Sorrow is Progress

So I bet you all want to know how my hunt for joy is going. It's fabulous like June. I made my list of joy verses- it's 2 pages long. I've gone through 9 verses so far. Being the analytical sort that I am, I have diligenty looked for patterns among them. Joy begins in the presence of God. From God's presence come correlates of Joy such as communal and individual integrity, honesty, fellowship in war and celebration, and generosity. Further verifying my conclusions, the very time spent looking said verses up felt refreshing and deepening. I feel myself settling down, the demonic busyness being pulled back (by the way, thanks Lisa, Robyn, and Jason for praying with me about that on Sunday). Even more so when I took Brian Haab (artist visiting from Switzerland)'s advice and got up on Monday morning to watch the sun rise with God. 5:00am waking to be at a nearby hill by 5:27am with coffee, a banana, and my journal- So worth it. Moreover, my converse-once-in-a-month-or-two friend surprised me by e-mailing me a quick note on the topic: Joy comes before during and after healing. It brings reprieve from pain, it heals your wounds, and sheilds you after. It is Vital to life, especially a christian one. About healing. Healing is a curious topic to me. I have been wondering for some time how much damage can be inflicted on a person before they are so wounded that full healing is no longer possible. [Just to clarify: I am not a sadist...I am a psychology major who, thanks to several years studying things like developmental psychopathology, now knows a lot more about the width and breadth of harm we can cause each other and ourselves in our sin than I ever intended to.] On the one hand, my faith tells me that there is no limit because my God is all powerful and all loving and can therefore heal anything. All humanity's evil combined was not great enough to permanently hold Christ dead in our place- 3 days in hell by that perfect Being was sufficient to pay all our death wages. On the other hand, I know that some wounds are never healed. Christ himself, even when risen from the dead in his heavenly body, still had the puncture wounds from his crucifixion in his hands for the doubting Thomas to see. So what prevents God from completely healing people on earth? Are some types of wounds unhealable? Is there one or more rules operating on earth that restrict God's full healing here, such that some hurts may only be completely attended to in heaven? Do those rules include conditions on our behaviour or faith? What about Christ's prayer, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"? Answers come as peices of a puzzle, fragments of pictures that make up another picture, like the cover of The Truman Show. J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: "There are some hurts that are just too deep to heal," explains Frodo Baggins in reference to his Morgul blade wound, prior to his journey in the last ship to the undieing lands. C. S. Lewis' The Cosmic Trilogy, That Hideous Strength: "'Through me,' said Merlin, 'you can suck up from the earth oblivion of all pains.'... 'No,' said the director. 'God's glory, do you think you were dug out of the earth to give me a plaster for my heel? We have drugs that could cheat the pain as well as your earth magic or better, if it were not my business to bear it to the end. I will hear no more of that.'" A. M. Rihbani's The Syrian Christ: "Once upon a time, a certain man fell from the housetop and was badly injured. The neighbors came and carried him inside and placed him in bed. Then one of his friends approached near to the injured man and said, 'Asaad, my beloved friend, how is your condition [kief halak]?' The much pained man opened his mouth and said, 'My two arms are broken; my back and one of my legs are broken; one of my eyes is put out; I am badly wounded in the breast, and feel that my liver is severed. But I trust that God will restore me.' Whereupon his friend answered, 'Asaad, I am distressed. But if this is your condition, it will be much easier for God to make a new man to take your place than to restore you.'"- a parable portraying "one who has been demoralized beyond redemption." Genesis 32:23-31: "So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, 'Let me go, for it is daybreak.' But Jacob replied, 'I will not let you go unless you bless me.' The man asked him, 'What is your name?' 'Jacob,' he answered. Then the man said, 'Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel (he struggles with God), because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.' Jacob said, 'Please tell me your name.' But he replied, 'Why do you ask me my name?' Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel (face of God), saying, 'It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.' The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip." Richard Kuklinski, in the filmed interview with a criminologist prior to his execution: "I must be the loneliest man in the world. No one loved me as a child. No one loves me now. I've come full circle. I guess it's time for me to die." Note: claims in the interview to have killed more than 200 people during his career as an assassin for the mafia. In the interview, he notes that he felt no emotion whatsoever during or after any but 2 of the killings. He was given the dual diagnosis of paranoid personality disorder and psychopathic personality disorder by the criminal psychologist interviewing him. Basically, that means that he hates and is suspicious of everyone, and experiences little or no emotion, either positive or negative. He recognised that he was different, but didn't understand his own behaviour or reactions. He actually seemed relieved to finally have someone else (the psychologist) explain them to him. Patterns, patterns, patterns...I swear I'm not schizophrenic. Um, so the two biblical accounts (doubting Thomas, wrestling Jacob) both use the permanent scars/wounds for posterity- as symbols for teaching others. The fictional accounts (Tolkien and Lewis) both also involve physical-spiritual wounds incurred from great battles with the Evil One, during and after which they suffered much but were victorious in the end. All four endured with faith in a greater power of good/love. The parable and the real account of persons defunct of all moral reasoning seemed to agree that there was less to be gained from such a person's extended life than there was to be gained from his death. In all cases, suffering or sorrow is endured in a spiritual battle manifested in the physical realm. Christ suffered unimaginable sorrow and pain for the release of sinners from death, that they might have joy and life. Jacob wrestled with God until he was forgiven and blessed, released from his own fear and the consequences of his manipulation. Frodo fought Sauron and his Nasguls to destroy the Ring of power that would have enslaved and massacred all life on earth. Ransom (the director) fought Satan (disguised as Weston) in the oceans and through the earth to the peak of Perelandra (Venus) to save the Green Lady (and hense all her descendants) from making Eve's mistake. The psychopath, bent into personified animosity by hateful parents, acted out Satan's will for humans to be destroyed until his capture and subsequent execution by the human authorities put in power by God to act out justice as best they can on earth. What then is the rule? It appears to have more to do with the spiritual benefits to be gained by those surrounding the wounded person that it does with the wounded person himself. Ultimately, God wants both the wounded and the wounded's community to learn to trust and obey him. Those with a good heart who fought for Christ may be allowed to live with a remnant of their hurt to remind the individual and everyone else that this world is temporary and eternal things come with a cost, that we all need God. Conversely, in cases such as Richard Kuklinski, since God is equally justice and love, he cannot allow the murder and/or injury of so many of his children go without consequence. That would teach society that humans have no worth and thus, what they do doesn't matter. Even if Kuklinski does chose to be forgiven and sanctified by God, it would be impossible for a murderer of 100s to ever perform enough acts of goodness to heal the number of injuries inflicted not only on the murdered, but on their loved ones and society as a whole. Maybe death, oblivion, forgetfulness are the only acts of mercy left to someone whose wounds are his own memories, his own mind. Would I want to remember 40 years worth of faces, blood, bodies, and weapons? I doubt it. And there's really no logical way such events could be forgotten on earth, not with the communication technology we have and the number of people who can act as witnesses to all any given person's deeds. The only solution would be to create another world, where the essence of a person may pass but not the specific details of their history, so that they can begin anew. Heaven. Death is the final healing. Anyways, those are my happy thoughts of the day. Psychopathy is a pretty extreme example (occurs in approximately 1% of the population) of someone who can never be healed on earth without breaking God's rules/self-regulations regarding free will (ie. free will does not exist if there are no consequences for choices made). More typical cases exemplify reasons God may choose not to fully heal someone, and how God walks with us in our pain and brokenness. The point of this whole rant is that Joy may be found in Sorrow, because we can only truly understand God's love, comfort, and healing when we experience his presence during and after our hurt. Bring on the sorrow.