DARK NIGHT OF THE HUMAN SOUL
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Not Seeing Through The Dilemma
We often have to experience what St. John of the Cross called the “dark night of the soul,” wherein we cannot see our way through the dilemma we are dealing with and we despair even that God’s grace will be sufficient.
We are “left in the dark” to “walk by faith, and not by sight” (II Cor. 5:7) until God’s light shines forth providing the life, energy, and action of His grace.
Many Christians do not make it through the dark night of weakness wherein grace is revealed, for they are tempted to “take the easy way out” that bypasses the pain of what seems like estrangement. Thomas Merton explains how some exit the process for a way more exciting: Paradoxically, then, though Christ Himself accomplishes the work of our sanctification, the more He does so the more it tends to cost us. The further we
advance the more He tends to take away our own strength and deprives us of our human and natural resources, so that in the end we find ourselves in complete poverty and darkness. This is the situation that we find most terrible, and it is against that we rebel. For the strange, sanctifying mystery of Christ’s death in us, we substitute the more familiar and comforting routine of our own activity: we abandon His will and take refuge in the more trivial, but more “satisfying” procedures which interest us and enable us to be interesting in the eyes of others. We think that in this way we can find peace, and make our lives fruitful; but we delude ourselves, and our activity turns out to be spiritually sterile . . . Insofar as we rely on our own anxious efforts, we are of this world.16
Divine grace does indeed run counter to all enlightenment understanding and humanistic reasoning. It makes no sense to our American work ethic, our pragmatic concerns for productivity, and our capitalistic premise that “you get what you pay for.” The mentality of the world will always regard grace as an escapist pattern of indolent inertia and sloth for those who disdain work and prefer to be “on the dole” in God’s kingdom.
The contemporary religion of “evangelical humanism” has the same point of view, suspicious that the gospel of grace leads only to passivism and acquiescence that will never serve to build an active church organization. Only the Christian who has submitted himself to God’s grace will see it for what it is – the divine dynamic of Christ’s life that alone can overcome sin and manifest God’s character.
Our Response of Faith
Contrary to the charge that grace fosters passivism and inaction, the human individual is always responsible to function as a contingent, choosing creature who derives character and action from a spirit source.
The responsibility of man is best understood as his response-ability to God, His Creator. This response- ability of faith will never produce passivism if we correctly understand that faith is “our receptivity to His activity.” Inherent in such a definition is the active expression of God’s grace.
Faith, thus defined, allows us to understand the statements of James when he wrote that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17,26) and “faith without works is useless” (James 2:20).
Faith (our receptivity of His activity) without works (the outworking of God’s grace activity) is dead, useless, and non-existent (by the privation of the activity inherent in the terms).
When faith responds in receptivity to God’s grace activity, passivism is out of the question because God is not a passive God, but always acts in accord with His character, His Being in action.
In his commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Romans, Martin Luther reacts to religious misconceptions of faith.
They conjure up an idea which they call “belief,” which they treat as genuine faith. It is but a fabrication, an idea without a corresponding experience in the depths of the heart. It is ineffective and not followed by a better kind of life. Faith puts the old Adam to death and makes us quite different men in heart, in mind, and in all our powers. A man not active in this way is a man without faith.16
When the Christian’s receptivity of faith avails itself to God’s activity of grace, there will be an inevitable counteraction against all that is contrary to God’s character.
God always acts in accordance with His character and in order to express His character within His creation unto His own glory. Sin falls short of the glory of God (cf. Rom. 3:23), for sin is any expression of character that is not God’s character. Sin is not defined by certain unacceptable actions, but by anything less than the character of God.
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Faithful Receptivity...
Dr. James Fowler | IOM Staff Writer
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