 that God whips His legitimate sons as part of their training. That sure sounds like the use of force to me when I have come to firmly believe that God does not use force to get His way. What is going on here? This is another good case of asking God to explain Himself.

I do notice that the word for whipping or flogging only occurs once in this passage and all the other references to discipline have much more to do with training than with imposition of punishment. That is some consolation but it still leaves a big question in my mind.

Whatever all this means it is obvious in later verses that its full intention is so that we may share in His holiness and it produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness. This is the context in which this issue must be resolved.

But is flogging ever an effective means of bringing a person into a state of sharing God's holiness? I can't accept that this condones all the legalistic, sadistic religious abuse and distorted notions about God perpetrated for centuries by advocates of force and false systems of authority. But it certainly makes it too easy to do just that. What is going on here?

There is another option that seems to make more sense. It is the same issue as our struggle to understand the God of the Old Testament and all the apparent contradictions we think are there in our picture of God. Much is attributed to God that is in fact a natural result of consequences that we bring onto ourselves by throwing off the protection of God. If these floggings come under the same category as the apparent punishments of the Old Testament then this would make a lot more sense.