God Sees Me!

We in Christianity have been so broken down and convinced that we are complete rubbish when looked at and judged on our own merit, that we can’t even conceive of being able to communicate directly with God without the presence of an “Intercessor”. We just feel way too unworthy to even be acknowledged by God.

We promote this mindset by judiciously quoting half-verses such as,

“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”[1]

We postulate,

“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.”[2]

Seems like a slam-dunk, doesn’t it? We are hopeless wretches! But as we have seen multiple times already, things are not always as they seem.

Let us examine for a moment the Isaiah text, in context.

“You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways. But when we continued to sin against them, you were angry. How then can we be saved? All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.”[3]

In context, this text is directed at a specific group of people who have sinned against God’s righteous people. This bunch of “filthy rags” people reflects some truly evil individuals who are effectively being cursed by God for their abominable and hateful actions to those who are trying to obey God’s law and live righteously. It is an isolated situation for a specific time; not a general directive about every person who has every lived in the whole world!

“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

King David rather forlornly penned this psalm after Nathan the prophet confronted him for his sinful behavior with Bathsheba. Obviously, David was feeling guilty about his actions, as he had very spectacularly broken God’s law and been “taken out behind the woodshed” for it! Feeling contrite and useless, he dramatically elucidated his feelings of worthlessness. Exploring the context of his situation helps explain his pessimistic “woe is me I am so guilty” rant!!

You and I both know that David did not feel that way at all times. Compare and contrast the “in sin my mother conceived me” text with the hope-filled optimism of the following passage.

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”[4] And, “From birth I was cast upon you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”[5]

At any rate, in order to maintain our guilt-inducing rhetoric, we first must ignore the context of these very dismal texts. Next, in order to keep our “I’m a horrible, worthless, pessimistic sinner” vibe going, we must ignore the multitude of verses that talk about the fact that there are many righteous men and women whose righteousness is not “filthy rags”, and indeed, God will exalt them and bless them.[6]

In order to cope with this inclusive and innate guilt we have been saddled with, we have developed the ultimate “shields down” technology, to use Star Trek vernacular. When you are a small Christian child, you are very consistently taught that no matter what you do, God sees Jesus instead of you! If you sin, God still sees Jesus. No matter what horrid thing you have done, if you are “saved” God sees Jesus. In a nutshell, God sees you as righteous because the death of his Son “cleansed you” from your horrible and otherwise unforgivable sins and pathetic “filthy rags” attempts at righteousness.

Once you let go of the doctrine of substitutional atonement, things start to look a lot different. Rather than disappearing into Jesus, as it were, you begin to get the distinct feeling that you are responsible for your own behavior. You are responsible for your own relationship with God, and you are also responsible for your own consequences. It’s a bit like growing up. And at first, it’s scary.

I can’t tell you how long it took for me to get accustomed to this new paradigm. I felt grief and anger, because I missed being able to just punt the responsibility over to someone else. I felt fear, because all of a sudden I was in the direct line of sight of God Almighty. And somewhat oddly, I also felt a deep longing for God to see me! As a Christian, I KNEW that I was “significant” because Jesus was significant, but now? I was being judged on my own merit, as God’s daughter. How on earth could I measure up? I wanted to jump up and down to get my Father’s attention, yet hide at the same time.

One day, I was feeling particularly lonely in a spiritual sense. I felt just so insignificant. Invisible. Colorless. Spiritually drab. If God was looking at me to be some “rock star” believer, then I knew for sure He’d be disappointed because I just had nothin’.

I took myself out for a solitary walk and inwardly raged; at my circumstances, at my loneliness, and even at God. How I longed to get some message from God that I mattered! How I wanted to know that even though Jesus was not “standing in the gap” between us, I was still valuable!

Just a couple of days before on this same walk, I had been talking to God when some sand hill cranes trumpeted in reply, almost like they were a direct voice of God saying, “Hey, you! You’re not alone!” Well, this time, lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t even notice these lovely birds, until they called out to me again. Immediately, I remembered the last time I had heard them – when they had trumpeted after I cried out to God. Now that they had gotten my attention on God’s behalf, I waited.

You know, God is the great Innovator! He will use whatever means is necessary to get His message across. With Moses, it was an oddly burning bush. With Balaam, it was a talking donkey. With me, it was trumpeting sand hill cranes and a song that immediately followed on the radio playing directly into in my ears. As the song started, the words seemed to be coming directly at me from my Father above.

You with the sad eyes; don’t be discouraged,

Oh, I realize it’s hard to take courage

In a world full of people

you can lose sight of it all

And darkness still inside you makes you feel so small

    

But I see your true colors shinin’ through

I see your true colors and that’s why I love you

So don’t be afraid to let them show

Your true colors, true colors, are beautiful,

like a rainbow.

    

Show me a smile then, don’t be unhappy,

Can’t remember when

I last saw you laughing

If this world makes you crazy

and you’ve taken all you can bear

You call me up because you know I’ll be there

    

And I see your true colors shinin’ through

I see your true colors and that’s why I love you

So don’t be afraid to let them show

Your true colors, true colors, are beautiful, like a rainbow.[7]

 

I bet you didn’t know that God sounds an awful lot like Phil Collins… but this day, He did! It was so amazing because it was JUST what I needed to hear right then! With tears flowing from my eyes, and a giant smile on my face, I just basked in the glory that was my Father’s Presence. With nothing, and no one, between us – I knew that far from disapproving of me – God saw me! My Father indeed saw my heart, saw my “true colors, so beautiful, like a rainbow”. And now that He had gotten my attention, I was finally able to see myself through God’s eyes – and what I saw was, for just one moment, beautiful. Yet because of my insecurities and timidity, it was a lesson that I would have to learn over and over again.

A day or two after my “True Colors” experience, I was once again hurting. The SDA General Conference Session, attended by 70 thousand members of the world church, was taking place in Atlanta, GA, and I was experiencing the loss of my “religious homeland” very deeply. Watching my friends and family members excitedly attend the GC Session brought on excruciating feelings of pain and longing. I cannot tell you how much I grieved at the loss of my church, my SDA culture, and my utter significance itself since embarking on this journey of question and discovery.

As I mentioned earlier, at the time when I discovered that Satan was NOT really named Lucifer, I had been in a position of writing songs for popular Adventist musicians, writing programs for respected Adventist ministries, and receiving respect and accolades from Adventists across the globe. My entire identity as a sixth-generation SDA had always been wrapped up in “being a good Adventist”. Because of this religious birthright, as it were, this ongoing journey away from Adventism has really been unspeakably hard for me.

What has made it even more difficult is the knowledge that I have so utterly devastated my parents with my choice to leave the spiritual land of my fathers. They have dedicated their entire lives in service to the Adventist church, and have  always been good and faithful servants for her cause. In my “Donna the Adventist musician” past, they had always been so proud and supportive of me when I was  writing and performing music for church! They would travel long distances to hear my programs in person, and listened with love and anticipation every time I would call them up to tell them, “I’ve written another song!”

You can only imagine their utter consternation, anguish, and heartfelt grief to realize that their very faithful, very visible, yet very inquisitive daughter had been questioning the “faith of her fathers”. I will never forget the “knock-down drag-out” argument my mother and I had late one evening when Beau and I were visiting her and Dad’s home in Alabama. She challenged me very strongly about the fact that I was questioning Paul’s inspiration and inclusion in the Bible. I was in tears, sobbing; yet I could not recant what I believed to be the truth. I could not understand why my mother was attacking me in this manner! Yet I know that she was trying to reach me out of the depths of a mother’s heart, as one who truly believed her daughter must be on the path to hell!

After that, my family and I just really didn’t speak of our differences in belief. They invited us to church on rare occasions and we would generally decline, because we just felt that to attend would be an utter lie. After all, we believed SO differently now, and our children did not even believe in some of the most precious fundamentals of Christianity; the need for blood sacrifice, Communion, and the Trinity. So we simply learned to keep quiet about our beliefs during family gatherings, just to keep the peace.

Yet it still hurt during the time of the GC Session, knowing that my loved ones were rejoicing in this big worldwide SDA event, and I wasn’t there. The grief of my self-imposed exclusion just wouldn’t go away.

What made it even worse was that while I truly believed in my heart that my beliefs were now a lot more in line with those that Jesus followed, I still had “Adventist programming” inside my brain that said, “God only sees you if you are Adventist. You are only chosen of God if you are SDA. After all, Adventists are ‘The Remnant People’. There can be only One Remnant!” I knew in my mind that this was not true – but my heart still felt like it had been taught to feel all its life. This is what made the week when everyone was at General Conference so difficult.

I cannot tell you how much my heart longed to be there, visiting old friends, meeting new ones, and feeling like a part of a larger entity. I literally felt like crying all week – and did so frequently. The loss of my religious homeland homeland – my spiritual inheritance – was never more profoundly felt.

The last day of General Conference, those feelings came to a head. I was looking at pictures that family members had posted on Facebook of the GC session, and reading their comments of how it was simply heaven on earth. I felt so alone, left out, and invisible. Utterly despondent, I once again cried out to my heavenly Father in my grief. I so longed to know, in what was becoming a regular refrain, that He saw me, that He loved me, and that He still had meaning for me, even though I was no longer an Adventist! I wanted to matter to my Creator!

In tears, I started searching online and ran across a passage in a book on Amazon that struck me like a lightning bolt from above. Somehow, God knew the exact words I needed to read to realize that I still had extreme significance, meaning, and favor in His eyes.

The passage I read talked about how Abraham, the father of the Jews, start out living his life by following the path that his ancestors had walked before him, honoring God as he had been taught. But when AHEYEH God called him to go on a journey to parts unknown, Abraham said, “I will.”

 

The Bible portrays the origin of Judaism in God’s call to Abraham. Abraham is told to leave his childhood home, told to go “to the land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). The life he has known is overthrown in that instant. Abraham has been fated to follow something grander and deeper.

God does not tell Abraham his destination, because the goal cannot make sense to someone who has not yet experienced the journey. Arrival is not the essence. The lesson that Abraham will pass on to his descendants is that the key to the journey is the journey.

The command to Abraham “Lech L’chah” (Go forth) is literally “Go, you.” The Hebrew can also be read as “Go to you,” that is, journey inside yourself. Moving through this world is always an expedition into the “you” – into one’s own soul. Abraham must be willing to leave the community that will not accept his changed spirit. But even more important, he must be willing to break with what has been inside of him until this moment.

In Abraham’s time as in our own, most are content to skate along the surface of their lives. God’s call in Judaism is a challenge to go deeper, which means a challenge to wrestle with difficulty. Abraham must stop looking back on the life that has been provided for him; he must change his focus and look forward to the life he is fashioning for those who will come after. He is no longer just an inheritor but a creator, not only a descendant but an ancestor, no longer a passive recipient of the ideals of others but an idol smasher. The moment that Abraham responded to God’s call by saying, “I am here,” his soul burst out of the cage of convention and began its journey.

This is the model and the challenge for one who undertakes a truly Jewish journey. Quiet and complacency tempt one all along the way. But the call to depth is always there. “Go forth” has no ending – not in the world and not in the terrain of the individual soul.

Jews are called the children of Sarah and Abraham. That is not a statement of biology; it is a statement of destiny. But none can claim a destiny who will not journey.[8]

 

Eureka! My tears were now tears of joy. I sat quietly in reverent submission, head bowed and heart fully exposed in the brilliant spotlight of Heaven’s stage. Finally, it had sunk in. I knew in the deepest part of my soul that my Father was looking at me and Actually Seeing Me. ME! “Non-Adventist”, sort-of Jewish Me! Once again, the Eternal One had heard His beloved child’s cry and cared enough to answer! I was still beloved of God!

Finally, my Father got through to my quiet, hesitant, tentative heart. I realized that I do have a mandate from above as to why I am still here. I am not to be defined by where I have been, but by where I am going! I am “no longer a passive recipient of the ideals of others but an idol smasher”. I have a purpose! The journey, which I have always had difficulty appreciating in my grand rush to get to the destination, IS the purpose. And in traveling the long, solitary road, with no one but my precious husband and my God to cling to, I finally found not only my voice, but also the courage to use it.