Elijah House
The Power of the Cross
Through the Spirit and the Word
Working to Heal and Restore Families
www.elijahhouse.org
Reality and Truth Are Not Always the Same
by Mark Sandford
For some time I have felt there was more to be discovered about inner healing. It's fruit is mostly excellent, but certain bad fruit appears just often enough to belie a missing ingredient. A major fruit we try to cultivate is honor. We teach that if one honors parents, life should go well for him (Dt. 5:16). The Hebrew word for honor, Cavad, means to intensely glorify. The Greek, time (pronounced tee-may), means "to value," as something highly priced. But for some, forgiving parents invokes little more than toleration. Rather than learn to honor parents, they only cease to dishonor. Gladly, this brings far more than the tolerable recovery secular counseling offers. But forgiveness ought to bear richer fruit.
The remedy is to honor more fully. Paradoxically, the healing process can make that difficult. Or at least the process as we know it. The process begins when one renounces false honor. For instance, a child in denial might call merciless beatings "fair discipline," because he "deserved" it. If Mom and Dad never gave hugs or kisses, he'll convince himself this is normal, and even believe his family to be the very ideal which others should emulate. Rather than face his anger, he'll lie to himself about what constitutes reality, and call that lie "honor."
Later, he'll take out repressed anger on his children, repeating his parents' sins. The resulting devastation might shatter denial. He'll renounce false honor. He'll discover what his parents were really like, and face his heart's secret bitterness toward them. He'll realize that judging them has caused him to become just like them. Forgiving will free him from the effects of the law of sowing and reaping, which had doomed him to repeat their offenses. So far so good.
But stepping out of denial can have its dark side. The more dysfunctional he admits his parents are, the harder it can be to take joy in them. Years ago I learned what bad fruit that can sometimes bear. After I eliminated "Gary's" denial, he lamented, "I used to worship Mom. Now I don't even know if I like her." My heart sank; that's not what I had intended! So I asked him to enumerate good memories of Mom. That was small consolation. Her criticism and manipulation had been daily fare! Her myriad selfish acts hopelessly outweighed her half-dozen good deeds.
Yet the Bible repeatedly calls us to bless even persecutors. The word "bless," eulogeo, means "to speak well of," "to celebrate." Early Christians were able to celebrate Pharisees who cast them out of synagogues, family members who ostracized them for their faith and rulers who tortured and killed them! All I had produced in Gary was amiable toleration.
I recalled Jesus' words: "I am the way, the truth and the life" (Jn. 14:6). A light went on. There is no truth outside Jesus! Gary's mom's dysfunction was indeed reality. But since it did not issue from Jesus, Biblically it was not truth! Reality and truth are not always the same. What is truth is the image of God, which Gary's mother reflected. Proverbs 22:6 states: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The sense of the Hebrew is that one should cultivate the child's natural bent. Gary's mom's dysfunction was not her God-given bent. Although there is nothing good in us (Ro. 3:10-12), by God's grace the image of God was not entirely defaced by the fall. The darkest pagan heart yet reflects a glint of God's ineffable light.
I had compared Gary's mother's sins to her good deeds. But that was the wrong comparison. If her sins were set on one side of a scale, they would surely outweigh her paltry good deeds. But what belongs on the side of the scale opposite her sins is not her good deeds. Rather, it is the image of God in her. For the true Mom was represented by the reality of neither her good nor bad works, but by the truth of the Proverbs 22:6 blueprint which God had designed her to be.
A bit of trivia from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader drove the point home (God is not above imparting noble truths through "unsophisticated" sources!). The center of the sun is 73,000,000 degrees. A speck the size of a pinhead would burn people to death 94 miles away.1 Since Jesus outshines the sun, and His image is reflected in Gary's mom, surely we could celebrate her with gusto, even if her virtues were pin-sized! For by celebrating Mom, we would celebrate Jesus, in whose image she was created.
In denial, he dared not admit Mom was chained to a false self. I opened his eyes. But for what? Only to celebrate her false self by giving it, not her, his full attention! This was true even when I focused Gary on Mom's finer points, for they too are not the true Mom. For as we read in Romans 3, there is nothing good in us, except the image of God, which is not our doing.
When I prompted Gary to enumerate Mom's good deeds, I offered no real hope. For her "good" side was nominal compared to all the bad she had done to Gary. And was no more her real self than the evil side chained to the other end.
Having no love of their own, parents can only pass on the love God has granted them. Next to God's infinite love, the portion of His love passed on by even the best Christian parents is miniscule. All anyone can do is whet a child's appetite for the infinite. To truly honor parents, a child must choose to see God through his image which they reflect. Gary's mom loved little; she reflected that image through a tarnished lens. But the God viewed was not thereby diminished. Proof of healing is the ability to be more impacted by the reflected sun than by the dark glass of flesh which obscures it.
I have long been aware of the doctrine of the image of God. It has always been part of our counseling. The problem is that while we have much explicit teaching regarding the sin nature (how to deal with bitter roots, inner vows, etc.), we do not have much explicit teaching on the image of God in humanity. Counselees whose hearts "know" this doctrine end up honoring hurtful parents. But sometimes we assume that hearts know more than they know. In counseling, nothing can be assumed. The Garys of this world need explicit teaching.
And some of us counselors need a refresher course. For the great madness of our minds is that while proclaiming truth, they blind us to the secret lies in our hearts. Paul taught, "the weapons we fight with have divine power to demolish strongholds" (1Cor. 10:4). Inner healing alone does not demolish strongholds. It heals the soldier and readies him to fight. I am now learning how to celebrate "toxic" people more, how to encourage honor for the most loathsome parents and to call forth the best from the darkest hearts.
Because the true person, however lost to view, deserves more attention than the darkness of his flesh. By encouraging them to love the true person you are teaching them to love Jesus.
1 Uncle John's Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader, Editor Larry Kelp, Bathroom Reader's Press, Ashland, Ore., c. 1997, p. 112
For more information about Elijah House...
Phone: (208) 773-1645; Fax: (208) 773-1647
9:00 AM to 5:00 PM pacific standard time, Mon-Fri.
General Email: ehinfo@elijahhouse.org
Elijah House
17397 W Laura Ln
Post Falls, ID, USA 83854
208-773-1645
fax 208-773-1647
http://www.elijahhouse.org
