While living far from family in Dallas and regularly finding myself in need of a mood booster, I ironically chose to listen to weird and terrifying literature on audiobook. H. P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers cheered me up, in spite of their trademark climaxes, in which the narrator encounters a hideous creature. The writhing shoggoth and the shriveled King in Yellow acted as proxies for my own failings. I needed a bit of that catharsis—that permission to stop tiptoeing around my personal demons and look them in the face.
When confronted with the horror of individuals’ sinful selves, the church often hobbles between two extremes. On one hand, we’ve been inundated with the word, “grace,” such that Christian culture sometimes rebukes condemnation of sin more harshly than sin itself. On the other, we know that Christ died for sin because, well, it’s bad! We don’t want to let all those ugly things through the gate, or else the church will be just like the rest of the world! Both approaches lack a practical response to the motives behind the behavior. There has to be a third option between excusing and exiling iniquity.
“There has to be a third option between excusing and exiling iniquity.”
Perhaps we should take a page from Lovecraft and meet the monster. Let’s have coffee with the underachieving Christian and let him explain what’s going on in his life without fear of judgment. It’s better than seeing a person’s darkness and sending him away until he fixes it, and it’s better than pretending it’s not there. Recovery from spiritual struggle is helped not only by discipline, but by friendship.
We cannot afford to quarantine our brothers and sisters, if they’re making an earnest effort, when we see them stumble. Isolation has never cured an ailing soul. Inaction has never cured a callous one. We find an exemplar in our God, who cleansed Isaiah’s lips with a coal but approached him while he was still dirty. As a church we often marvel over those instances when God heals someone, but those intimate moments before the healing are striking as well. If Christ looked at still-broken me and you without flinching, we can do no less for our fellow believers.
“Isolation has never cured an ailing soul.
Inaction has never cured a callous one.”
Christianity exceeds Lovecraftian horror in the sense that the spectator doesn’t encounter just one overwhelming presence, but two. After the grotesque thing is unveiled, the beautiful thing appears as well. Unlike Lovecraft’s monsters, who are “altogether different—and… infinitely more horrible,” this being is infinitely wonderful. God doesn’t just expel the blackness; He gets next to it, coexists with it, and ultimately transforms it. The grace of God is stunning, and it is most potent when we are allowed to display our whole selves, metaphorical tentacles and all.
Guest Blogger: Lauren Simcic, B.A., MUP
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Jackie Chea is a blogger from San Antonio, Texas who holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Community Counseling from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She writes on political and cultural issues from a conservative, religious standpoint. She lives in the Lone Star State with her husband Nick, her 5-year-old son Lincoln, and her rescue dogs. |
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