Fragile
I had a thought last night as I was falling asleep. I imagined God–Jesus, really–as a blossom with paper-thin, purple petals. And I thought: he was actually fragile like this. He chose fragility. He chose a form in which he could be crushed instantaneously without the ability to fight back. He was subjected to all the madness of this world. That feels so significant. It says to me that he is not dismissive of our physical world, or poised to rain down fire and obliterate it. Instead, he chose presence. I can’t tell you exactly what he is communicating through this, but these days, I do wonder if it suggests that rescue from hardship and suffering is not his ultimate goal for us or our world at this moment in time. It's a hard and enigmatic idea, this. Maybe you even find it abhorrent. If you’re reading, I hope you trust that I understand and feel that feeling, too.
As parents, we sometimes hold our kids down while a bone is being set, or stitches are put into place, or peroxide is poured into a wound. We hold our kids while fever or disease ravages their bodies–as they scream in pain or as they sit comatose unable to process trauma. We hold them and we wish for all the bad to go away–all the abusers to die immediately and all the sharp and dangerous things to be blunted and all the impossibilities to be made possible. We long for these things. Sometimes we don’t do them because we’re powerless. Sometimes it’s because we aren’t strong enough or aware enough or–God forbid, but yes–selfless enough. There are a myriad of reasons. In the parent metaphor transferred, we assume God does the same for the same reasons–he isn’t aware enough or powerful enough or loving enough. It’s our experience so it’s all we can imagine. This infuriates us and leaves us deeply unsatisfied.
Coming back to this question of fragility, and God’s apparently unconventional way of being Deity, I wonder if this perspective could be turned on its head? What if his current posture towards the world is because he is too strong, too aware, too loving? What if it’s not a lack but an overabundance that leads to things going on as they are? We all want to believe we are worthy and deserving of salvation. When we call for justice, we don’t usually mean upon ourselves. But in the hypothetical scenario in which none of us are worthy of grace–if, as God says, to him murder is the same as hatred, and we hate Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Rush Limbaugh or Ruth Baden Ginsburg, then we all have to go. Could it be his over-kindness that keeps our world spinning as is? And so–and so–and so–we suffer. And he hates it. But love stays his hand.
What can a God like that do before his New promised Creation comes, then? He can choose fragility and come next to us. He can come into our physical world and eat food that tastes bad and let fever ravage his body and wonder where he will sleep at night and get lost from his parents and be rejected by his brothers and neighbors and be dismissed. He can be whipped. Stones thrown at him. Experience hunger. Have no one to trust but God alone. Be utterly misunderstood by those closest to him. Have nails drive through his skin and take on weight that wasn’t his to bear and through all this, he can sidle up next to us and say: I see your loneliness. Pain. Grief. Uncertainty. Confusion. Fear. Hatred. Mockery. Rejection. Darkness. He has entered our experience.
It’s not a perfect answer for the doubts. I still don’t know how to make sense of it all. Many times, I’ve been in a place where any of the musings above would have entered my brain bitter and damaging as poison. So if you have stuck it out through this verbal wrestling, I thank you for your patience and trust. I have no answers to give anyone, but what I can say with authority is that this concept of the fragile God utterly captures me. It has arrested me and I haven’t been able to liberate myself from it. To date, I have discovered no safer place for my fears and griefs than to be nestled next to this Someone who is so empathetic they would risk what I risk in order to love me. I can’t escape the wonder of that. Frankly, it sustains me through doubts and liberates me to scream obscenities at him (sometimes for years at a time) because I feel safe from anything within that love. I feel a kind of acceptance in this place that has been too compelling to walk away from. It hasn’t stopped me from keeping bags packed at the door. Even walking through it sometimes. In the mornings, sometimes fainter than others, I can feel him moving about in the home of my heart saying “I’m glad to see you today.” And then…I don’t know. I just stay a little longer.
