Getting Honest at
Rock Bottom
John Crist is a popular comedian who has developed a strong Christian fanbase. His jokes regularly poke fun at the church in the sort of way that a person might make fun of his own family. His humor is not meant to tear down the church but to illuminate its peculiarities and especially the ways we sometimes cover up or hide from the truth with pious-sounding sentiments.
Here are a few one-liners from his bit, “Christian ways to say no that will make you sound way more of a spiritual person than you are.”
“I don’t think it’s God’s will.”
“It’s just not his timing.”
“I’m feeling led in a different direction.”
“It’s a closed door.”
“I just don’t feel peace about it right now.”
And, of course, everyone’s favorite: “Let me pray about it.”[1]
The twist in John Crist’s story is that, four years ago, right around the height of the Me Too movement, several women made allegations that he had exploited his popularity and interacted with them in sexually inappropriate and emotionally manipulative ways. John Crist was swiftly canceled. He’d been working on a Netflix special, but that was binned. He retreated for a while. Apologized. Went to rehab.
Now he’s back performing. As you might imagine, his fanbase is split over the sincerity of his repentance. I’m not a fan, so I have no comment there. But what has captured my attention is his story. He describes his downfall as many addicts do. His “rock bottom” was not a day of decision. He didn’t wake up one day and get honest with himself and say, “I need some help.” His rock bottom was a day of intervention. It was an apocalypse (which literally means revealing), when others had to hold a mirror up to him and said, “This is what you are. Look!”
Since we’re not far off from the Christmas season, we might also compare this experience to what happens to Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Scrooge doesn’t simply wake up one day and decide to change his ways. His rock bottom involves an intervention: three ghosts, who each in their own way forces him to confront his own reality. Only after their visit does he become honest enough with himself to say, “No. This is not who I want to be.”
Israel Gets Honest: “Help!”
In our scripture today, the people of Israel hit their own rock bottom. Our storyteller summarizes, “The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (Judg 4:1). There are no further details. But we might imagine some. A recurring theme in Israel’s covenant with God is that the people will look after the needful: the widow, the orphan, the stranger. And according to the prophets, what is evil in the sight of the Lord is not bungling a sacrifice or getting the rituals wrong. No, what is evil in the sight of the Lord is the mistreatment of people who need care. What the Lord desires is not sacrifice but mercy. Hosea said this (Hos 6:6). Jesus as well (Matt 9:13). The problem in ancient Israel is that the rulers and business leaders often pay close attention to sacrifice and piety while at the very same time they not only neglect the needful but also exploit them (e.g., Amos 4:1-5).
In other words, the problem is that the people of Israel are living a lie. The people of God are living ungodly lives, and they are hiding from this truth under the cover of religion. As with John Crist, as with Scrooge, their rock bottom is not a simple day of decision. They do not come to their senses on their own. Notice when it is that the people of Israel finally cry out to God for help: only after twenty years of cruel oppression under King Jabin and his army’s nine hundred chariots of iron (Judg 4:2-3).
That is some intervention. Twenty years of cruel oppression. Perhaps without it, the people of Israel would have gone on living a lie, people exploiting the needful rather than caring for them, the gap ever increasing between rich and poor. But the consequences couldn’t be ignored forever. They had become a feeble, selfish people, lacking a commitment to the care of others and thus falling prey to an oppressive tyrant. So finally, after twenty years of living in the miserable state of foreign occupation and cruel oppression, they wake up to their reality and get honest with themselves. They need help!
A Woman Sitting Under
a Tree
There is a pattern in the book of Judges. It’s simple, and it goes like this. First, the people do what is evil in the eyes of the Lord. Second, they cry out for help. And third, God raises up a judge to deliver them (cf. Judg 2:10-17). (This is before the time of kings. The leaders, who were called “judges,” were charismatic individuals who periodically unified the people and led them to care again about one another and about God.)
The fascinating thing in today’s scripture is that when God raises up a judge, we do not find ourselves looking at a warrior or a rousing speaker calling people to arms at the town gate. We find ourselves looking at a woman. Who is sitting down. Under a tree. It’s about as passive an image as you could imagine. Yet something about this woman draws the Israelites to her (Judg 4:4-5). They come streaming to her “for judgment,” we are told, which is perhaps a way of saying, that the people of Israel are hungry for honesty, desperate for truth. They know deep down that they are living a lie and are suffering the consequences—in the same way that Scrooge, deep down, was haunted by his greed, literally so; in the same way that John Crist felt like a fraud, calling the church to account even as he was selfishly exploiting others.
The people of Israel know that they need what Deborah has. They have been impulsive, living on autopilot, living for themselves, living a lie. This woman is patient, waiting, listening. Honest.
Listening to the Cry
of the Heart
It’s not easy to be honest. It takes real courage. I read recently about a study conducted by a social psychologist at UVA, in which participants actually chose to receive a small electric shock rather than to have to sit alone quietly for fifteen minutes. I think it is telling that we would prefer an electric shock to being left alone with our own thoughts.[2] It is frightening what we might hear if we actually stop to listen to ourselves. Beneath all the surface chatter, we might actually hear the cry of our heart, saying something we’ve been trying to avoid. “I’m not actually happy here. Something feels off. I don’t feel right about the way I’ve treated my partner. I don’t feel right about the work I’m doing. I don’t feel right about the choices I’ve been making.” We might hear the cry of our heart, saying, “I’m feeling hurt and alone, disconnected from others. Disconnected from God.”
Our scripture today ends with Deborah summoning an Israelite commander, Barak. Our translation misses a small but significant piece of grammar in the original Hebrew. Where our translation has Deborah say to Barak, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you” (Judg 4:6), the original Hebrew includes an interrogative marker, which is sort of like a question mark. In other words, Deborah is really saying, “Has not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you…?” The implication here is stark. God has already been speaking to the commander, Barak, but he has not been listening. He needs a second prompting from Deborah. Barak means “lightning” in Hebrew, but he is not living up to his name. His sharpness has been blunted. Because he has not been listening. Because he has not been honest with himself about what God is calling him to do.
An Honest Heart
When I read today’s scripture, this short chapter in Israel’s history, I am inclined to see faith less as a set of beliefs and more as a cry from the heart.
What brings Israel back to God (and back to life) is its honesty. The people have been living in harmful and self-destructive ways for twenty years. Only when they become honest with themselves and acknowledge their need, do they cry out to God for help. It is the heart’s cry that brings God to their side—or rather, helps them to realize that God has been at their side all along.
What brings Barak back to God (and back to life) is honesty. He has been ignoring the still, small voice of God within himself. But then Deborah summons him and calls him to hear the cry in his heart that God wants to do so much more with him.
In the same way, what brought John Crist back to God (and back to life) was honesty. And not just the honesty of a confession or an apology. John has made clear that the real work of his recovery was becoming honest about what lay beneath his behavior: his own wounds and needs. He had misguidedly been trying to care for himself by winning the attention and admiration of others. The cliché here rings true. Hurt people hurt people.
But when hurt people become rigorously honest, God is near. Help is on the way. Healing is possible.
Today’s scripture reminds me of this good news: what brings me close to God is not a set of beliefs but an honest heart. (David said it more poignantly: “A broken and contrite heart, O Lord, you will not despise.”) An honest heart: it is so simple…but not necessarily easy. It may mean sitting for fifteen minutes alone with my thoughts. It may mean listening to someone else’s observations about how I am living. It may mean letting go of plans I have made or fantasies I have nurtured, which are the kinds of things that keep me from being honest; they keep me in autopilot.
God’s help may look different than I want, just as a woman sitting under a tree was probably not what Israel expected for its salvation. But I can trust that when I am honest, open, and willing, God is near. Help is on the way. I can be who God made me to be.
Prayer
Whose real strength is not in the sword
But in the heart:
Grant us the courage
To sit.
To listen.
To hear the cry of our heart.
…
May our honesty
Open us up to your saving love
And help us to grow into our true selves.
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