In 2019 the alternative rock band most known for their rendition of hymns and their popular mixtape mixing their unique sound with rap came out with an album that put a stamp on who they would be from here on out. The album was titled ‘Zeal’ and was a hope filled record aimed to remind brothers and sisters in the faith to return to their first love.
Chad Gardner, the front man of the band details in a mini-documentary1 of making the album, about how he found himself and his friends struggling to keep the faith after having left and suffered under the Mars Hill Church scandal. Church hurt hurts. Sometimes it’s the reason people who have walked closely with God for decades inevitably leave the faith.
Chad though has talked about how he did not come into this mega church world assuming everyone was going to be perfect. He never expected the church to be a place of pure bliss. He came from a family who loving served the church which let him know what he was getting himself into, even if he did not know all the details of what would take place at Mars Hill.
Th album traces this journey of wrestling with your faith to returning back to the simple gospel message sung by a child in the song “Jesus Loves Me.”
I believe what resonates this album with so many is that simple truth that being with Jesus is hard.
Some days we don’t want to.
Some days we aren’t sure how to.
Some days we have no why to.
Illumination
There was a popular “game” if you will that we use to play as kids…Okay, I still find it funny to play this game with my wife because it scares the tar out of her. But the game is called “Bloody Mary”.
This games requires you to go to the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror, and turn off the lights. Once you’ve done that, you are suppose to repeat the phrase ‘Bloody Mary’ three times and this wretched ghost is suppose to appear in the mirror. Now, I’ve never seen her. And there are variations to how you play this game. But the key is to have those lights off. The reason why is because your senses are dulled. Even with your eyes open you cannot fully focus on anything you are looking at. You will jump scare at the slightest movements or even supposed movements. The reason why is because nothing is clear. Nothing is apparent. You are lost in a tiny room you should be familiar with but you’re not.
Illumination comes when you finally turn on the light and come to terms with not only what is there in that little bathroom of yours but also with what’s not: Bloody Mary.
When we came to the faith, it felt like we had played a game of Bloody Mary so to speak. We had existed in this world our entire lives, we should have been aware of the evil that exists but we were not. We were familiar to this world but unfamiliar at the same time. Until, something switched.
The room was lit, the world was made visible. We could finally see ourselves for who we really are. Beloved by God and also capable of more sin than we could have ever imagined. Everything seemed to become clear.
At this moment of what theologians would call “illumination”, we are awaked to a whole new reality. The world is suddenly flipped upside down and you are supposed to live in this world differently than you had previously. Theologians would call this transformation the act of the Spirit regenerating you.
Regernation is the act of God to hit ‘begin again’ in our lives. It is this second birth that Jesus talks about to the Pharisee Nicodemus in John chapter 3.
In this account of Nicodemus and Jesus’ conversation, the curious Pharisee asks Jesus what he means by this phrase “being born again.” Jesus responds by detailing that it’s not about entering through your mother’s womb again like the Pharisee jokingly asked2, but rather it’s about a different kind of rebirth. A rebirth that comes not from human procreation but by the work of the Spirit in one’s life.
The Spirit is the cause of this “rebirth” that we all can find ourselves looking back on if we claim to be a christian.
And Then What?
Life goes on.
Many of us try to follow Jesus to the best of our ability. We begin to use new terms in our vocabulary like “blessed” and “hallelujah”. We start this new practice of talking out loud to someone who is not present in the room but we believe is present in our hearts. We try reading an ancient collection of 66 books that we believe is the Word of God. And we probably will try to be a little bit nicer to the people around us but as time goes on, we find that this all harder than it seems.
And what’s even crazier to us is where at first our biggest goal was to just simply stop cussing, the longer we spend in this relationship with Jesus the more we realize we need to work on. It’s not just the occasional “F*** you” we scream out the window as we delve back into our road rage, but its the anger that resides in our hearts and shows up in the littlest moments of our days. It’s not just the habit of checking a pretty woman out while you’re at the gym, it’s the OCD like lustful thought process that follows you around wherever you go and you just cannot seem to shake. It’s not just the argumentative personality trait that you find yourself fighting, but rather the realization that you have deep family dynamics at play within you that require more effort than just shutting up when someone says something you disagree with.
Overtime this can weigh you down and it can be discouraging because you can start to feel like maybe life with Jesus is not really any better. Maybe Jesus did not actually fix me the way I thought he would because it seems the further I get in this life with Jesus, the more I realize how screwed up I am.
And the sad reality of our current evangelical way of viewing salvation is that it requires you constantly to look back at this moment of illumination which brought about a lot of zeal or enthusiasm and to long for the days where you can experience that type of spiritual high once again.
Nothing’s Wrong With You
Working at the cabinet shop for a decade now means I’ve got to experience some high and lows at the shop learning and mastering a trade that requires a lot of of skill and a retraining of your mind and eye in order to do it well.
One of the areas where many people stumble early on in learning this skill of cabinetry is in sanding. Sanding is like a continual make a wish process where you hope you did it right but it’s not until you get some paint on it that everything will be made clear on how well of a job you actually did.
It turns out lighting is a very important part of the job. In order to sand well, you of course have to use different grits at different moments. At the start you go against the grain and then with the grain. But at each stage it’s helpful to put the piece of wood you’re sanding into the light and try to catch it at different angles. Your naked eye even as a skill professional will not always be able to catch what’s going on with the wood. The light will. The light will expose subtle marks and dings that you can neither feel nor see without the light shining on it.
What’s beautiful and sometimes painful to me is putting that piece of wood up into the light in order to see if my sanding worked. And at times, my sanding was not enough. The light exposed more under the surface that needed to be dealt with.
I have two choices at that moment.
I can get discouraged that more is wrong than I initially thought.
Or I can be thankful to the light for showing me where to head next.
The light if anything is making your path of sanding clearer. It’s showing you exactly what to focus on next. Instead of guessing around and depending on your own opinion for the matter the light guides you. And each time you hold the wood up to the light to see your progress you are going through a process of illumination again and again.
I believe the Christian life is more like sanding than it is baptism. You arguably get dunked once when it comes to baptism. It’s symbolic. It’s painting a picture of you identifying with Christ in his life, death, and resurrection.
Sanding is what life with Jesus will look like from that day forward. It’s a continual process of being exposed to dings under neath the surface of what you present yourself as.
Which means once you’re saved, you will need to keep getting saved. You will continually need to be illuminated about the cracks underneath the surface of who you are.
Yes, you are right to feel that there is more wrong with you than you realize. But it is God’s grace on your life that the further you walk with him, that he is pointing you deeper to the root of the issue.
Your sin has layers. You at first were just aware of the surface. And just that surface level understanding made you break down in humble repentance to God and caused you to cry out to Him to save you. How much more then should it be when you realize there’s more to uncover?
It should not be discouraging. Because you are not without hope and you are not without vision. And maybe the reason you find yourself wanting to throw up your hands has more to do with you focusing on everything wrong with you, and not the Spirit’s continual work in your life.
You are discouraged because you’re focusing on the wrong things. When as you notice the wrong things, you should be focused on the light and where it’s pointing you to. Which is a closer union with the Father.
The darkness and the other evils of which the soul is conscious when this Divine light strikes it are not darkness or evils caused by this light, but pertain to the soul itself, and the light illumines it so that it may see them. Wherefore it does indeed receive light from this Divine light; but the soul cannot see at first, by its aid, anything beyond what is nearest to it, or rather, beyond what is within it-namely, its darknesses or its miseries, which it now sees through the mercy of God, and saw not aforetime, because this supernatural light illumined it not, And this is the reason why at first it is conscious of nothing beyond darkness and evil, after it has been purged, however, by means of the knowledge and realization of these, it will have eyes to see, by the guidance of this light, the blessings of the Divine light; and once all these darknesses and imperfections have been driven out from the soul, it seems that the benefits and the great blessings which the soul is gaining in this blessed night of contemplation become clearer.
St. John of the Cross3
- The mini-documentary by Kings Kaleidoscope: https://youtu.be/dhN7c3iuJ34?si=axDMYZeq656PUoOP ↩︎
- John 3:4 CSB ↩︎
- St. John of the Cross in his book: ‘The Dark Night of the Soul'(Translated and edited by E. Allison Peers)(pg.154-155) ↩︎
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