"What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh! Precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus."
Today morning I woke up to a painful reality, from a painful dream, that came from a painful reality. There is nothing about this song that is directly relevant to my situation at the moment. Yet, as I am losing my sanity (whatever remains of it), I'm playing this song on repeat, as though that's the only shred of reality that I have left to hold on to. What's with my situation, maybe you'd ask. Does it matter? All that I know is that it is crushing.
I've followed God for many years. There are particular areas of my life that no matter how bad the struggle was, all that they did was to lead me closer to His embrace, to feel His heart and know His mind more. Each time I'm broken in these areas, I know His mercy and grace that much better. Yet, there are also particular areas of my life, even the slightest touch and struggle cause worry in me. Much less the storms that come. Those more than cause me to struggle. They completely wreck.
At the end of such seasons and struggles, I know, I will grow. Leaps and bounds. With new skills, insights, and perspectives. To the point I couldn't at times recognize myself. As the Bible puts it, "the old has gone, the new has come". As you read this, maybe you'd be inspired to struggle; to not give up; to continue trusting. That's great, you know. I meant it. But sometimes I feel like I've lost something very important to me each time I've struggled and struggled victoriously in these areas. Something that is really important to me: my sanity.
Going Insane
We all have our ways of thinking, common sense and a desire for emotional well-being. When those are invaded, whether by circumstances or the Word of God, we change. And when it's for the better according to the Word (such as the Fruit of the Spirit), we grow. However, it always cost us something to grow, doesn't it? Be it effort, time, resources, tears and pains. When at a specific season or point in time, our emotional state gets wrecked to a point way more than what we can bear, then, I think, the cost we pay for our growth is our sanity. We lose touch with reality as we know and understand it, and the floor gives way to an endless sea of confusion. And often, if we ever came out of that sea, we lose some parts of ourselves there, and come back with something else that we never knew, and is not ours. That, to me, is what it means to be insane.
The Bible has many, many people whose life circumstance, I imagine, would drive them insane. The story of Joseph (of Egypt) in Genesis - to be given a prophecy in his younger days, THEN be forced to work in the house of foreigners that he knew not at all, and sadly, betrayed repeatedly again and again and again no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he contributed. By his brothers - his own kin. By his master - despite his best effort. By the cupbearer - mustering all his compassion on their plight. For those of you who ever felt betrayed or indignant, you know his pains. You wonder how he can continue to give his best, especially in those dark days for him. I know how. He went insane.
Another such person in the Bible, arguably the most famous of the New Testament besides Jesus, Paul. His suffering goes beyond virtually any bible character, perhaps. And perhaps that made him the most insane of them all.
... Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant? (2 Corinthians 12:23-29 NSRV)
"Who is weak, and I'm not weak?" This question, I've asked a million times to God. Why me? Why are some of my struggles so crushing, so wrecking, so insane? Prophet Elijah says the same in 1 Kings 19:4 - ..."I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Truly, Father in Heaven, I am only mortal, human, with little sanity left. Who am I, that makes You think I can grow like this, at such costs? 'The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak'. You can put me through it, and yes I will grow. But my vessel cannot keep up; each time, I'm going more and more insane.
Another instance of Apostle Paul's insanity:
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ,[e] the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:7-11)
Here, he sounds like a lunatic. He had suffered so much, he gave up everything that he was even remotely interested in - and asked for more: the sufferings of Christ. He was essentially saying to God: "Show me more of Your cross, of Your pain, it does ridiculously hurt now and I may die for it, but it doesn't matter - I want more, because it leads me to You." I know, sometimes in our own lives we made prayers similar to Paul's before, wanting to know Christ at whatever the cost. I'm not doubting our sincerity when we made those requests to God, but I'm doubting whether 'whatever the cost' is limited to what our minds and heart think is reasonable and sane. Because, I've come to realize, God does answer our prayers. And He doesn't differentiate whether the answer to those prayers are sane, or insane.
The Sanity of It All
Why does a loving God like Him want us to grow insane? Why can't He just grow us step by step at a level where we can manage? I really don't know. Not clueless, but not certain. I think, it's because we don't have time on Earth. We are mortal beings, with a finite lifespan. He can, the master craftsman that He is, shape us to the image of His beloved Christ slowly and surely, as He is doing in your life in this very moment. Yet, the struggles of life and the forces of evil aren't as kind or patient as our God. They desire to drown and devour us, to destroy us. And God had to build us up to protect us, to let us be strong enough to face the storms of life and eventually be presented to Christ and to Him "...as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless" at the end.
Jesus had 30 years to prepare for His 3+ years of ministry on earth. The Bible records little of His life before His public ministry, but I doubt that those 30 years were without its own shares of knicks and knocks, joys and sorrow. As He learnt about Scripture, He would live them out through His time on Earth. And in human skin, He would understand the heart of the Father for Him and His brothers and sisters. Why did God not extend Jesus' earthly life, so that He can have more time to minister to people and be better prepared? I have nothing but hunches: because Jesus was already fully prepared in those 33.5 years to be the sin offering that He was sent to Earth to be. Because by then, He was not just perfect in being, but the perfect moment in history had come. God had provided 33.5 years and had 33.5 years for His greatest work to be completed on the cross. Both Father and Son knew that was the time limit He had. And that's why Jesus' life was turbulent, difficult - and those are gross understatements. Jesus definitely, in some ways, went insane.
We, however, are not sinless like Jesus was. And we don't have the fate and destiny that He had. However, we "share in His suffering, in order that we may share in His glory" (Romans 8:17). And therefore God has a plan to make us more like His Son. And therefore, He had to give us those knicks and knocks, crash-courses if you will, sometimes too powerful and glorious for our sinful flesh to absorb, driving us, well, insane.
As I write this, I vividly recall the instances when God robbed me of my sanity. Yes, I use the word "rob". For it was not by my choice that they happened, I didn't agree to it, nor was I usually a willing participant of my struggles. Romans 8:20 - "For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it..." I frankly hate it. Call me a control-freak, or call yourself a control-freak. I hate it when God does this, when He invades my soul and personality to change me, not just character, but my mind and worldview and emotional state. I want none of those. I want Christ, yet I don't want this surgery. Why not give me medicine? Why not adjust me from the outside? Why slice me up to change what's within? I know the answer, much as I hate to accept it: because sin lives not just outside of me, but it also lives inside my core - my innermost being. And nothing but such invasive surgeries can do anything against it. That honestly doesn't make me feel better about it, absolutely not, on this side of heaven. Only worse because I know it will happen again and again till the day I die. But through it, I know, my God is not random. He loves me, more than I can bear or imagine.
The Insanity of It All
The conversion to insanity only gets worse each time. The first time, when I lost my sanity back in my Year 0 days (of university), I found what it means to have an 'inseparable intimacy' with God, while discovering that I am really adverse to communal things and many things that are social. The second time, a memory as recent as 8 months ago, I found Erez and Ayreh, stillness and courage, and also the personal mentorship of my Father in Heaven. Together with that, I came to doubt if God ever wants me to be happy and emotionally-well ever again, or was my entire purpose in life purely to grow and suffer for His sake: was Earth supposed to be the hell that I would otherwise never come to know when I die, and go to His side? This third time, I don't know what else I will find and gain, or what else I will discover and lose. But I know for sure, I'm going to become even more insane.
But, do you know what's the most insane thing about all these? It is that as I grow to hate His methods and His ways to me more, I grow to love His heart and thoughts for me more and more each time. As I grew more and more insane, I found myself more and more like Him, like His Beloved Son. I don't relish this experience, but yet I also don't want to relinquish it. I have come, closer and closer, to understand and believe that He is for me. That He has a plan to prosper me and not to harm me, that I am the apple of his eye. The promise of Romans 8:28-30 becomes clearer to me with each step I take:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
At this point of time, as I'm reaching the end of writing this post, I'm also extremely fearful that once I leave this seat and this computer, the fear and endless sea of confusion will again ravage me in the absence of my tearful revelations of God. I fear that as I go on to serve Him for the rest of the day, for the rest of the week, it is with a weary heart and an increasingly strained soul, together with a mind that that cannot look up at Him. And that I would come to disobey Him and run away from His plan and purpose for me. Yet this is my... conviction. I know, this insane God would never let me walk alone. The insane Father will walk with His insane son, whom he predestined; called; justified and will glorify,.
Indeed, our God is an insane God. None of His actions are sane. From the start, when He created mankind; when He made a covenant with a bunch of people who couldn't offer Him anything and whose heart strayed from Him - repeatedly. Nobody can understand why He never gave up on mankind, and eventually, in the height of His insanity, He did the most insane act of them all: He sent His son for us to redeem us, a Son so dearly beloved which He loved as Himself - to die for those who did not even know Him and disdained Him.
That cross, is a cross of insane love. And so this life, shall be an insane life. Lived by an insane person, led by an insane God, towards an insane future and inheritance.
Nothing But His Insanity
"What can wash away my fear?
Nothing but the insanity of Jesus;
What can make me bold again?
Nothing but the insanity of Jesus.
Oh! Precious is the plans
That makes me pure as Christ;
No other way I know,
Nothing but the insanity of Jesus.
