a painful isolation

Last month I wrote several times about the experience of the followers of Jesus as "strangers and exiles" in the societies of the world. That thought came back to me again in my current reflections and feelings of being humbled. (Pretty appropriate themes for this time in the church year....)

The experience of social rejection for following Jesus is an important part of our spiritual formation. I touched on some aspects of this in my writing about becoming "nobodies," in Jesus' kingdom of nobodies. Being rejected or pushed to the margins of the human societies we find ourselves in helps us focus on our true source of personal value and help, our Father.

Being rejected by most people also tends to help us stay humble. It's belittling to be thought of as a nobody, of little worth to the group, a cast off. It helps us avoid the natural pride of those honored and praised by the crowd. But there can be a spiritual pride that can try to replace that, a feeling that we are better than others, set apart from the crowd because we are so spiritually superior.

If this continues, it has an increasingly isolating effect. Not just isolating from the people around us, who we come to judge and despise, but also isolating from God. Because the illusion of superiority is not truth. (Being able to follow Jesus more closely is always a gift, never something we earn or deserve.) We have to isolate ourselves from reality to keep up the superiority illusion in our own head, and shut out God's attempts to show us the truth. An increasingly painful isolation.

As the images of strangers and exiles suggest, we can face some lonely times in following Jesus. Just as he did. But when God is with us in those times, we need not feel the painful isolation. God will provide all the inner reassurance and also the human support that we need to get through those times (remember the man who carried Jesus' cross, for instance). But if we start to cut ourselves off from God in those times, by spiritual pride, for example, then we can find ourselves truly alone. The pain of this, though, can be God's way of getting our attention and calling us back. And a life of depending closely on God's support (because we find little support from the society that rejects us) does help us recognize quickly when we are choking off God's support through our own sin. Because then we have nothing, and feel it intensely.

I pray I'm more sensitive and responsive to these pains in the future (and don't have to be slammed flat on my back).