Why did Jesus have to die for our sins?
Speaking of Steve G., I am delighted to share this guest post that he wrote. Click here to see all of his posts.
Early in my Christian journey, I often struggled with understanding why Christ had to die for our sins. This was something that believers would say to me that I had a very difficult time grasping, and when pressed, they often had a difficult time answering.
“What does that mean exactly?” I would ask. “Why did He need to die for my sins? I mean it sounds great that He loves me so much that He’d be willing to give His life, but why exactly was that necessary?”
Over the years, as I began to come to terms with the damage my own sin caused in the world, in my relationships, and in myself, I slowly came to an intuitive understanding of why some way of repairing the damage of my misdeeds needed to exist. But to be honest, I still didn’t understand very well why Christ needed to die to do this. His death and resurrection certainly seemed the ultimate example of total self-donation, but I still did not grasp at more than surface level “how” it repaired, or began to repair, the damage done.
Recently, I think I’ve begun to understand this a bit better. It started with a homily I heard in which the priest was discussing the story of the fall. What he focused on in particular was the intimacy of the relationship between God and Adam & Eve in the garden. He pointed out how they walked and talked together in the garden in friendship with one another.
This got me thinking. When we rightly see this relationship as it is, rather than terms of the master/slave mentality we all fall into sometimes, maybe we can begin to understand their sin for what it really was. It was a betrayal. Adam and Eve betrayed God and were unfaithful to the relationship they had with Him.
When one is betrayed, only the betrayed person can actually forgive, and reconcile with the other. The betrayer may be heartily sorry, may be committed to never betraying again, but unless forgiveness is extended from the betrayed, a reconciliation cannot happen. Only the offended party can truly repair the breach.
The closest analogy I can think of is marital infidelity. Indeed the Old Testament is rife with the language of Israel’s sin as being infidelity to God, so it seems a fitting analogy.
In this case, the offended spouse must give up something in order for reconciliation to be possible. That something is a bit of themselves. They must give up their justified hurt and anger. They must die a bit to themselves by once again exposing themselves to the other in a way that might just end up with them being hurt again. They must make themselves vulnerable and put their heart in their betrayer’s hands.
This is, I imagine, exceedingly difficult, and requires a level of selflessness that is astounding. To give one’s self again to the one who has betrayed you. That is real selflessness. That is a sacrifice of a part of one’s self.
And the worse the betrayal, the larger the rupture in the relationship, the larger the sacrifice must consequently be.
So, in the fall we have the ultimate rupture, the ultimate betrayal. It is the betrayal of the creator, by the created. It is the betrayal of the very source of life and love. It is the betrayal of the most fundamental relationship in the life of man.
How can such a betrayal be reconciled? I can imagine only one way which makes sense. The betrayed in this case must be willing to make the ultimate act of self denial. The ultimate act is to give our entire selves, our very life, in service of repairing the breach that has been made by the betrayer.
And so maybe we can begin to see the need for the crucifixion.
This is the act of God putting Himself entirely in the hands of those who betrayed (and continue to betray) Him. It is God utterly dying to Himself in order to forgive, to reconcile and to heal the breach made by that betrayal. It is God putting Himself in our hands again knowing full well that we may (will) betray Him again.
This is probably kid’s stuff to those who’ve been at the spiritual life for a while, but it was helpful to me in gaining a deeper understanding of His sacrifice, and so I share it in hopes it might be helpful to someone else.
Making room for prayer (literally)
Sometime last year I became familiar with the concept of creating a special space for prayer within your home, either a prayer corner or perhaps a prayer closet. I read multiple accounts of people who created such a space, and all unanimously agreed that it not only transformed their prayer lives but turned their houses into “domestic churches.”
I knew that regular commenter and occasional guest blogger Steve G. had such a space, so I asked him about it. He sent me the following thoughts along with a picture of the prayer closet he created for his family:
The prayer closet is a good sized closet in our home that I have totally emptied, and turned into a sacred space. I have a crucifix, and several icons, holy water, candles, and several shelves at different levels, a prayer ‘rug’ on the floor, my prayer list, the Bible, and all the prayer books I could want. And as I pray I face east, which is (and this was something new I learned) the tradition of Christianity from time immemorial. This idea of a specific sacred space carved out of the home (it can be a prayer closet or a prayer corner) was the major element I took from the excellent Earthen Vessels book that my spiritual director gave me.
I really can’t emphasize the impact that ‘space’ has had on me. That little sacred room calls to me. I’ve found myself, in the middle of the storm (maybe when I am caring for all three kids by myself and they are not listening, and I have no more patience), withdrawing (more like running) to that little room for five minutes to beg for help…and of course getting it. That sacred space in the home (which also historically has been the tradition in most Christian homes) has been the big piece that I think was missing in all my previous attempts. It may not seem like a big deal, but it has had a profound impact.
And I’ll only briefly mention how this space draws the little ones: one of my joys was sitting outside that closet while oldest son took his little sister in there, and closed the door to show her how to pray. To hear him gently showing her (at 2) how to make the sign of the cross. To hear our middle son request that we say night prayers ‘in the prayer closet.’ I hate to keep going on and on, but I cannot emphasize enough the benefits of having this little ‘sanctuary’ in our home set aside for building up all of our prayer lives.
Sold! I knew that this was something I wanted to do as well, but wanted to wait until I felt “called” to do it (since it would be just like me to fixate on creating a prayer closet to the exclusion of actually praying). It’s been more than a year since I first began praying/thinking about this, and I recently got the message: Now is the time.
The problem is, there’s no obvious place for a prayer closet or corner in my home. So I wanted to ask you guys:
Do any of you have a special place for prayer set aside in your homes? Any tips for getting creative to carve out a space like this in a bustling household?
On being loved: A thought on spiritual dry spells
A while back fellow convert, regular commenter and occasional guest blogger Steve G. emailed me with some thoughts on a long period of darkness that he experienced. His reflection was so interesting and thought-provoking that I just couldn’t keep it to myself, so I asked if I could share it here. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Steve G., I highly recommend checking out some of his other writing here.) Here is what he wrote:
It’s amazing, but the darkness that I have been under for at least half a year now suddenly and nearly miraculously has begun to lift. It’s in part contributable to just getting healthy, finally getting some decent sleep with the relief of the sleep apnea, having lost 30 pounds, and that kind of stuff. But the real turning point came just within the last week, and I thought I’d share it with you briefly in case it’s any help:
Firstly, the fertile soil of it was laid down by the fact that I’ve finally again (after several years of slacking) begun to attend the daily noon Mass, across the street from where I work, for the last month or so. The gift of the Eucharist has been a great consolation of late.
Anyway, as I’ve been struggling through that darkness, I’ve been as faithful as ever (more if I am honest) in prayer, spiritual direction, and spiritual reading. As I said earlier, this period has really driven me into the arms of Jesus on all those fronts. But one morning as I was reading another small section of Pope Benedict’s book Jesus of Nazareth, and I stumbled on this little passage:
“Man lives on truth and on being loved: on being loved by the truth.”
This seemingly simple passage gave me a real jolt. It came from the fact that it immediately changed my perspective of the relationship with God on its head. We (I at least) are constantly so focused on our part in the relationship — Am I praying enough?, Am I praying correctly?, Am I doing enough?, Am I good enough?, Are my thoughts on God and his presence (or seeming lack)?, and so on. Everything we view is from our perspective and how we feel about and view Him and the relationship. It can be downright self-centered if I can accuse myself.
This passage forced me for a moment to think about the fact that He loves me (vs. how I feel about Him). That really, He is the motive force in the relationship, not I. Pope Benedict says, peace only comes from being loved. And of course it is in that being loved by the source of all love, that we then love Him and others in return. But again, it is HIS love for us that is driver here, not our efforts.
How often do we think about that? How often do recall how much we are really loved?
I know that I occasionally say it (He died for me, He gave himself up for me, etc.), but do I really ponder that and what it means? I know that I don’t do so nearly enough, if at all.
To stop and ponder that, and to try to keep it in mind first (even before my own feelings and actions if possible) was a real wake up call. If He who IS, truly loves me, what should I fear? Why should I not trust? Why should I be anything other than at peace? If He truly loves me, and I believe it, He holds me in the palm of His hand, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well…regardless of what comes.
This perspective has begun to bring me great peace of mind.
I know that the living out of this still is the challenge, but for what it’s worth, this has really been helpful for me to keep in mind. His love for me, for us, rather than focusing so much on myself and my own love for Him. If I can live within the former, the later takes care of itself.
Looking for the tow truck driver
Coming from atheism, the whole concept of there being a personal God who is somehow involved in all that we do was amazing…and intimidating…and confusing. As anyone who has read my 2007 archives knows, for many months I was fascinated with the concept of knowing exactly what God’s plans were for all the little details of my life. I looked everywhere for signs: did my invitation to a friend’s wedding get lost in the mail because I wasn’t supposed to go? Did my computer crash while writing for my blog because God didn’t want me to publish that post? Did all the difficulty we had getting to church mean that we should switch parishes? I wanted all the answers NOW, and wanted the world around me to act as a sort of spiritual Ouija board in which God gave me clear Yes’s and No’s when I asked him questions (that way there’d be no uncertainty and I wouldn’t have to mess around with that sticky “childlike trust” thing).
At some point I realized that, unless being a Christian was supposed to make you neurotic, I was probably doing it wrong. So I emailed regular commenter Steve G. and asked him for advice. The details of my question and his answer are here (I highly recommend that you read the whole thing), but the summary is this: I offered him a hypothetical situation in which my car breaks down on the way to an important meeting, and asked how to know the mind of God based on that situation. How do I know if God means the car breaking down to be a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down about the subject matter of my meeting? Or could it be that God is trying to tell me something about my relationship with the person I was planning to meet? Steve G.’s response was not what I expected, not what I was looking for, and not what I wanted. But it was a profound insight, and it changed the way I saw the world. In summary, his answer was:
Maybe it’s not about you at all. Maybe it’s about the tow truck driver.
He countered with a hypothetical situation in which there is a tow truck driver who is in a bad place in his life and is having a crisis of faith. He takes a call about a woman whose car is broken down on the side of the road. When he gets there he sees a Bible or something on her seat that indicates she’s a Christian, strikes up a conversation about faith, and ends up being led back to God through the discussion they have. In other words: I am not the protagonist in that story. I’m just “the Christian woman whose car broke down,” a bit player with a small speaking role.
It was this advice that led me to one of the biggest paradigm shifts in my entire conversion: the realization that to be a Christian is not to make God part of your story, but to realize you are part of God’s story (that phrasing borrowed from this fascinating post at Speak the Truth in Love). Up until this point, I would have described my goal as a Christian as “to make God a big part of my story!” To understand that it’s not about me, that the story was never mine to being with, was so humbling, so intimidating. What would this mean? How was I supposed to control everything if I didn’t even know where God was going with all of this?!
Though Steve G. actually offered the ultimate answer in his response, it took months for it to sink in. I had to learn it on my own, the hard way (as usual), after banging my head against the wall by trying to do it my way a few more times. Eventually I realized that what it means to accept I am part of God’s story is to ask in every moment not “What is God trying to tell me with this situation?” but rather, “How can I better know, love and serve God through this situation?” It is to stop reading tea leaves to see what God thinks of all my great, important plans and to realize that my plans are neither great nor important in the grand scheme of things.
Whenever I am tempted to forget this lesson (which is often), whenever I get so mired down in the frustration or difficulty of a situation that I can’t imagine how this could possibly be part of God’s plan, whenever I get so fixated on my own desires that I fall into thinking of all events in my life as related to them, I remind myself to “look for the tow truck driver.” The tow truck driver has become a symbolic reminder for me, a call to put it all in perspective and remember that I have the great honor of being but a small player in the story that God writes. And, sure enough, nine times out of ten when I set my gaze higher and look outside of my own little bubble to see what’s going on with the other players on the stage, I find that it is surprisingly obvious that the drama that I find myself in the midst of is actually not about me at all. Indeed, it’s usually about the tow truck driver.