Broken Toes

I think it's a bit ironic that House, the confirmed atheist, has helped me understand God a little more. Well, maybe not so ironic and maybe not so unexpected. God seems to delight in using the opposite of what we expected, the meek inheriting the earth and all.

In the episode I saw tonight, a doctor in the Arctic had fallen suddenly and mysteriously ill (as they all do) from a break in her toe that was leaking marrow into her system. House, in doing the full body exam over an internet camera, didn't make her take off her socks because she hated having cold feet. At the end of the episode, he's lamenting his mistake to Robert Sean Leonard (!) who plays Wilson but is better known in my life as Neal in the Dead Poets Society and My Lord Lackbeard (Claudio) in Much Ado. Anyway, Wilson comforts House, saying that House actually cared about his patient by not wanting her to be in discomfort in the first place. House insists that he could have solved the case days earlier if he would have just had her take off her socks. When Wilson says that House was cared for the girl, House replies, in Hugh Laurie's amazing sarcastic American accent, 'If that's love, I want nothing to do with it.'

Note to the world: This is not the original love of God. This is not the love that doesn't force itself on you, the love that compelled my Jesus to stop the angels and die on the cross, the love that offers everything and demands only acceptance. That love is given freely and that grace cleans. What I'm talking about now is the perfecting love, the sanctifying grace, the hard stuff for me to deal with. I don't want trial by fire. I don't want to be broken to be made new. I don't want this. I didn't sign up for this. Sure, I want to grow in faith, doesn't everyone? I just thought it was something you're supposed to do. I never realized what God really wants from me.

I was reading the passion story (for what must have been the tenth time this week) and I threw a tiny fit when I came to the crowds once again. I can't take it. They shout Crucify and I scream at them. How could so few stir up so many to cause so much suffering to my Lord? I claim possession of Him and call Him my Lord because His death was my fault and His death led to my life. If they would have seen what they were doing, who they were killing, what happened because of their cries... they would have yelled on. 'Ashamed I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers.'
Because I hear them yell crucify and I know that I would yell right along with them if I was there. I watch Jesus walk, watch the Romans grab a passerby to carry the cross when He can't, watch them nail Him to a tree and wait for the time, I know it's coming, when He yells 'Eloi, Eloi...' I always used to have a problem with this. Why wasn't God more obviously present when Jesus was in such need of Him? I know He never left Him- why wasn't He there more? I would shake in quiet rage at this. If God couldn't be visible for His only Son on the cross, what ever made me think He would be here for me in my tiny pain? 'It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.' Jesus, having never felt the separation, the blocking effect that sin has between us and God, suddenly had all the sins ever committed in all of eternity upon Him. It's the worst possible feeling ever and He had the worst of the worst as His only experience with sin. Of course He felt like God abandonned Him. No one can see the stars through a thunderstorm.

And so my every sin heaps pain on my Lord. No, I know He's already felt it all. that the sins I commit tomorrow, the next day, a year from the now, the very day of my death, all those have already been piled on Him. I just want to limit my pile now. And here's where the love comes back in. I've told Him, time and again, that I want to be better, that I want to stop causing Him pain, that for once I want to be the person He made me to be. And He smiles because He sees that I really do want to try and I know He shakes His head because He knows when I'll fail. But His love is now not the kind that lets me sit with my socks on and a broken toe unnoticed. He must see into every area of my life and bring to light the things that must be taken away from me to make me perfect as He is perfect. And this is painful, much more than cold feet and discomfort. He is pulling everything wrong in my life, getting rid of my status quo and making me right. And I asked for it.

So this is love. He loves me too much to let me hide these things, no matter what the original discomfort is. House is right. Like Holmes, he usually is. A love that is unwilling to make me take off my socks, that is willing to let me die rather than cause me a little pain to fix my problems, is no love at all and I want nothing to do with it. I'm glad God's love is much better than that. I don't want to leave it.