More Than Forgiveness (Paperback)

Chapter One

They stood in line for twelve hours, nearly twenty thousand of them, to view the body of their friend and lover. He was Eugene "Big Daddy" Lipscomb, defensive lineman for the Baltimore Colts during the 1970s.

Dead at thirty-one, the Big Daddy had been known for his power. He was a six-foot-six-inch, three-hundred-plus-pound Bunyan with a seven-foot wingspan who moved forty-pound weights with his fingertips and tackled strong men with one arm.

"When Big Daddy wrapped a guy with those long arms, he stayed wrapped," said his coach, along with half of the league. "The best man I ever saw at knocking people over," said another.

And there was more. One player remembered his "heart of gold," and another his "gentle spirit." He was the Babe Ruth of football, a man with big talent and a heart to match. More than once Big Daddy carried children on his shoulders or escorted whole families through the clothing store, buying them shoes, pants, and winter jackets. Unlike many of today's gladiators, Lipscomb helped his victims back to their feet after driving them into the turf, and often gave up his bed to derelicts caught in the cold Baltimore snow. But Big Daddy was a complex man with more than one side. This was his Dr. Jekyl.

His Mr. Hyde was evil and afraid. At night, when the demons came out, Lipscomb would slide his bed against the door so no one could get in. He kept a loaded gun under his pillow, and chained a friend's giant dog to the foot of his bed.

"I've been scared most of my life," he explained to confused roommates. "You wouldn't think so to look at me, [but] it gets so bad I cry myself to sleep."

One night while carousing through Baltimore with a friend, the big man suddenly broke down and started crying. "Ah, the Daddy ain't right," he mumbled over and again, "the Daddy ain't right."

"You'd walk up, and his mind would be somewhere else," remembered one teammate, "[then] you'd look and he was crying." His coaches reckoned that "the haunts of his childhood pursued him to the end of his life." Perhaps, but by the time he died, most of the Daddy's problems were of his own making.

In his worst moments, and there were lots of them, the Daddy drank to excess, trashed hotel rooms, gambled away his salary, and slept with prostitutes, girlfriends, ex-wives, and even hotel maids.

"Willing women were all around and he was indiscriminate," a friend recalled. On the night of his death, he'd been in the company of two prostitutes before stopping at a friend's house to shoot up (twice) with what would become his final dose of heroine. According to the coroner's report, he died with enough smack in him to kill five people.

He was survived by a fiancée and three ex-wives, the second of whom he married while still wed to the first, whom he'd impregnated while dating the second. The second marriage ended in annulment after eight months of abuse. Like the good coach said, he was "the best man I ever saw at knocking people over."

The reason I bother to tell you about Big Daddy Lipscomb is that he is a type of modern man. We are big, powerful, fast, rich ... hollow, afraid, haunted, angry, and dead.

We live fast and die faster. We have brawny reputations and lots of acquaintances we call "friends." But we are running scared, pursued by the haunts of a childhood that was lost in the Garden. We suffer deep problems with even deeper causes. Like a diabetic who drinks Kool-Aid thinking it will quench his thirst, modern people do not see the root of the problems that drive them. They do what they think they must to find relief, not fearing the consequences of tomorrow. They only know it feels better today.

"And where will you be in five years?" I asked a middle-aged woman contemplating divorce.

"I don't know," she said, "I never thought about that."

She is not alone. Many drift backwards into the fire only because they are tired of the frying pan. They try to solve deep and fundamental problems with fast and foolish answers. They act upon their instincts. They put off the pain. They bide their time. But very soon-ready or not-the rent will come due, because it must.

You see, human souls are working even when their minds are turned off. They are always keeping score, always measuring their chances of making it in the next world. As the holiness writer Daniel Steele put it, their consciences may be seared or even put to sleep, but they can never be changed. That is, we may say that evil is good, but we will never get our souls to believe it. That is the gift of conscience. So even when we say "it doesn't matter," it does. Though we are never alone, we're still lonely. While we whistle in the dark, we tremble. Even as we terrify the league, we sleep with our bed against the door. We can have sex, but we can't make love. We are rich, yet always hungry; spiritual but not religious. We have sterling reputations, but inside we are insecure. And all we know is that "the Daddy ain't right."

Even in the Church we are committed, yet unfulfilled. Our lives are clean, but our thoughts are dirty. We sit together at worship, but seldom speak at home. We are all driven by the very desires, fears, and wounds of the Big Daddy, but some of us have hidden these under the rituals of our faith. Is this why one skeptic called modern conversions "a baptism of neurosis"?

But every now and then the soul of the modern person peeks out from under mounds of activity and whispers, "What about me?" And if we will put everything down and listen, we will find that Christ (and not religion), that holiness (and not good, clean living), that repentance (and not serial apologies) constitute the life we miss but cannot describe.

Like the Big Daddy, we have problems only holiness can fix. This is why our faith must be cloaked in terms of a "relationship." If it is not, it will have the same appeal as a Betty Ford clinic. It will be something to help us dry out, shape up, get back in line. Our lives will seem like a monastery, only with less fun and more furniture.

So what are the problems that modern people face? How are these deep needs met in those who lose themselves in Christ?

The Perversion of the Ordinary

To answer this, we must return to the Garden (Eden) from which we came. There is a reason for this. In Christian theology, we are always trying to balance two poles: sin and salvation; depravity and perfection. Like any good story, the Bible must unravel in the end whatever predicament it describes in the beginning. Whatever was ruined by the Fall must eventually be restored by conversion; for ultimately, that is the purpose of conversion, and that is the story of the Bible. If we do not balance these two opposites-that is, if we minimize sin in order to emphasize holiness (as the holiness movement has done), or if we minimize holiness in order to emphasize the depth and deceit of sin (as the Reformed tradition has done)-we skew the meaning and miracle of grace. We must always hold these two in balance. One is an action, the other an equal and opposite reaction. Sin is the question. Holiness is the final answer. Sin is our journey away from God, and holiness is the homecoming in which we are granted all of our former privileges-and more (see Luke 15:21-24).

So what happened to "Big Daddy" in the Fall? How did he get this way? What does he need in life, and where can he get it?

The Effects of the Fall

Like Adam before the Fall, the Big Daddy was once not merely sinless, but innocent, transparent, and unselfish. Yet even before he'd finished eating the fruit from the forbidden tree, Adam was hiding from others ("they made coverings for themselves," Gen. 3:7) and running from God ("they hid from the Lord God among the trees," Gen. 3:8). Man's rebellion ("you will be like God," Gen. 3:5) had crystallized into fear ("I was afraid ... so I hid," Gen. 3:10). Thus, the Big Daddy's problem is that he is smitten by sin in two ways. First, he is alienated from God, which, among other things, means that he is nearsighted (his "mind is on earthly things," thus he "cannot see the light of the gospel" Phil. 3:19, 2 Cor. 4:4), and he is dumb (that is, "darkened in [his] understanding," Eph. 4:18).

Second, and as a result of this, he is dreadfully selfish. To borrow Luther's poignant phrase, he is "curved inward upon himself." From the beginning, he has sewn fig leaves for himself, and he will likely continue with this fetish until the day he dies.

But all is not lost. Solomon observed that God "has also set eternity in the hearts of men" (Eccl. 3:11), which means that we still carry the peculiar image of God. While human beings share many things with other creatures, there are distinctive needs that only we possess and that only God can fill. In other words, the problem with the Big Daddy is not that he has evil desires. His desires are the same as anyone else's. The problem with the Big Daddy (and every person) is that he is seeking to fulfill these normal desires in foolish and perverted ways. If and when the Daddy is converted, we must not expect him to have a new set of needs, but rather to meet the old, familiar needs in new and more satisfying ways. For if a person truly enjoys sinning, it is rarely the sin itself he enjoys. More likely, he enjoys the relief that he believes sin will bring to the deeper, more basic, human needs we call the image of God. These needs are the human being's trademark. They give him meaning and purpose. They make him human. They also make him vulnerable. And what does he need? I believe he is looking for significance, security, innocence, intimacy, and hope. And because he is nearsighted and dumb-that is, because he is affected by the Fall-he will always seek to meet these needs in selfish and perverted ways.

In order to find significance he will resort to power or pride, because both will make a person feel good about himself. When he feels the need for security he will hoard things (greed) or he will seek guarantees since both of these provide a sort of refuge. To recover innocence he will employ confession or therapy. To find intimacy, he will engage in sex. To feel hope he will seek pleasure.

Basic Human Needs Through the Fall

Significance Power/Pride Security Greed/Guarantees Innocence Confession Intimacy Sex Hope Pleasure

The Corruption of Desire

But just as there are perverted ways of gratifying natural desires, there are pure and more satisfying ways as well. In fact, "the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8). In other words, anything sin can do, holiness can do better. For in true holiness, we are not only separated from sin, we are made fully human again. We are free to gratify our needs, this time through the cross. We are liberated from the bondage to our appetites. The hiding is over. We can search ourselves without being afraid of what we might find, for "whenever our hearts condemn us ... God is greater than our hearts and he knows everything" (1 John 3:20). We are subject to genuine sorrow and thus to genuine joy (Luke 6:21).

In holiness, we find our significance not in power, but in service; not in pride, but in humility. We find our security neither in greed nor in guarantees, but in simple trust. To recover our innocence, we have our sins forgiven and our sinful natures cleansed. We find intimacy as much in worship as in sex. To feel hope, we turn to suffering rather than to pleasure alone. We have the same basic needs, now redeemed through the Cross.

Basic Human Needs Through the Fall Through Holiness

Significance Power/Pride Service/Humility Security Greed/Guarantees Trust Innocence Confession Cleansing Intimacy Sex Worship Hope Pleasure Suffering

This explains how Christ could be tempted without having evil desires, for temptation is merely the urge to fulfill an otherwise innocent need by perverted means. The temptation itself is not evil, nor is the need upon which the temptation preys. No, the evil occurs when a basic human need and the opportunity to fulfill it in unordained ways conceive an act or thought contrary to the will of God. As a human being, Christ carried within him every basic human need. And he was given ample opportunities to fulfill these needs in selfish, unordained ways. But as God, he resisted each opportunity and found his joy in holiness.

The Homecoming of Holiness

Each of us faces the same dilemma. By nature, we need what is ordinary and innocent. Through our sinful nature we have strong inclinations to fulfill these needs in perverted ways. To have our natures cleansed, that is, to be sanctified, is to have our inclinations miraculously changed, our minds reprogrammed, our appetites brought under control (now taking orders rather than giving them) so that even though we have the same basic needs, we see them for what they are and gratify them in the ways God originally intended. In this way, holiness restores us to a new yet familiar condition. The holy person, therefore, is not really different from the rest of us, neither is he faking his righteousness. He has the same needs as the rest of us, only he gratifies them through the Cross, the ultimate satisfier. Thus, the curse of the Garden is undone.

Once we view salvation and holiness in this way, it becomes clear that the search for the fulfillment of these needs does not belong exclusively to the Christian. Indeed, everyone is looking for the same things. The secular person does not need to become spiritual in order to try to meet these needs. He is already spiritual. He is incurably religious. Thus he will try to fill the void in his life, bouncing from one idea to the next, until he finds ultimate satisfaction in Christ. For one cannot know the whole content of any need until it is finally satisfied. One cannot fully describe thirst until he has discovered water. Until then, he will only know that sand cannot meet the need. In just this way, no one can fully understand his need for significance or intimacy until he has discovered service and worship. Until then, he can only know that power and sex do not quench these raging thirsts. Holiness then, is a homecoming. The restless heart finds its rest in Christ.

Continues...