CALLING ON JESUS IN THE COLD DARKNESS Paul describes himself and other persons as having three aspects: spirit, soul, and body. (1 Thes 5:23). Without trying to be scientific, I offer the following descriptions of a way of thinking about the human person as a unity of spirit-soul-body. Why bother? Because it is helpful in understanding our life in Christ. We may think of the body as a person s self-expression in three dimensional space. The body is what moves around from place to place, occupies measurable space and has visible form. The body is the material that the soul makes human in form and function. The body is the expression of the soul in the empirical world. And, finally, the body is the instrument of selfcommunication to other human persons. We use body parts to tell others what we think in our mind and feel in our emotions and what we want in our spirit. The soul is not visible in itself, but it is manifest in its effects. The soul is the principle of life of the body. It is the organizing principal of design and function of the body. The soul is the fountainhead of all of our thoughts, feelings, moods and emotions. The soul is the self-expression of the personal spirit in the material of the body. The spirit is the point of origin of our choices and intentions. We call it our personal spirit because it is the self beneath the body and the soul. The spirit is invisible, but manifests itself in our free choices and intentions. Animals have bodies made alive by souls. But they have no power to engage in relationships of I and thou. The human personal spirit is the source of the power to say I and You and in some cases, an I makes the choice to unite with the other saying I love you. Only a personal spirit has the cognitive power to know itself and others as personal spirit. Only a personal spirit has the power make choices that transcend the powers of soul and body. Only the personal spirit can act independently of the impressions, feelings, thoughts, and all the experiences of the human body and soul. In summary: The body is in the soul and the soul is in the spirit. The spirit gives personal being to the soul which makes the body human. The body expresses the soul in the empirical world and the soul expresses the spirit in the human body. The personal spirit is the origin and cause of the human soul and the soul is the origin and cause of the human body in the world. My personal spirit is who I am. The soul and the body is what I have. Using this provisional grammar in speaking of the human composite, let us now address the crisis of the Jesus Prayer and all prayer life. 1
INFLUENCE OF THE BODY AND SOUL UPON PRAYER One of the basic facts of life in this fallen world is the dichotomy within the human person. No human being is completely unified in body, soul, and spirit. All of us are internally divided to some degree. We have conflicts of ideals or we fail in the ideals we embrace. We aim high, but never quite reach the mark. Sometimes we cannot understand our own behavior. We believe we sincerely desire to think, feel, and act in certain ways and we find ourselves acting in contradictory fashion. During our span of life, we fail others and we are failed by others. When our lifetime is over, we simply fail completely in the life of our body. Conscious life for everyone at some points becomes an experience of cold darkness. There is no psychological personality disorder named despair. The behavioral sciences speak of depression. Psychological depression refers only to the patients in their relationship to the empirical environment. Non-religious people interpret their experience people and events in their environment without reference to any deeper significance. Good or bad luck or fortune are often invoked as if they were real beings determining human events. Evil things come upon Christians from two worlds: the world inside and the world outside. Negative attitudes, feelings, and judgments that we entertain toward ourselves come from within ourselves, the world inside us. What happen to us, circumstances that come upon us, and things people think, say, and do to us come from the external world we live in. According to Christian faith, every hair of the head of a beloved child is precious to God. This God wills no evil, not the least evil, upon any creature. Christians believe in a God of omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, eternal, unconditional, grace-love. The last means love given independently of merit or response. For Christians who see the Light, God loves us without regard to our behavior, good or bad; and He gives that grace-love even to those who do not acknowledge it and do not love God in return. Christian faith in the love of God sets up the paradoxical situation of Christians. How does it come about that Christians suffer if the all wise, all powerful, all loving God is providing every instant of their lives? There are two levels of answer, one natural and one supernatural Naturally, God does not impede or prevent human beings from using free will to sin and from the tragic disorder in the material universe caused by sin. God redeems and delivers us from sin and suffering after the fact of our sin and the evil we bring upon ourselves and one another. 2
Supernaturally, Jesus suffered to take away the sin of the world and to show His love for the Father and for sinners. We who are one with Christ are called and privileged to suffer as he suffered and with the same intentions: that the Father be glorified and that the lost be found. God is good, all good, and only good. The will of God initiates no evil of any kind, not even the smallest evil. God endures the evil that we initiate by the evil we will. Yes, God wills to endure evil. God does not will any evil. We sometimes speak of God s permissive will in reference to our sins and to human suffering in general. I find it a weak expression because it suggests that God somehow wills evil as means to accomplish a good end. Not so. My body becomes decrepit with age. It happens to me. I have no other option, so I let it happen. But I do not will it. Evil has its origin in the sinful human will. God lets it happen to Him. He does not will it. In the matter of evil, if God wills anything, He wills Himself to endure the evil of our making. And by willingly enduring, God destroys evil. Apply all this to the experience of cold darkness experienced by a Christian in prayer. It is a suffering, an evil thing. We do not will it and God does not will it. God endures it and we endure it. If our mind is in intellectual darkness and our feelings are in the deepest pit of emotional sorrow, who is the subject of that experience? It is the personal spirit. It is I myself or you yourself. The depth of your being, the origin of your body and soul, is your personal spirit. Your personal spirit is that unique breathe of God once breathed into your mothers womb that made a little biological material become a human person. Your spirit is that which clings to Jesus Christ and is now one Spirit with Him. Your person, that is, your spirit, is what makes you an individual different from every other human being. Not in your mind, and not in your feelings, but in your spirit you make your choice to believe in Jesus and to trust God. We who are in Christ have chosen to live by faith and prayer. There are times when faith seems attractive and inspiring to our soul s reason and feelings. At these times, prayer is full of warmth and light and is easy to do. But there are times when the story of faith seems dim and obscure to our mind times when we feel neither beloved by God nor lovable times when we do not feel liking for ourselves, much less do we feel like the delight of God s heart. Coldness seizes our hearts. We can feel little or nothing of love for Jesus. Darkness descends upon our mind. The gospel revelation that seemed so incredibly beautiful and irresistibly convincing suddenly seems to have little power and appeal to our reason. A voice that is not from God suggests the question: Is faith real or is it just my wishful thinking? We are then experiencing what all of the saints before 3
experienced: the cold and dark night of the soul. But joy comes with the eternal Dawn that rises in Jesus from the tomb. THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST Those outside have no other life beyond the inclinations of their bodies and the feelings and thoughts of their soul. We who are in Christ have the Spirit. Before we were born again, our human spirit was dead. We were led about by the impulses, repulsions, and attractions stirred up by the empirical world or coming out our own fallen human soul. Grace came and we were raised up in the Resurrection of Christ. We clung to the Lord Jesus and we our human spirit was united with His Spirit. When grace came to us, it did not raise our dead human spirit to become a living human spirit. Not at all! Far more than that, our dead human spirit was raised into Life of the Risen Christ in the Spirit. People in grace do no live a separate personal life. We live, not of ourselves or by ourselves. We live in Christ and Christ lives in our personal spirit. When we are going through that night of coldness of heart and darkness mind, we have to bring forth our choice to trust God from a source deeper than though and feeling. We have power in the Spirit to say yes to Divine love that we can neither understand with our minds nor feel with our hearts. I said that God does not will any evil at all, but that He does will to endure it. We have all seen tragic things like a young family who lose their mother or their father. We have stood beside parents in speechless surrender to incomprehensible evil of the meaningless death of their child. The endless ocean of human suffering on the earth is beyond our ability to measure. God does not merely observe our evils with compassion. God endures every one of them as His own suffering. By enduring all human suffering, God destroys all human suffering. When we experience suffering in our own lives or in the lives of others, we must know by faith that it is God in Christ who is suffering the evil. He delivers from evil by undergoing evil. And God s compassion destroys the suffering. God endures all the evil that shall ever be in time, to make it vanish forever in eternity. Now I address you who experience obscurity of mind and dullness of heart at the time of calling upon Jesus. I am speaking to those who are passing through a period when the scriptures are boring and uninteresting when you do not feel the least loving affection for the Savior when you feel doubt whether you were ever an authentic Christian when you cannot sense any impression that you are God s beloved child in whom He takes delight. This is the time for spiritual prayer. Just call out to Jesus because He is Lord and God. Just shout 4
out the bare syllables Jesus even though it sounds like empty noise without meaning or emotion. Why do this? Because Lord Jesus loves, saves, and comes to any human being who calls upon Him. No appropriate feelings of devotion are required. No fine spiritual thoughts are necessary. None of your best thoughts about Him are adequate, so do not think Jesus will not give you His All when you call upon Him with nothing but the sound of your voice. Indeed, the poverty of the mental and emotional content of your prayer calls all the more for His Presence and Mercy. The demons suggest to us that when our feelings and thoughts are empty, cold, and dark, we should not call on the Lord Jesus. Lie! Precisely the time when we are in the cold darkness is when we most need to call on the only Name by which we can be saved. Remember, the revelation of grace. Grace means that God gives us His unconditional love freely, without our meriting it. Grace means that our bad behavior does not cause God to stop loving us and our good behavior does not cause God to love us. Now apply this revelation of God s grace-love for us to our calling on Jesus in prayer. No matter how much devotion we feel, it doesn t cause Our Lord to respond. No matter how dark our minds are or how cold our hearts, it we just call from our personal spirit, Lord Jesus, He will respond with a complete and perfect response. Whoever calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved. We cannot make one hair of our heads black or white. How much less, then, can we command our hearts to feel love for Jesus and our minds to be enthralled with His Truth! If it is not in our power, then it is not our responsibility. No Christian is at fault because she or he cannot have appropriate thoughts and feelings toward God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, it is a greater work of the Spirit in our spirit when we have power to call on Jesus out of the cold darkness. The cold darkness is under the control of God. The evil spirits would use it for our destruction by suggesting to us that it means God does not love us. God strictly measures the limits of the dark night so that it never becomes greater than the power of His Spirit in our spirits. Why does God allow us to suffer like this? He does not allow it. God the Son, the Lord Jesus, continues in us to go through the experience of abandonment in us. See, God does not allow us to suffer; He endures the suffering and triumphs over it in us who refuse to be silenced but cry out all the more: Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. 5