The Thin Edge

Before the holidays, I sold a few sets of books that were collecting dust in my library and ordered a stack of new ones from Amazon, including Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the unlikely people who help you) by Jim Palmer. What a ride! I’m trying my best to finish the last couple of chapters, but I wanted to share a few quotes from the chapter entitled, “Sex, Lies, and Paratroop Deployment.”

At some point in his journey as a Christian, Jim Palmer traveled to an undisclosed location in South Asia where many of the sex trafficking stories originate (like Thailand). He accompanied a special team from International Justice Mission (see IJM’s video here for a brief overview of their ministry). He was disturbed by what he witnessed: girls as young as ten being enslaved, threatened, and forced to engage in prostitution. He describes one scene as he and the IJM team pose as customers: “These ten- to fifteen-year-old girls looked pathetic and terrified as they were chided by the brothel owner to look energetic and maintain eye contact with customers who were making their rape selection. The younger they were, the more you paid.” The undercover team would gather enough information to mount a raid on the brothel and rescue as many girls as possible.

On the flight home, the tattered shreds of Jim’s worldview left him asking questions like, “Where was God today?” He candidly admits that he was glad to be going back home to his world, leaving the sex trafficking world behind for God to deal with. That was God’s business, not his! Then this thought dawned on him,

I don’t really want a “relationship” with God. Here’s what I want. I want to share with God all I feel, all I need, all that grieves me, all that makes me happy, the puzzling things, the fun things, and the hard things, but I would prefer that God keep his stuff to himself. I don’t want to hear about his pain and share in his grief. I don’t mind listening to God as long as I’m receiving solutions, answers, and advice. Maybe what I really want is a divine vending machine: pop in my prayer, press the button for my need, and I’m good to go. A professional live-in massage therapist and a Starbucks within walking distance would be nice, too.

Any relationship involves two people, you and the other. It seems that in a “relationship” with God, we would desire to listen to the Other to learn what the Other is really like. But how is this possible without going through the adventure of each day with the Other? Can we personally and intimately know someone without sharing experiences, doing things together—little things as well as big things, and taking the risks of love together? Wouldn’t we want to learn how to love those whom the Other loves, to see them through his eyes? We would want to rest and celebrate together, to share beautiful things, to laugh together. But wouldn’t we also want to enter into the pain and grief the Other feels when pain, injustice, and cruelty are inflicted upon those he loves? In every abusive home where a child cries in fear and pain, and in every city street where a homeless person shivers under newspapers on the pavement, the living Christ is there. Whether it’s across town or on the other side of the globe, suffering people surround us. Maybe “carrying Jesus’s cross” is our free choice to become compassionately involved with him in the pain of others and be partners with God in bringing healing and transformation. [pp. 144-45]

I’ve been thinking along these same lines for several years now, so it’s really encouraging to find a fellow Christian expressing my frustrations and questions about what it means to relate to the Almighty. If I’m serious about living dangerously in 2008, then I desperately need to know Him—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—more deeply; otherwise, how will I ever discern how he/they are leading me. Since this blog often serves as my confessional, I admit the one-sidedness of my God journey: as painful and embarrassing as it sounds coming from an ordained minister and missionary, it’s been all about me most of the time, like the chorus of Toby Keith’s hit country song, “I Want to Talk About Me”…

I wanna talk about me
Wanna talk about I
Wanna talk about number one
Oh my, me, my
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see
I like talking about you, you, you, you, usually, but occasionally
I wanna talk about me
I wanna talk about me

There are several ways to listen to this song theologically. First, you can put yourself in the songwriter’s cowboy boots and imagine yourself singing this song to God. You go to church, listen to sermons, and read the Bible—learning all about God’s exploits, His power and greatness, and responding with dutiful admiration in worship; yet all the while, you just want to talk about you. But what if God were to sing this song? Go ahead. Watch this YouTube video…and imagine God wearing Toby Keith’s white hat, listening to his chatty followers 24/7, and feeling shut out of the relationship. Is it remotely possible that God feels this way, that he simply wants us to give him equal time? That he wants to speak to us, but he can’t get in a word edgewise? Of course! Listen to Jim Palmer once again,

You’d have to be comatose not to feel God’s hurt and anger ooze from the pages of Scripture over the oppression of the weak and vulnerable. Even after all my sophisticated exegesis of the Old Testament prophets and words of Jesus, I can’t seem to get away from the fact that the main message of God to his people about injustice is to get off our rear ends and do something! This goes way deeper than feeling guilty about doing more; I’m trying to figure out how I got to the place where the things that break the heart of God are so marginal to mine.

I’m starting to wonder if I can even have a “relationship” with God this way, and I’m left with the question of how much I really want to know God. There’s no having it both ways. Whether I like it or not, the God who dances over the breathtaking sunrise weeps over each victim of brutality. [pp. 145-46]

I love Palmer’s piercing transparency and authenticity. He speaks powerfully to me, even if everyone else has their stuff together and I look like an idiot. The bass player for The Allman Brothers Band coined a phrase that’s new to me, calling Jim Palmer “the head of the pack of the new ‘Evanradicals.’” Palmer lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and you can read his blog here. I’ll leave you with one more quote. It’s toward the end of the chapter I mentioned above, after he explains the almost-paramilitary-like extraction of young girls from the sex trafficking trade:

Maybe the kingdom of God needs a few more who are willing to kick some tail and take names if necessary. Sure, we need to pray for victims of injustice, but has anyone thought of, well, like, rescuing them?