Well, Jacob he loved Rachel, and Rachel she loved him 

And Leah was just there for dramatic effect. 

Well it’s right there in the bible so it must not be a sin 

But it sure does seem like an awful dirty trick. 

(Jacob and 2 women, by Rich Mullins)

I remember listening to that Rich Mullins’ song and being confused by those last two lines, until one day I heard the joke in them. The Bible is an often uncomfortable mirror to look into; it’s not shy about showing us how hurtful humans can be. It’s not shy about showing us how complicated the relationship between God and humanity really is. It’s a rollercoaster of a story, and it tells the whole truth. It tells the whole truth by representing the whole range of human feeling and action. In his song “Jacob and 2 women”, when Rich Mullins sings, “Well, it’s right there in the Bible so it must not be a sin” he’s serving up a side of sarcasm, in order to remind us that the Scriptures are a relentlessly realistic depiction of the screwy, ridiculous, and downright evil things that humans do.  

In the midst of that upset of hot air, mixed motives, plain wickedness, and confused searching for God comes God himself. The Holy One refuses to disengage. The Old Testament is consistent with the New in that, for God, this is a heartbreaking, exasperating endeavor. Jacob wrestles with God and will not let go till God blesses him; and likewise, God wrestles with his Israel through the world’s long, hopeless night – wrestles till he is beaten to a pulp and hammered to a tree. And our wrestling partner just will not quit until we bless him.  

I’ve been watching Jesus move through his ministry in John’s Gospel lately, and one thing that strikes me is that he’s trying so, so hard to help his own people see him. He’s constantly signing the signature of God in his miracles and words, doing works that only God could do. Several times he says that he must keep working while there’s daylight, before it’s too late… just one more sign, one more rescue flare. Will anyone see its light arcing blood-red above the city? He reaches out one more time in hope. 

But the problem turns out not to be a failure to recognize Jesus, but rather a refusal to acknowledge him. They know who he is; they will not bow.  To glorify someone means something like to reveal the truth about their identity. Jesus is glorified again and again; the truth about who he is and where he came from is made available. The light did, in fact, come into the world. Jesus himself diagnoses the problem in a conversation with Nicodemus; in effect he says that we’ve gotten used to darkness and it’s working pretty well for us, so well, in fact that we prefer it to light. 

I can relate. Who hasn’t got ways of dealing with life that we’ve put together to get us through? These are ways of coping that work well enough. I’ve started to think of these as Simulated Atonements. For instance, control works well enough, but what real thing is it simulating? Maybe trust and trustworthiness? Real trust is a bit much to ask, hence control. Or, blame brings a simulated relief, since we really do need to get our guilt off of us and onto someone else. We simply can’t bear it, so, blame to the rescue. But, the real things: responsibility, confession, repentance, apology – hard as they are – supply real relief that blame only simulates. Manipulation (which is another word for idolatry) works decently as a way to get us the things we feel that we need, but it bypasses the pains of mutual love and care, which are themselves the things we truly need. Illicit pleasure simulates the joy and beauty of intimacy long enough to keep us sedated. And so on. 

The thing is, all of the simulations have a grain of truth in them; you can’t have a Perversion without a Version. We wouldn’t keep coming back for seconds if the simulation weren’t a little bit tasty; nothing has any flavor without a little salt in it somewhere. So all evil has to borrow from good in order to have any appeal. And the Simulated Atonements do the same. As I’ve already mentioned, we really do need to get our sin and shame off of us and onto someone else, blame parodies that for us. But blame is just simulating the reality that Jesus’s crucifixion supplies; Jesus is our scapegoat. 

We have immensely complicated ways of maneuvering our sin and the pain it causes, and I have come to believe more and more that Jesus’s death and resurrection are not nearly as simple of a response to our problem as we might at first think. It would be an interesting exercise to trace out all the ways that our coping strategies simulate the real gifts that Jesus makes available at the Cross. I really believe that whatever it is Jesus accomplished at the cross is a mystery so inexhaustibly good that there is no evil or hurt that the power of his atonement fails to encompass and redeem. Still, it’s hard to let go, hard to face Jesus, hard to allow my heart to go out to him, much as it aches to. 

I wrote a song once called Weapons that goes: 

It’s my weapons that weigh me down 

It’s not the waves of sin that make me drown. 

It’s my weapons that pin me to the ground. 

That song started while I was listening to Walt Wangerin, Jr.’s Bible re-telling, “The Book of God”. When he gets to the part where the Israelite slaves cross the Red Sea, he comments that the reason the pursuing Egyptian army drowned was because of their sophisticated weaponry. The Israelites weren’t loaded down; they were poor and unarmed. The Egyptians sunk to the sea floor from the weight of the complicated mechanisms of defense they had made for themselves.

Last night, some friends and I sat around reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, and he talks about how terrified the little tin soldier would be if he were suddenly told that he’d be turned into something other than tin, something alien to him called ‘flesh’. If all you’ve known is skin made of tin, the prospect of being turned into flesh feels like losing yourself. And, of course, it is, for we must lose ourselves to find ourselves, Scripture says. If we try to save our lives we’ll lose them. 

All the things we construct to make us feel powerful, safe, even loved become deadly when reality comes flooding in. I’ve learned from conversations in the counselor’s office that, over the course of our lives, we reach for certain coping tools to deal with whatever is overwhelming us. And it doesn’t do much good to beat ourselves up for trying, even if the best we could manage at the time was to build a boat with a hole in it. In other words, I’m not writing this to you to pile guilt on top of the guilt that you, like all of us, try to but can’t bear. We all do the best we can until we find out there’s something better. And, here’s the Good News, these simulated atonements we’ve fashioned for ourselves aren’t the only game in town. That means we have a choice, because real peace with each other, ourselves, and God has been brought within reach. 

I’ve built all kinds of boats for myself, and I have to keep frantically bailing them out as I sink.  Meanwhile, God’s own ark, Jesus himself, steps lightly upon the surface of the dark deeps. Our hearts are mistrustful from so much hurt and we wonder, “Is it just a ghost of hope on the water, some passing phantom of peace that will sink us if we go to it?” Still, Jesus calls to us, “It’s really me. Step out of the boat, and come to me all who are burdened and heavy laden. I will give you rest.”