Too Close for Comfort?

By Audrey Stallsmith

In a mystery novel I recently was reading, the middle-aged heroine descends unlighted stairs at night, clutching at the stair rail. Only to touch someone else’s hand in the dark.

That sort of thing would make anyone’s pulse jump. But, even under less fraught conditions, any of us can be startled by finding out that we aren’t alone when we thought we were. Especially if we are doing something embarrassing at the time, such as picking our noses or talking to ourselves!

So we probably also would be startled to realize how close God always is to us—in every sense of the word. Since we are beings who think in pictures, we often still perceive Him as being a muscular and angry old man floating up in the sky somewhere amidst a swarm of angels and watching us with a critical air. Much like the image of Him in the Sistine chapel, in fact!

But, as Dallas Willard points out in The Divine Conspiracy, “’the first heaven’ in biblical terms, is precisely the atmosphere or air that surrounds your body. . .it is precisely from the space immediately around us that God watches and God acts.” And, even in that Sistine Chapel image, Deity was near enough to Adam to touch him.

God therefore is so close, as in “being near in space or time,” that He actually can see those food-encrusted dishes I didn’t wash last night still cluttering up the sink.  Not to mention the dirt in my heart that I intended to get around to eventually also. Just as the reflection off of the first snow of the season exposes the dinginess of all that we own, not to mention the lines in our faces, the very idea of the eternal God shining on all that we are can make us feel grubby and ugly too. Not to mention old.  

All of this explains why it is so difficult for us to believe how close God is, in terms of His finding us dear too. In fact, other definitions of “close” mention “a strong uniting feeling of respect, honor, or love” and “being bound by mutual interests, loyalties, or affections; intimate.”

After the aforementioned heroine’s initial start of surprise, she wasn’t alarmed by the unseen hand. She assumed it was that of her protective nephew who had gone downstairs before her to investigate unexplained noises.  She wasn’t alarmed, that is, until she spoke to that nephew and he responded from much further away! 

We do a lot of reaching for reassurance out of the gloom which sometimes falls upon our lives too. But, when we actually encounter God’s hand in that darkness, how we respond will depend on how much we trust Him.           

If he hasn’t given us what we wanted in the past, we may have come to the conclusion that He literally doesn’t think much of us because we are so insignificant as to be beneath His notice. So finding Him actually beside us can make us jump in almost fearful surprise. As Willard points out, our fatalistic conclusion that God doesn’t care is exactly the attitude Jesus was attempting to contradict in His Sermon on the Mount, when he pointed out that our heavenly Father is just as interested in the poor and no-account as He is in the rich and powerful. 

Actually, the love of God for His creations shouldn’t be so hard for us writers to believe, since we prattle on about the characters we have created ad nauseam to other people who really aren’t interested. They probably think we are worse than doting grandparents.

So maybe it’s time we started thinking of God as doting on His characters too, not in the making excuses for us way of grandparents but in the genuinely knowing what is best for us way of parents. Good parents understand their offspring better than anybody else does. That includes being all too familiar with those children’s weaknesses as well as their strengths. But they still love those kids anyway just because they are theirs. 

That’s one of the many reasons I miss my mother. She always knew what sort of things would stress me out—even though they weren’t always the same sort of things that would stress her out. And she would make allowances for me accordingly. Of course, her knowing me so well could be downright annoying at times too, as she seldom was deceived by any “fronts” that I put up. Fronts, “external and often feigned appearances,” are one of the main things that separate us from each other and prove that we aren’t satisfied with ourselves. 

Willard reminds us that “We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that it is good for us to be and to be who we are.” In other words, we cannot reject the self that was made by God and love Him at the same time.

Our rejection of self implies that God didn’t do well by us, that he should have made us better looking, smarter, richer, more outgoing—or perhaps all of the above! But we need to remind ourselves that our heavenly Father understands us and what is best for us even better than our parents do. 

Before I let that idea terrify me, I need to remember that He doesn’t love us because we are perfect, but because we are His. Another definition of close is “being near in relationship” as in “close relatives.” The assurance that we really are part of His family, made in his image, should put an end to all our grasping attempts to prove ourselves.  The recent Overcomer movie reminds us that our identity shouldn’t be centered in what we have accomplished but in Whose we are.

A documentary on Mr. Rogers, which we also watched last weekend, implied that it was his own insecurities which made him able to identify with those of children. He knew that we all crave reassurance that we are wanted just the way we are and that someone bigger and stronger will take care of us. 

In fact, Rogers, who was a Presbyterian minister, reportedly asked his wife towards the end of his life whether she thought he truly was a sheep rather than a goat. Implying that even he had doubts about his own acceptability to God. She was able to reassure him that he was one of the most sheepish people out there—in more ways than one!    

As Willard points out, we Christians should long since have gotten over the fear that we are unloved or unwanted. “I no longer need to secure myself in life, for I am secure,” he writes. 

He goes on to ask a question that should reassure all us loners and klutzes who were the last to be picked for games as children. “What really matters, of a personal nature, once it is clear that you are included? You have been chosen. God chooses you.”