I think I brushed my teeth about 8 times when I was a teenager. I don’t know why I made such a fatal dental decision. I had braces and headgear and retainers at the time. And not those cool invisible ones, I’m talking about the thick metal braces that reduced your number of friends by about 32% when you were in the seventh grade.
I had every incentive to brush. My orthodontist and dentist and dental hygienist mother kept me well stocked with the veritable tool chest of instruments you need to care for a mouth that is loaded down with heavy hardware, but still I refused.
Was it laziness? Stupidity? Some completely misguided form of rebellion? I did after all choose the black eight ball design for my retainer, so maybe there was an element of that. Regardless of the specific reason though, the result is the same – Adult Jon is paying for Teenage Jon’s mistakes. Literally.
In the last two years I’ve spent countless days at the dentist getting root canals and cavities filled and temporary crowns and permanent crowns and new retainers. My mouth and I have gone on a less than fantastic voyage. And although I would like to build a time machine and go back to punch Teenage Jon in the stomach (don’t want to hurt that mouth), it’s not entirely his fault.
When I was in my 20s, I realized I had a few “mouth issues.” But I thought that if I avoided the dentist, they would just go away. I knew that if I went to his office, he would be disappointed with my many failed attempts to floss and would probably uncover some painful cavity that needed to be drilled. So I didn’t go. I didn’t want to deal with the consequences and thought that as long as I didn’t ever go see the dentist, I wouldn’t have to. I could pretend everything was fine. If I went to him, he would see that it wasn’t and would force me to deal with all the poor dental decisions I made as a teenager. And in a painful root canal kind of way. Sure, my teeth might hurt a little every now and then, but not as bad as they would if I was in that dentist’s chair. So I avoided him.
I’ve realized over the last few months that sometimes I treat God the same way. When I fail, when I fall, I don’t want to deal with the consequences of my actions. If I have secretly stumbled, then only God and I know about it. And if I don’t tell God, then I can avoid ever dealing with the consequences.
But if I do go to Him, if I confess, the first thing He is going to do is unravel a long list of consequences. He is going to turn on a consequence fire hose and spray me down like a new prisoner entering jail. I will drown in all the consequences I so desperately want to avoid, because that’s who God is, He is the keeper of consequences.
Wow, am I wrong. I wish I could say “was” wrong, but like most of the posts on this site, I am sharing things from the middle of the trenches, and past tense would indicate that I no longer struggle with this issue. But I am wrong. And here’s why:
1. My junk is its own consequence.
Getting caught is not where the hurt from our mistakes begins. It begins the second we make them. The mistake might grow neon as more people know about it, but the poor decision I made starts wounding me as soon as I make it. The guilt of carrying a secret around. The way shame can flavor every second of a day. The weight and exhaustion that comes from being two people. The fear of being found out. Those things aren’t tied to God. Those are tied to sin. Romans 6:23 lays that out so simply, but I always missed it: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sin comes prepackaged with its own consequence. It’s not something that happens later. I sometimes read that verse as “For the wages of being found out in your sin is death” but that’s not what it says.
2. God is not the keeper of consequences, He is the comforter of consequences.
I have made some tremendous mistakes in my life. And what I have found and am still finding, is that when I bring those mistakes to God, He doesn’t say, “Here are the consequences you’ve been avoiding, go deal with them.” Not at all. He says, “That hurt you’ve been carrying around is too big for you. That hurt you helped create is too heavy for you. Come get in my hand, let me hold you. Stop looking for a solution to your consequences. You will never find it because the solution has already found you. Me.” He doesn’t magically take away the consequences I’ve created with my actions. He can, He is certainly capable of that and at times I’ve been amazed at His ability to shrink situations that seemed massive and overwhelming. But sometimes letting me walk through the consequences while resting in Him is the most loving thing He can do. Letting me learn from the people I’ve hurt and the relationships I’ve damaged can be a deep form of love. Allowing me to grow in difficult situations is sometimes the gift He chooses to give. But through it all, He doesn’t wait for me to return to Him so that He can dole out consequences and hold them over me. He waits for me to return so that He can hold me in the midst of them.
I don’t understand so much of who God is and what He does. He is such a mystery to me. As I mentioned above, I wish that I was writing these posts from the other side. That I was sending you postcards from “Successville,” but I’m not. And maybe you’re like me. Maybe you avoid God because in your mind He is clothed in all the things you don’t want to deal with. The hurt, the consequences, the regret, the shame, the difficult conversations you’re afraid to have with people you’ve betrayed, the task list of amends you think He will thrust at you if you get anywhere near Him.
That makes sense to me, because I fear the same things too. But what I’m starting to see is that’s not who God is. He is love. As weird and as crazy as that might sound in the midst of everything else going on in your life, love is not simply one of the things God likes to do after you’ve “fixed everything” or “paid for all your consequences.” That’s who He is. He is love. And that makes His response to our consequences radically different than you or I could ever imagine.
