Interior Work
Welcome to part four of a four-part series on Habakkuk, written by Beth Ann Fisher. In case you missed it, here’s part one, part two, and part three.
Reflection Roundup reports from conversations couched in relationships. Here, readers will find boots-on-the-ground and “live from the field” activities of people intent on increasing their understanding of what it means to live like Christ in the world. As always, listening broadly draws together differing perspectives from which we can learn but with which we may not concur.
Habakkuk carried to God the personal and communal disorientation we all experience at times, an ancient outcry. A lost feeling which, in the spiritual life, can come in a few various yet common forms. This is the fourth and final post in a series unpacking forms that people might wish were not so common, while together we stand on the rampart watching. Here we wait for fresh awareness – dare we say understanding? – of God’s faithfulness.
Pitfalls common to those on the ramparts can include anger, an absolutely practical and common reality – yet one surprisingly difficult to admit. Why is it so difficult to admit such a common malady? Shoot straight: I think it’s deeper and more fundamental. Anger touches either fear or pride.
In Habakkuk chapter 2, God and Habakkuk continue their experience together. God shares with Habakkuk the spiritual and even natural victory behind the disorienting circumstances during this shared vision. The oracle comes right on the heels of God’s first response to Habakkuk’s complaint where God says (paraphrased), “Your biggest challenge is your vehicle to freedom.” Habakkuk essentially says, “I wish I’d never asked.”
What common vehicle for deliverance might many people share? The marriage relationship, designed to provide an earthly shade of the heavenly reality of God’s unconditional love for people, seems an obvious tool in the hands of our divine Teacher. Hopefully it is one that is quite unlike a Babylonian invasion, yet it’s a crucible God often uses. That which by definition invites change refines character. Only those whom we love the most can reveal and motivate in the special way we know they can.
Some of the best advice we have applied within our own marriage was passed to a classroom of senior high school students we were teaching on the topic, and it was this: always give your partner permission to reinvent themselves in any season of life. A new season. Making space. Permission-giving. This doesn’t sound so hard. Why might encouraging “our person” to reinvent themselves if they wish and giving them space to do so pack such a punch? Even cause a little anger to rise up?
Examining different directions the thoughts of people can carry their beliefs and ultimately their behaviors, Benedictine nun Mary Margaret Funk wrote a little book called Thoughts Matter. Specifically regarding anger, she calls her readers to examine their interior lives. Yet, generationally, a call to this type of faith activity is not so much one people’s ears are trained to hear.
While contemporary Christians may contemplate, much of the activity motivated by modern Christian faith looks like outward service. Funk suggests there is an active piece of a Christian’s interior life, and it has to do with unlearning anger, which she calls a learned behavior [1]. Funk says that while thoughts come and go – a rhythm from which no person is exempt – the choice to linger on a thought can be the root of anger, and it is here the danger lies [2]. An angry thought places an obstacle both between people and impedes union with God, according to Funk [3]. Dealing with our thoughts selectively can become quite an active expression of Christian faith, but it’s inward. Not even our closest people see it until it affects our actions on the outside.
Many days together, length of years is the goal. It goes without saying, then, that there are going to be all manner of days, even possibly one on which one person wakes up and says to the other, “You are not the same person I married!” How could they be? It is an objective impossibility given the influences in life. Heck, we didn’t even have the internet when we got married! Yet these factors are among a few that can cause great disorientation and even anger for people. One root of anger, pride, is evident, “You reflect on me.” The other root, fear, follows close behind, “I don’t even know what this is or who we are.” Sometimes people even rail at God over these fluctuations.
Why?
First, the marriage covenant. It is a “deal” of sorts between two people. More between each person and God despite the adherence of the other, and this deal contains one element: faithfulness. Humans layer on conditions and preferences whether we realize it or not, but these are the very things traditional vows convey that are non-factors in our fidelity. Together we vow to one another to seek to emulate the unconditional faithfulness of God, no matter the circumstances. How presumptive and prideful of us to think we know and can predict just how life may “go.” But is that the kind of love with which we are loved by God and called to emulate in our primary relationship?
Greater love has no one than this, that they would lay down their life (preferences, plans, assumptions) for another.
Next, giving someone we love space for the enrichment of their choice within a lifetime of relationship requires great trust. This trust requires one person to release their limited knowledge, a personal way of knowing from a singular perspective, and trust their partner. This trust says to another, “I trust you and what you know.” It is a privilege to have the benefit of multiple perspectives within the relationship. Honestly, there are times when it is difficult to trust either partner’s perspective in a relationship. It is in this place that trust in God rules the day. Glancing tangentially at one another, side by side on level ground, kneeling at the throne of God as children, is where real trust resides. It really does come down to the faithfulness of God.
Lastly, sharing in this way is vital.
As people continue to grow and share, they communicate in ways that extend beyond words. Their learning extends beyond the bounds of conversation. Body language communicates subconsciously. The patience they extend to one another, the care they show for one another, their honest unflappability. They are unable to become angry with one another, for good reasons or bad ones. The bottom line is this trust, a choice that demonstrates ultimate faith and trust in God.
Trusting God in a marriage looks like trusting another person. Every iteration of a chosen life partner contains the best of that person and more, with the added benefit of the learning that has taken place when we are all at our worst.
Anger is the most destructive human emotional force. But Jesus got angry, so what can be so bad about it? Jesus’ anger was ultimately generous. The context of his anger was the closing of the physical temple system. The time had come for expansion and mobilization, for the Spirit’s presence within people. One building was vacated, his own physical life force was snuffed out temporarily to demonstrate the way God was reinventing God’s own presence within the world. A penultimate nearness came to people through the gift of God’s Spirit until ultimate union comes. And it is this Spirit’s leading straight through anger to trust that Christians count on.
Many of our translations of scripture contain a heading for the prophecy of Habakkuk, “Learning How to Trust God,” followed shortly by “Habakkuk Complains.” Trusting God looks like saying “no” to anger, moving through it, and letting go of it. Trust grows between God and people, and between people with one another, by being honest in every season about ourselves, what we are learning and finding beautiful, and trusting one another, a fruit of our choice to ultimately trust God.
We can say to another, “What is beautiful to you right now, I am willing to explore and look for beauty similar to what you see,” or even better, “This is beautiful to me because you are beautiful to me.” We might even say to a spouse, “What is beautiful to me, I share with you. There is so much of it! You have loved me so well that my own perspective on beauty in the world has grown. There is now more: more of me to offer you, to offer the world. There is just more, and I can trust you with more.”
It is my hope that as people of faith look at their present challenges with the aid of the prophet Habakkuk’s eyes they are able to pray, “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength,” and not give anger a second thought (Hab 3:18-19).
