Embrace Your Brokenness by Ben Ertel
Early in my spiritual walk I found myself having a particularly hard time with being open about my struggles. I have consistently convinced myself of the lie that you have to give the impression of having your life together in order to belong in Christian community. In the past I let that lie turn into competing for the prize of coming across as the most holy, only to realize that both the prize, as well as the competition itself, were non-existent. The notion of being confident in my standing before God through grace and not works was something I intellectually grasped but something I have not been comfortable with.
I was terrified of doing something to lose God’s love.
In the letter to the Hebrews, an authority on the “Grace + Nothing” theory, the ambiguous author says, “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.” (Hebrews 10: 10-11). This scripture summarizes the fact that the work is done by Jesus on the cross and we don’t need to strive for any sort of standing with him. The issue I’ve faced is that I can feel a pressure to act as if my paraphrase of this scripture reads, “despite Jesus’s once for all sacrifice, I still need to prove to others that I believe I have to perform religious duties and pretend I don’t have sins that need taking away.” I found myself competing for holiness, as opposed to letting the Holy Spirit sanctify me.
While my one-man competition to be holiest led me to form my own odd and unnecessary personal piety from time-to-time, I’ve seen the largest danger in my lack of confession. I’ve let two lies prevail that led me to confessing less than I ought: the first being my need to look faultless, and the second being that I didn’t need to confess since God knows what I do. I have so often wrestled with the notion that “God’s commands are not burdensome.” (1 John 5:3) when it came to confession. I thought I would be burdened when people realized that I didn’t have it all together when confessing corporately, and I thought I would be burdened by wasting my breath since God knows what I’ve done and I know God loves me still. John says that if we claim to not sin then we are only really kidding ourselves (1 John 1: 8). This truth makes me realize that I am indeed only kidding myself when I look at my previous logic. I am kidding myself communally by thinking that anyone actually believes I am perfect, and I am spiritually depriving myself of an intimate conversation with the God who created the whole universe.
I am learning to lean into the fact that openness about being broken is not a burden, but a worthwhile disruption of the self.
While I am working to be more transparent and open about my brokenness, I have found that the disruption of confession gives so much life and freedom that I genuinely did not anticipate. In regard to my personal relationship to the Lord I have found that when being open in confession I have been able to walk in a way that actually appreciates His grace because it is easier to understand why it’s so great. Communally, confession promotes openness for all in the community and can prevent the isolation of people struggling when they know they aren’t alone in their brokenness. Coming from someone who has felt isolated in struggle, I am sure I have perpetuated making others feel this way as well.
Looking at my relationship to God through being openly broken, I take so much comfort in knowing that He is not ashamed to call me His, and that my story doesn’t end broken as He is making me holy (Hebrews 2:11). Jesus famously said “it is finished” on the cross, and the posture of walking in that truth may require some added affirmation for some as it does me. It is finished, it really is.
It took Michelangelo somewhere around two years to complete the statue of David, continually chipping away at unneeded marble until a true masterpiece was created. Over those two years the piece of marble had to have looked broken, cracked, and incomplete but Michelangelo knew exactly what he was making and that it would be an amazing sight in the end. If we look at our spiritual lives as if we are being sculpted by God (Ephesians 2:10) it can be easy to fall into the trap that since we still look broken, cracked, and incomplete then we aren’t being sculpted at all. We try to convince each other we are a completed work, but the fact that we are being refined is obvious. God knows exactly what he is making in us and the beautiful thing is that he already sees us as such. There are times that we may get impatient or frustrated that God didn’t make us perfect at the moment of salvation in a quick strike to marble. We can be comforted in knowing that we are not alone in the waiting and that we are loved and held by the Lord during it.
I sometimes wish that someone would pull me aside every single day and remind me flatly to wait patiently for the Lord, removing my need to try to seem perfect. So, if you are like me in this I have a parting word for you and I both:
You cannot make yourself righteous. You also don’t have to. You are broken, you are loved, you are being made new.
