“Coming to church, did any one of you see the man standing
butt-naked at the off ramp of 118 Freeway and Porter Ranch? He was holding a
sign saying something about God judging the nakedness of America.”
“If you’d seen him, would you have called the police?” I
continued asking.
“I almost did! But first I decided to talk to him. So I got
out the car and asked him why he was doing such a stupid and disgraceful thing in
God’s name.”
“God told me to do so!” Shouted back the man.
With much indignation in my voice, I asked the people, “Can
you believe this lunatic? Would God EVER ask us to do something so humiliating,
so shameful? Would He EVER expect us to do an act that might make us feel
uncomfortable?”
I then went on to say, “Before answering my questions, let me
read something to you.”
In
the year the field commander, sent by King Sargon of Assyria, came to Ashdod
and fought and took it, God told Isaiah son
of Amoz, “Go, take off your clothes and sandals,” and Isaiah did it, going
about naked and barefooted. Isa.
20:1-2
“I believe the word naked
means butt-naked since it’s the same Hebrew word used to describe Adam and
Eve’s appearance in the Garden. However, even if you believe it means stripped-down
to one’s underwear, as some argue, it was still an extremely shameful act for a
Jewish man to perform. After all, Isaiah didn’t live in America where it’s
fashionable for men to wear their pants at their knees and their underwear
pulled up to their chins.”
“So, my friends, in order to make his point, the Lord
might/will ask his servants to perform acts that are uncomfortable, shameful
and even indecent by our standards. The Bible is filled with incidents like
that.“
A few years ago I had a very strange spiritual experience
that was quite unusual and humiliating. Personally, I would have never sought
such an experience. In fact, earlier, I’d mocked those who had experienced it.
It didn’t live up to my theological standards. Hey, I was a seminary graduate
who had the Creator of the universe all figured out.
On the surface, the experience was not only humiliating, but
also foolish and downright weird. However, through that incident, I came to
know my Savior and his love for me like I never felt and understood before. It
created in me a deeper love for God and a longing for more of him in my life. I
began to seek him like the addict Origen talks about when he says, “Without
ceasing, the soul searches after the Bridegroom, the Word, and when it finds
him, it looks for him again like an addict, in other things as well.” By the
way, I am well aware that Origen, an early Church Father, didn’t have an
orthodox Christology; however, I also believe that all truth is God’s truth.
Unfortunately, my experience didn’t sit well with some of my
more theologically sophisticated Christian friends because it didn’t jive with
their understanding of the Bible. Regardless of how much that experience had increased
my desire to seek my Lord in a much deeper way, they severed their relationship
with me. As if, like the blind man healed by Jesus, that was going to make me
deny the reality of what had taken place in the inner most part of my
being—that deep sense of God’s presence in my life.
Let me finish this post with a challenge to my readers. The
core desire of my ministry, Shahzam Factor, is to see church different (the
incorrect English is intentional). To see church differently, many of us
Christians need to experience the Lord in a new way acknowledging that:
The newness inherent in any
situation of encountering with God is brought by him, not by us, and the
newness it calls for in us is not a newness of physical or psychological or
intellectual experience, it is simply a newness being given to him (and that,
too, is not a matter of psychological or any other kind of experience in
itself, though it may, of course, lead to or involve some kind of
transformation of experience of life).
Simon
Tugwell
The Psalmist says, “As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.” When was the last time YOUR soul longed
after God with that intensity? Please note that I am not asking how much you
love to read or teach the Bible. I am not asking you how much you long to fellowship
with the believers, serve others, or tithe, but thirst after God and his
presence in your life. What if to
fulfill that longing, God requires you to do something humiliating. Will you be
willing to do so? Or at least, will you be willing to rejoice with a friend who
is willing to be humiliated so he/she can draw closer to God?
