Musings on “Musings on the Dark Night of the Soul”
I recently had a conversation with a friend about “losing that God feeling” in the course of the Christian life. It sparked the memory of an article I’d once read by Dr. John Coe titled “Musings on the Dark Night of the Soul”, an exploration of a concept developed by an ancient Carmelite monk St. John of the Cross. Since John Coe is incredible and I am not, I would refer anyone who gets confused by the incoherence of my writing to the Journal of Psychology and Theology, 2000, Vol. 28, No. 4.
This particular conversation began when I was asked “What do you do when you don’t desire God anymore?” My initial response was, “Well, do you remember a time in your life when you did desire God? What was that like?” The answer came back, “You know, you just had that feeling. That worship feeling, the feeling that God was there. Now, it’s just gone.” An honest answer from an honest seeker after God.
I’ve found that Christians, if they’re really being honest with one another, will often admit that there are times when they just can’t feel God anymore. At one point, God used to feel really close, maybe when we first came to the realization of and accepted the truth of the gospel. Or we might’ve been at a retreat, or some large-scale worship experience, and found a personal time of spiritual intimacy with God. Or maybe there was a time when spiritual disciplines such as studying the Bible, regular prayer, or fasting really brought a supernatural feeling of fulfillment that resonated deeply with our spirits and souls. These times are characterized by feeling loved, a sense of peace, and an assurance of the Spirit’s presence in a believer’s life. In times like these, we can read a verse like the apostle John’s rejoicing in 1 Jn 3:1 and agree wholeheartedly: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God~! And that is what we are~!” (I took the liberty of capturing John’s excitement with the tildes…) Right on, John, that’s what we are, and that’s what I am, loved by God! I feel it in my soul, a sweet communion with the Lord, an indescribable experience that God is real.
However, in whatever way one might experiencing this love, the truth is that sometimes (and for some of us, maybe most of the time) we go through dry spells from feeling God’s presence, a phenomena that can last for months or even years at a time. I’ve found that what this usually leads to is a sense of frustration. We decide that it must be some kind of sin in our lives that’s blocking God from blessing us in the same way that he used to, or that we’re not working hard enough at our part to please God. So we throw ourselves into our spiritual disciplines, praying more, fasting more, going to more church and prayer meetings, attending more conferences, going to more workshops/retreats, downloading more sermon podcasts, studying the Bible more, going on more “spiritual hikes”; the list goes on and on. American church culture is filled with things to do for a Christian desperate to “get back on track”.
We throw ourselves into this relentless pursuit of reclaiming that “God feeling”, maybe achieving victory some days, but more often than not finding ourselves in a state of frustration. Others encourage us to pray more, listen more closely for God, seek harder, but no matter how hard we try, He’s just not there. The more this happens, the less we can talk about it, because, well, really, it’s just embarrassing that we can’t find our way out of the pit. It probably has to do with some sin issue in our lives anyway. And Lord knows we’ve got a lot of them… So we try and try on our own until we’re exhausted, and eventually become so disillusioned with the whole process that we just settle for being lukewarm. All in all, it makes you wonder why anyone would want to become a Christian when that’s the honest testimony that most of us can give. It’s certainly not a very attractive sell. Hey, receive the gospel, it’s the greatest thing that could ever happen to you and now I’m burnt out and complacent because of it.
Coe’s article, however, explored the idea that these seasons of spiritual dryness are a natural and necessary part of God’s work in every Christian’s life. The concept goes like this: when we first receive and believe the gospel that Jesus’ death and resurrection paid the penalty for and conquered our sins, we are given new life. We are now resurrected with Jesus, only now we’re clothed with his righteousness and not our sinfulness, and thus able to truly reflect the image of God in doing the good things that He created us for. Now God begins the process of tuning our mindsets from our captivity to the sinful desires of our self-centeredness and flesh towards a new Spirit-filled life. But there’s a problem: we’re still used to dealing with things by prioritizing our fleshly desires. What I mean by that is that formerly we had certain fleshly desires that controlled us. Pride, lust, gluttony are a few of them. In our lives before anyone was given new life through faith in Christ, these were the priorities that motivated us to action. For example, in my life, lust for money, pride for a persona that others envied, and gluttony for opulent things drove me to play poker all the time.
When we’re given a new life, God needs to remove these things in us to shape us into the likeness of Himself, replacing them with the spiritual things that reflect Him instead, such as joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Immersing ourselves in and allowing ourselves to be fed spiritually by the Word of God, interacting with God conversationally through prayer, discovering our true created purpose in lifting up our worship to Him, allowing Him to sustain and strengthen us through fasting; these are all spiritual disciplines that strengthen our new existences as a new creation.
The thing is, though, since we’re still spiritual babies when we first believe, we have no idea how to “live by the Spirit and not by the flesh”, like Paul tells us in Galatians 5:16. We’re still completely stuck in the mindset of prioritizing our activities based on how they make us feel in a fleshly sense; that is to say, based on how much pleasure we get out of doing things. I read in a book by Robert Saucy that it’s like how the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in the Confederate states. When the proclamation went into effect, the next day the slaves were free under the law, but in their behavior still were slaves. They didn’t know what to do or how to behave as free men. On top of that, Southern slaveowners were oppressing them and telling them, “Don’t you dare believe that you’re really free. You’ll never be free!” Similarly, we were formerly slaves to sin, and acted accordingly, and when we receive new life, we’re pretty confused as to what a life of being free from sin and our flesh looks like, and we’re constantly beset by the forces of sin, telling us that freedom from sin and evil is just a pipe dream.
The good news is that God isn’t going to just leave us in this state. Coe (and John of the Cross before him) proposes that God, like a nurturing mother, gently offers us a spiritual bottle of milk in this situation. That is to say, he allows us to continue to be fed by our fleshly desires in a sense, but he tunes them towards spiritual things. Milk is solid food that’s been processed by the mother for the child in a form they can handle. Similarly, God processes solid spiritual food for us and gives it to us in a form that we can handle, that caters to the way we prioritize according the flesh. I mentioned lust, pride, and gluttony earlier. For me, when I first started getting back into the church, I served in music ministry (completely without the spiritual maturity for it!). I was prideful of my musical abilities, played as though I were doing the church a favor with my “community service”. And God gently offered me his spiritual bottle by having people coming up to me and gratify my pride, and say things like “Wow, you’re so anointed when you play.” Or another example of my lust being revealed, when I first started really studying Bible, I experienced a really weird phenomena where every day for about two weeks, I would study a passage, and immediately (or really soon after), I’d be conversing with various people, and they’d ask me a question that was directly answered by whatever passage I was studying at the time. I’d get super excited and go, “I just read this yesterday!” and share, and feel a great “glow”. I thought, “Maybe this is God’s plan for me, to study the Bible and help people supernaturally! What a great feeling!” I was hungry for more.
Babies must grow up, though. Eventually, God takes away the spiritual milk bottle, not because He doesn’t love us, but because we’re ready for solid food. It’s a tremendously painful experience (just ask any mom!), because we’re left grappling around blindly in our spiritual pursuits, with none of the fleshly incentives that we had before. John 4:23 says that the worship that God desires is in “spirit and in truth”. In our Christian infancy, we have absolutely no idea how to do this. When God begins to take away the bottle, He starts revealing truth to you about your spirit. Take fasting, for example. When I was starting out, I used to feel a spiritual closeness to God every time I did it. I told a friend, “I really like fasting because it makes me feel good to depend on God for my nourishment.” Now, when I fast, I just get hungry! The closeness is gone. But God, in the absence of the milk bottle, reveals to me the truth of my dependence on physical things. He says, “Ernest, your comfort lies not in me, but in food and other physical things. I want to help you with that. Will you allow me to get into the roots of this idolatry and heal and cleanse you?”
Most of the time, we miss God’s offer in cases like this. In our relentless pursuit of “the God feeling”, we keep searching for the bottle, like a baby throwing a tantrum. Where did that bottle go? It’s so much easier to look for it in our own power, rather than open those deep wounds up to God. But in our escape, we’re not allowing God to do the work that He’s decided we’re ready for. So what’s a better way to respond?
Psalm 77 captures this phenomena of the “dark night of the soul”. In verses 10-20, the psalmist gives us a hint of what we do in these situations when he spends time remembering who God is and what He’s done. So for us, when we’re in a dark night, the first thing to remember is that we stand on the promises of God in our life. We’ve already achieved and received more than we need or deserve through life in Christ, and trusting in those promises is what we’re created to do. We worship Him because He’s God, not because He makes us feel good! So we trust in Him, expecting and wanting nothing more than what He’s giving to us. Even if it’s a really painful experience, we trust because the Lord is good, all the time. Most of all, we need to be totally open to the work of God in our lives at this time. It reminds me of going off the high dive when I was a kid. I can’t tell you guys how many times I climbed up that ladder, looked down at the water, and just chickened out. The apprehension and fear is so qualitative that I can still feel it now! But when I did jump, it wasn’t so bad. God says the same thing. “Trust me. It’s not so bad, because the things that you hold onto are the things that I want to heal you in.” We need to be dedicated to allowing God to minister to us in every single part of our lives.
I’m just going to close by pointing out that one of the most popular things for a Christians to do today is to bash on prosperity-gospel. These are the televangelists who tell us that God’s will is for us to be materially blessed in this world, so we must give more materially to receive more materially, which is evidenced by the flashy ways they live. It’s pretty much en vogue in Christianity today to get after these guys, but watch out for the splinter in the eye, guys, because when we go after the bottle, and only desire from God what we think He feels like or what He gives to us (i.e. “that God feeling”), we’re doing the exact same thing. We’re not worshipping Him because He’s God, but because of what He gives to us. That, my friends, is idolatry.
May the Lord bless you and keep you and give us all the wisdom to be open to His work in our lives, no matter what it might look like.
- Ern (praying for courage)
