Wrath from a Father's Perspective

Since my son was born a week ago, my father-protector instincts have been off the charts. I feel such intense love and loyalty not only for Levi but also for my wife and daughter that I feel a ferocious compulsion to keep them safe from all harm. When I have perceived one of them being harmed, isolated, bullied, or shamed, I have reacted with surprising anger. It’s not just that I’m upset by the offender’s behavior and its unfortunate consequences on my family. The full force of my personal hatred for another human being is focused on that single person in that moment. Even if the offender is a close friend, I find that all my previous compassion and loyalty for that person is consumed in a split second by a murderous personal vendetta against them. I would sooner wipe them off the face of the earth than let them injure my own. I don’t care about the personal or environmental reasons for their behavior. All that matters in that moment is my family’s safety and wellbeing.

I’ve been totally taken aback by this response because I’m passive and rational by nature. I fear uncontrolled emotion, and 9 times out of 10 I’d rather internalize pain than defend myself. So this furious protectiveness is completely outside my comfort zone. I keep wondering if I’ve strayed from the gospel, imagining that passivity and grace are somehow tied together.

But the more I read the bible, the more I’m inclined to believe that I’m experiencing a microcosm of God’s Father heart for his creation. 4 months ago, I began to experience a profound sense of the Father’s love for me. Wave upon wave of His grace, acceptance, and delight washed over me in a daily encounter with Love. THAT experience empowered me to pull out of my miserly shell of judgmentalism and shame-based religion. Others close to me began to feel the overflow of that profound love that is free of accusation or moral browbeating.

Then I got to thinking…. If this is how much God loves His children, how does He feel when another person hurts His child? Suddenly the images of God riding on a thundercloud, melting mountains, and demanding justice started to make sense. I could understand why my sweet huggable Jesus is depicted in Isaiah as a man treading the winepress of God’s fury, robes stained with the blood of nations…. Or as the rider in Revelation with a deadly double-edged sword protruding from his mouth.

I began to understand Jesus’ fury when he shouted to the Pharisees, “Hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” It’s not that Jesus hated Pharisees, but that he deeply loved people and that love displaced any shred of permissive compassion for those who wound His little children. No wonder he says, “It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.”

What if God’s wrath didn’t come from an esoteric, abstract sense of justice? What if it came from a deep fatherly love multiplied by infinity? What if it really was personal?

In light of that… yes, I believe in Hell. If God’s love for His people is infinite and eternal, it makes sense that His final judgment against the wicked is neither temporary nor annihilistic. If suffering and love both exist, then wrath must also exist.

So it’s one of those paradoxes that I’ve grown accustomed to in the Christian faith. I live my life confidant of the tender, father heart of God. But at the same time, God scares the hell out of me because I know that His tender love extends to all people and I haven’t always treated others graciously. It’s not just a deferential respect towards my creator but a real sense of awe and fear.

As my fierce protective love for my family grows, so grows my understanding of God’s fierce personal love for His own and His wrath towards those who stand in opposition to that love.

What's in a Role: Are you my Mentor?

There’s some confusion about what discipleship is and what it isn’t. Some people feel that disciple-building relationships deal with mentoring between a wise elder and a young person. Others feel it’s more like “friendship with a purpose.” Personally, I’m flexible. I find that people raised in conservative circles often like the power differentiation of the mentoring relationships while others find it a bit alienating. When I’m entering a discipling relationship, I typically withhold judgment about the role I can play in this person’s life until I’ve met with him several times. I may never verbalize a label for a relationship unless he asks. But if I do, I find it helpful to bear three things in mind:

1.     Roles can be freeing. I’ve been able to pour tons of quality time into people I wouldn’t typically connect with simply because I don’t expect them to meet my needs. A young guy once said, “I feel bad that we meet every week and just talk about me. Don’t you want me to ask some questions about your life?” To which I responded, “You can ask me anything you’d like, but I want you to know that I’m here for you. I don’t expect you to be there for me.” That freed both of us from the obligation to build a two-sided friendship and allowed us to focus on his personal growth. I didn't have to worry about whether he was meeting my needs.

2.     Roles can be crippling. I’ll be the first to admit that my tendency to slap roles on all my relationships has sometimes isolated me and driven me back and forth between self-loathing and pride. Are you worth my time? Am I worth your time? In my life, simple friendships are hard to find partially because I turn all potential friendships into work. To relax, trust, receive care, and engage as a peer is a struggle that deprives me of meaningful community. After an initial meeting with one such friend, I discovered through a mutual friend that his primary reaction was, “dude. You don’t have to be on the clock with me.”

3.     Roles can be organic. This was SO fun for me to discover. At the end of last year’s men’s group, I was spent. I had met semi-regularly with 10 guys primarily as a leader, an advocate, but not as a friend. Exhausted I told my co-leader, Mike, “I really like you. I want to hang out with you. But I can’t handle deep conversations right now. How do you feel about video games?” True to his word, Mike and I spent several afternoons mindlessly playing games, eating Pakistani food, and cultivating a deep kinship that lasts to this day. Likewise, the day I moved away from Chicago, I called one of my guys and we chatted on the phone for two hours... primarily about me. The whole time, I was thinking, “wow, I actually really enjoy this guy!” Similar things have happened with at least two or three other guys. Having cared for them, they grow and begin to care for me, becoming great advocates and dear friends.

I like roles. I really do. But I’m finding it necessary to hold them loosely. Sometimes it’s the people I’ve cared for in the past who are best able to care for me.

Being mean to your baby, and a new song

Do you know how to make sure your baby gets a full feeding? Put a cold wet washcloth on his back. Seems cruel right? But it wakes him up so that he can eat all he wants and then he’ll sleep soundly. Most kids are half-hearted, sleepy eaters. But I understand that regular full feedings are one of the best ways to establish a normal schedule for your baby. Do you think I find a spiritual metaphor in that? You bet.

Today I’m grieving irreparable relationships. I’ve lost my share of friends over the years due to my immaturity, sustained conflict, or situations beyond anyone’s control. Conversation doesn’t typically help because at least one party has lost the strength and motivation to continue a painful relationship. God has been teaching me that these broken friendships will continue to prick at my heart for years and years and that’s okay.

It’s unbelievably uncomfortable for me to accept the idea that I can’t FIX people’s opinions of me or singlehandedly set the terms of my relationship with them. I’ve tried to hash things out so many times, believing that if people just understood my heart, they’d like me. Problem is, sometimes my heart comes up lacking. Other times, these people just don’t give a damn.  Typically, I can’t really blame them.

I feel like God said to me today, “I gave you relationships you can’t fix,” as though that were some kind of Christmas present. I felt like He was asking me to let myself feel the loss of relationship AND the loss of personal control over other people. It an amazingly humbling process. And not to over-spiritualize it, but I do feel like it forces me into a desperate place of needing the nourishment that only Father can give. It wakes me up from my sleepy delusions of self-sufficiency. It draws me close to my emotional and spiritual food source. It reminds me to eat.

I wrote a song about this combined with what I was reading in Mark 4. I recorded it and posted it to bandcamp. It’s totally worth a listen if ONLY for the ending where Annabel interrupts and starts talking to me about the baby. You can listen to it for free at…

http://nathanharkness.bandcamp.com/track/whole-home-forgiven

If you’re interested in the lyrics, here they are!

You’re hand is like a wet

Cold cloth on my warm bare back

And I start awake

Latching on, drawing life from your breast from your veins

You said if seed falls to the ground

And dies it comes around to life

And spreads a thousand seeds to find

The fertile soil, the tilled and toiled

You said a lamp should never hide

The light in camps of darkness where

The blind have stumbled on for ages

Tearing pages from their minds

And if the smallest seed could sleep

In richest beds and start to root

With mighty branches reaching up

It makes a shady place to rest

And oh…

I will be whole

I will be home

I’ll be with the Lord

And be forgiven

More about the name: Levi Samuel

Here’s a journal entry I wrote about my unborn son on September 12 while in Colorado. Debra had been praying that God would give me a name for this child. One day as I was praying an inspiration came, a quiet assured voice (I listen to those: so far they’ve taken me to my life’s vocation, my marriage, and my career) saying, “His name is Levi Samuel.” What follows is a mix of God’s inspiration and my interpretation about the character and personal destiny of my son:

Levi Samuel

A man of peace. One who hears the voice of the Lord.

“My covenant was with [Levi], a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.” (Malachi 2:5-6)

Like Samuel, (interjection: a close friend had prayed over Debra, and said she believed our son had the “spirit of Samuel”, a biblical priest figure who heard God’s voice as a child) I will call him at a young age. He will hear My voice and follow Me.

A sense of Levi Samuel leading nations in the worship and reverence of the Lord. Levi is a worship leader. He has a tender heart, yet he is full of strength and power, secure and rooted in the Love of his Father.

From a young age, Levi will cease to follow only his parents’ instruction. The Lord Himself will lead and teach Levi and he will grow to be a source of spiritual blessing and guidance for his parents. He will surpass them in faith, courage, and zeal for the Lord

The Lord has anointed Levi Samuel a leader of nations, a man of peace, a lover of God.

Boy that gives me chills to read because as much as I can discern, it fits my son perfectly. He is a quiet, peaceful, tender child. He almost never cries (even when getting a shot he gives only a single cry). He eats with ferocity and focus. He loves to sleep on my chest but is also content for hours in his bassinet. He seems to be the very image of quiet security, intimate attachment, and focused strength. He seems in touch with himself but deeply resilient at the same time. I recognize in him a tremendous faith and courage combined with a deep personal intimacy with the God who made him. So I’m not joking when I say this kid is special. He truly is a game-changer.