“What about the dying world?” I did ask the Lord when he seemed to be inviting to be still, “like a weened child with its mother” (Ps. 131:2). Was God asking me to relent from trying rescue what I though must be rescued? I thought being Christian meant extending his reach to where he could not otherwise? Would he be able to do without me what I thought he needed me for? My visceral question revealed the base assumption: my responsibility as human and as Christian was to help God do what he could not otherwise do. I surprised myself upon the discovery of the assumption. I suppose I had found ways to deny what I had had believed: a piece of God’s mission depended on my performance. God needed me.
Good-hearted God desired for all people to come to know him and find salvation. The agents for that purpose, however, were a significant liability. The Church had the option to avail themselves to the mission or not to. Some do and some don’t. Even those who do cannot do so perfectly. Christians who do try to carry out God’s mission lapse in commitment routinely or have significant character deficits. Both of these things compromise their effectiveness for God’s mission. The lapse means that someone who could have reached now might not be. After all, how will they hear if someone doesn’t go? (Rom. 10:14). A Christian’s character deficit dulls the impression that the Christian makes on an unbeliever and therefore makes their “witness” less convincing. How often have unbelievers not turned to Jesus because the representatives of Christ – Christians – are morally decrepit? It seemed to me that this often was the case.
I admitted this year to living as though I was making up for the ineptitude of the Church. That was a cruel mandate to impose on myself. I owned the failures of the Church as I perceived them. Each new level of systemic prejudice, injustice or apathy that I discovered in my people added to the weight on my shoulders and dragged the baseline of my mental health closer to tragic fatalism. Church failure scared me because of its potential consequence – a consequence of eternal significance. Who were we losing for God?
At some point I extended my sense of responsibility to include people’s health as well as eternal salvation. Indeed, I had been shown in scripture that God seems to care about the whole person. True religion is apparently also a service of those in need, the marginalized in particular. In this arena as well there was so much ground yet to be covered. I had a strong sense that we were hardly effective in caring for the poor or for those with mental health issues. This was amplified by my own mental illness experience and a felt scarcity in the attention that my internal distress called for.
Perceived or felt scarcity is characteristics of mental illness in anyone. In my case, it happened that it became tightly woven into my Christian worldview. I saw scarcity everywhere. I’ll caveat that much good had been given me from the teaching of my youth. I must report, however, that in a very real way Christianity was to me a desperate, anxious thing. Under the trumpeting of victory and freedom – which I professed as well – there was a world of deficit and massive theoretical loss. We were not enough. We were not doing enough. We were losing so many so often.
The mission of God was compromised by the scarcity of Christian effectiveness. So many were not reached and most of those who were reached with the gospel were given a faulty version of the message by faulty representatives of the movement. Search Church history, friends, and see. Enter any church and find deficits of various magnitudes. It seemed to me that simply by choosing humans to be the agents of his message, God had lost a great deal. They were so inconsistently available to the Spirit given to them. Some who professed to be Spirit-led were actually imposters compelled by ego. I supposed that for some reason, God was bound to the choice he made. The Church is what he’s got – and it is riddled with holes. Scarce character and scarce effectiveness. Could it be said that millions were not reached because of a scarcity of Christian effectiveness? Could it be said that millions were deterred from the faith because of a scarcity of Christian character? To me, that seemed to be likely.
Is not the thought disturbingly tragic? God had lost millions upon millions because of scarce effort and character in his Church? In this paradigm, Christians are the limit of God’s reach, at least in most cases. Christians can help God reach farther or can fail to do so.
Ironically, attempting to be as effective for God as possible inflicted on me another scarcity: the scarcity of permissible behaviour. A (life-stiflingly) narrow swath of behaviour was useful for God. The rest – even though it may not be morally wrong – was not useful for reaching people and therefore not permissible. I had a persistent guilt about personal gratification or leisure. Behaviours that no-one would call wrong still felt wrong to me because I did not know how they were making me effective for God.
I consigned myself to religious perfectionism. There was no room for self-compassion. I had to be better; much was at stake. Failure was not permissible; the consequences were too high. Failure as a learning device never made sense to me. I had to get it right the first time. It did not give myself permission to develop or grow. God needed me to be effective now. My self-talk was commandeered by the need to be as useful as possible for God. I spoke to myself without mercy.
Notably, this ended up stunting my artist side. Everything I did had to have utility for the mission. Simple creativity fit very awkwardly in that space. I did not know how my desire to make music could be effective. Songs that weren’t about God were hardly justifiable. What use did that frivolity have for God’s purposes? I must make my artistry useful for the mission. I attempted to fit myself into the odd space that seemed to be the intersection between my gifts and optimal usefulness.
I never did manage to contort myself in the narrow box of permissible behaviour, that I thought would make me useful to God. For example, I never evangelized. I had no genuine desire or courage for it. I had persistent guilt, however, for the perceived deficit of my behaviour. I was ashamed. I was very ashamed.
I constructed an excellence in many things. Some of that excellence was in the direction of usefulness to God. Some, more to transcend the persistent shame that I didn’t really understand. My head was the arena of a perpetual clashing of agendas. There was on the one hand the need to be useful to God. On the other was a constant and inexplicable need to accomplish anything that made me feel significant. These two were often in alignment but often, also, were not. Neither came from freedom. They were both an obligation. One an obligation to not fail God. The other was an obligation to compensate for shame and attend to the basic, essential need for affirmation.
I perceived scarce effectiveness and character in the Church and perceived scarce regions of behaviour to be permissible. My own effectiveness – bound to my self-worth – was scarce. I was always apologizing to God and people. Very small chastisements cut to the depth of me and confirmed my persistent suspicion that I was failing. In that paradigm, what worth was I in the end to God?
Could God afford to affirm me if I was among those who could have helped him save many more had we been better? Could he be pleased with me? I knew abstractly that he loved me and actually had felt shots of it in real ways, but in the paradigm of reality I was working with I could not imagine that he could afford to truly have affection for me or be pleased with me.
I saw a scarcity in God’s capacity. Now that’s a confession. I saw a scarcity of God’s capacity for grace. He was bound to be disappointed. He’d reluctantly let me into heaven, but wouldn’t he be disapproving and grieving at the same time all those that he wanted not to perish who perished? I didn’t see him being able to really love me. A good portion of my life so far has been an attempt to qualify for it, unable to trust that it was already given.
I saw a scarcity also in God’s capacity to reach. As I mentioned, the Church was the limit of God’s reach. God could not save whom the church had not reached. He willed that all be saved but couldn’t accomplish that. That dream could never be. There was, in my mind, now a theoretical optimal number of people then that God would aim to reach considering the resources of his mission: the Word, Spirit, and Church. The word tended to require the assistance of the others. The Spirit was limited in movement to the Church, so the Church ends up being the bottleneck of God’s purposes. Perfect behaviour on the part of the Church would reach the optimal number. Anything less than that would lose people.
I saw a scarcity of God’s power. God had been obstructed, partly by the Church’s failure. God had saved some but failed to reach others. None of us were entitled to salvation but less received it than the number God wanted. He’d acquired a result smaller than his goal. I saw God exasperated. Perhaps I projected my anxiety and depression heavenward. God grasping for as much as possible. An anxious parent.
Cumulatively, the scarcities that I perceived told me that I belonged to a tragic story. I worried about whether I was part of the problem – an inept Church – or part of the solution. My attempts to be perfect were internally frantic. God needed my help but there was little I could give; I was so exhausted from already trying to maintain that narrow sleeve of behaviour by which I might determine I was effective. I thought perhaps that my music might make me effective but I could never be confident that it qualified as useful.
I came to recognize the absurdity of my life particularly when I received the question, “Would you want someone who isn’t a believer in Jesus to live the life you are living.” No. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Something is deeply wrong here. Either my religion is false or I’m holding it wrong. I’m across a chasm from the joy, confidence, and completeness that Jesus promises. What did I get wrong?
The seed of an answer came with a few assertions from the Spirit which I’ll elaborate in another essay. What I’ve outlined here is my scarcity paradigm: The entrenchment of my Christian worldview in a sense of deficit and a tragic fatalism. I ultimately felt like I, and God, were losing not winning. I belonged to a sad half-victory.