It’s been a while since I’ve been blogging but I’ve been tempted back by a meme someone posted in a group that I hear semi-often from various corners. It’s an idea about communion with God and I think it’s false, but there’s so many nuances to unpack about ways in which maybe it’s a little bit true, and ways in which it’s still very much false, that it seemed a blog post was in order. So here’s the meme I want to unpack:

“The only thing separating you from God is the thought that you are separated from God.”

This sounds so spiritual and wise, right? To really get inside this phrase and unpack all that is true and not true about it, first we have to talk about what our natural state is before God — just how might we be “separated” or “not separated” from Him to begin with?

We Are Connected
It might surprise readers that an evangelical writer will start out by saying this, but there’s a very real sense to which we’re always connected to God. After all, Paul is quoted in Acts 17 saying, “In Him, we live, and move, and have our being.” It’s hard to see “separation” in that sort of relationship, basically swimming around in Him all day, every day. Also, the writer of John in his first chapter says that Jesus is “the light that lights EVERY person who comes into the world.” In other words, the very light that animates your self-existence comes from God, and is part of God. And this takes us back to one of the wisdom books in the Old Testament where it is written that when someone dies, “the spirit returns to God who gave it.” So your very essence, your spirit, came from God and will return to God.

So here’s the rub — why doesn’t it FEEL that way? Some people will balk that I dared to use the big “four-letter word” that starts with an “F” that religionists hate — yes, I used the word “feel.” Why is it so hard to FEEL that you are are swimming around in God’s very essence, constantly, or that you are lit up with God’s own Son’s very light, or that you possess a spirit within you that is so much a part of God that the moment you stop breathing it will run right back to the God it came from? If you’re really surrounded by Him and infiltrated by Him, sourced by Him, why is it so hard to sense this? Or, ok, let’s dump the F word, and forget “feelings.” Why is God so hard to locate? So hard to see, hear, or find any objective evidence of whatsoever?

THIS is what I mean by “separation.” We are all held together by the very God who defines existence (and therefore we exist) but we’re separated in the sense that its so difficult to sense Him.

And here is why the meme is wrong. You can tell yourself all day, “I am not separated from God. I’m surrounded by Him. He’s in me. I’m held together by Him” and no matter how much you think thoughts about how there is no separation there, merely thinking thoughts of connection DOES NOT in and of itself grant you ACCESS. Because that’s the real opposite of separation….the real place of connection is only possible if you can ACCESS Him with some sense of yours. If you can feel, or see, or hear, or touch, or encounter, THEN you can say you aren’t experiencing separation any more.

But if you are sitting right next to me, and yet there’s a giant wall between me and you that keeps me from any sort of way to see or hear or touch you — it doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself, “my friend is just on the other side of that wall and I just have to believe it” — we are still separated. We still can’t experience each other, no matter how close we actually are. And that sucks. (And by the way, what else sucks is that WordPress probably puts an ad somewhere right about here about some church or Bible teaching I really don’t endorse, so beware that the ads are not mine.)



WHERE ‘SEEKING’ COMES IN


So back to where Paul talked about how we live in God and have our very being inside Him, in Acts 17….he went on to say in another spot in Acts 17 that even though God is NOT FAR from any one of us, that He is trying to get us to grope for Him and find Him. In other words, we are meant to go looking. We are called to active seeking. This is very different than just trying to psyche ourselves up to “believe we aren’t separated.” I know He’s right here, but that doesn’t matter. I need to figure out how to GET to Him.

And if you’ve been doing the Christian-y Bible thing for a while, you’re probably familiar with the idea of a veil or curtain that hung down over the Most Holy Place in the temple where God’s presence was, separating the worshippers from His Holy Presence. That’s a weird thing to think about if there is no such thing as separation between us and Him. And if you’ve been doing the Christiany thing, this is the part where you say, “But Jesus tore the veil!” And, so He did. When He died on the cross, that thick heavy veil thing tore itself in two, from top to bottom.

But see, that still doesn’t completely help us. Because …where is He? Can you get your hands on Him? Can you touch Him? Can you hear Him? Can you receive His thoughts and feelings?

If you can, it’s not just because the veil was torn. It’s because Jesus went through that veil and invites us to come and do the same. Here’s a secret: that veil that got torn was only an Earthly curtain hiding an Earthly chamber where the “real” presence of God wasn’t really hiding out anyway. (Because remember, here on Earth, He literally is everywhere. Just kind of hidden in everywhere, though.) But what that Earthly “Holy Place” chamber represents and what the Earthly torn curtain represents is something much more real, much more High than an Earthly Temple. It’s a symbol and a shadow of a Temple where God really does make Himself at home in a very pronounced way — in Heaven. And that torn veil speaks of something not that is permanently torn down — or else everyone would be able to see and sense God all the time, 24/7. But instead it speaks of a WAY that was made for people to get through that curtain — a “new and living way” is what the writer of Hebrews calls it in Hebrews 10:20 (in case you want to look it up.).

Communion with God then is a possibility. There is accessibility. He’s all around us but that doesn’t help us until we get to the other side of “the veil” to know Him, to sense Him, feel Him, hear Him, connect with Him. In short, the veil is the separation, but we are invited to move through it, so that we can experience Him instead of separation.

So how do we move THROUGH the veil? Hint: it’s not by simply telling ourselves to believe that we are not separated. That’s not how it works. Although here’s where the truth of the statement comes in: if all we do is tell ourselves we are separated from God, we get too used to that as our reality and what it actually does is kill our hunger and our motivation to do what Paul said to do — to “grope” — for something more. If we believe we are separated from God and that’s just our situation — or worse yet, we tell ourselves all the time that we are NOT separated but we get used to living the experience of separation while telling ourselves that our experience doesn’t matter so long as we think thoughts that say we “aren’t” separated (and that’s infinitely more tragic, really, because we think we have to be happy with being shut out while decieving ourselves and calling it connection) , then we never stir ourselves to seek, reach, and MOVE through that “new and living way” that Jesus made through that veil.

Fine, how do you take the “new and living way” and get through the veil? That’s another blog post. Suffice it to say though it’s not just about psyching yourself up to tell yourself you’re not separated. You are separated, even though He’s right there, until you move through the veil to meet with Him face to face. That’s the portion for everyone who receives the Son and His work on the cross, for everyone who bows their knee to Him as Lord — to rise up and come to Him through the veil.

“When you said, Seek My Face, my heart said to you Lord, Your Face will I seek.” — Psalm 27.

Seeking is not the same as telling yourself you’ve already got something. Seeking requires acknowledging you don’t have it, and going after it, looking for it.

And that’s a great place to end this post.