Even My Vomit is More Righteous Than Yours

Unbelief is an odd thing. It doesn't always look like I think it does.

Popular culture would have us believe that unbelief looks like a perpetual "dim night" of the soul where nothing is clear, nothing understood, nothing worth believing or living any more than anything else. And to be sure, there are some of us, who have stood with clenched fist, or searching, plaintive cry listening for an answer or response when none seems forthcoming. Or even worse, we've seen the best answers that can be marshaled and found them wanting.

I'd like to tell you that this is what my unbelief looks like too, if for no other reason than these versions of it seem understandable, "normal" if you will. But I was again reminded this weekend that I have a deep seated, flesh-driven sense that there is something other than Jesus, and his ways and his cross, which will make me feel full and content and free.

After what had been a pretty busy, but satisfying, weekend I was ready for a little down time. As I've grown older and busier, I've discovered an almost manic need for the opportunity to withdraw from human contact for a few hours a week. My shriveled soul needs space, silence, and solitude if it is to re-hydrate and be fit for human companionship.

So you can imagine where my heart started heading when 10 minutes into my peaceful reading session, there was a wail and then insistent crying from Parker who was tucked in downstairs on the sofa. A little further investigation revealed that he had thrown up all over himself, the sofa, his blankets and his pillows. And in that moment, seeing a vomit covered child, a vomit stained sofa, and my little boy who was scared and feeling unwell, I did what came naturally... I freaked out. By the time Jennifer came inside, Parker was standing in the kitchen dripping slime on the floor, saying over and over, "I didn't mean to do it, daddy. I didn't mean to." Yes, just another normal Sabbath day afternoon at the Knaak household.

At the time all the tears and apologies didn't do anything to quell my anger. After cleanliness and order had been restored by She Who Must Be Obeyed, we conducted our usual parental after action report.

"Patric!! What were you thinking. How could you yell at him just because he threw up?! He's just a little boy." (note from Jennifer: I don't remember saying it just like this.  Maybe it was the H.S. getting to him?  ;-)

"Yes, but you're missing the point."

"What point? I think when you have a five year old, covered in his own puke and a grown man freaking out, we've moved well beyond the normal situations where there is a point to be had."

"You're not listening to me. I wasn't yelling at him because he threw up! I was yelling at him because he didn't get up and go to the bathroom to throw up. Or at least get up off the sofa and get onto the kitchen tile. I would have even settled for any movement toward an appropriate venue. Don't roll your eyes at me! Over the last year, when he puked in our bed, did I complain? No. When he puked in his bed, did I complain? No. When he puked on me, and then you, and then me again, did I complain? No! I was calm. I helped clean up. But I've told him time and time again, 'Parker, when you are feeling like you might get ill, you need to immediately get up and go to the bathroom, or at least a garbage can.' He knows better than this! He did this out of pure carelessness. I think he knew what was going to happen, and just didn't bother to get up."

At this point in our conversation, Jennifer started looking at me like I had just thrown up all over the sofa. Seeing the sickness of my soul had elicited the same response from her that seeing the sickness of Parker's body had--it was really really sad, and really, really gross.

When I was talking about the event with some people at work this week, I started to see a little more of what Jennifer was seeing. It's true, I wasn't actually mad at Parker because he threw up--what kind of parent would get mad about that! I was mad that he didn't throw up the right way.

In my warped little head, things had followed this path--I had talked to Parker, lectured him, cleaned up his mistakes many, many times before, and thought that I had finally drilled it into his head--at the first sign of an upset stomach, immediately head for bathroom (or at least a hard, tiled surface). I don't have an iron stomach, so the sight that greeted me on Sunday afternoon would have likely stunned me even under the best of circumstances. But my anger really stemmed from the fact that Parker hadn't followed the rules, and now I was going to have to give up my peaceful afternoon and clean vomit chunks out of the sofa and living room carpet. Parker had failed to live up to my "vomit righteousness" rules, and so I did a nutty.

You'd be forgiven if you thought that we had gotten to the bottom of my sin here. Let's be honest, how much worse can it get than yelling at a sick child because he has failed to live up to your standards of "vomit righteousness"? Well... at least a little worse.

You see, this is what my unbelief looks like. It is an unbelief that whispers to me that even though Christ has given me everything I could ever need, it's not enough. It is an unbelief that is so deep, so insidiously intwined in my soul, that it needs to create rules, which when obeyed, will make me feel more righteous than other people. It's an unbelief that will cling to anything to help me prove to others that I'm better than they are. I've got "washing the car correctly righteousness" and "don't stand there with the door to the fridge open righteousness" and "how come I'm the only one who mows the lawn around here righteousness" and evidently I've also go "throwing up correctly righteousness." When any of these laws are violated, or challenged, or trampled, I can then see how much I rely on my efforts to make me a good decent person, instead of the righteousness and new identity that comes from Christ, and to which I have no claim, other than that it has been given to me freely as God's child.

In the clear light of day, with no bodily function emergencies, I can see how poor and weak this is. Who in their right mind would ever choose their own rules and expectations--with their enslaving desires and miserly rewards--over the freedom and joy of loving someone else through the power of the gospel? But that's part of what unbelief is... we are not in our right minds.

I'd like to tell you that I made all of this up. I wish that this was a hypothetical illustration to demonstrate how desperately our hearts will cling to the things that are "not-Jesus" in order to uphold our illusions of control or comfort. It would be great to finish by saying that now that I've seen the errors of my way, I'll never, ever, ever do that again. But it's just not true.

What is true, is that Jesus has come (and will continue to come!!) to me to lift me out of the vomit of my self-generated righteousness time and time again. With love and patience and tenderness, he has stepped in over and over again when my unbelief has covered me, or those that I love, with the foul taint of regurgitated sin. My heart is so desperate to prove itself good, and so mistrustful of what Jesus has already given to me, that I unintentionally make up rules that I think will generate a little bit of righteousness that I can claim as my own. And then I heap contempt and scorn on those who fail to meet those same standards and earn a little bit of righteousness of their own... even when they are little boys, with upset stomachs, who tried their best not to make a mess.

I don't now what your unbelief looks like. It may be clean and cool and detached. It may have elements of true searching and honest seeking, desperate to find better answers that have been so far offered. But I'd bet that somewhere down deep, there is a little bit of a desire to be "right" on your own terms, instead of forgiven on someone else's terms--even when that someone else is Jesus. I'm right there with you, on that one.

My unbelief is messy. It stinks. It splatters all over everyone in ways that have to be cleaned up, time and time again. When I move away from utter reliance on the One Who Was Pierced for Me, even for just a moment, my heart creates dumb-ass categories like "vomit righteousness" to try and cover the inadequacies that I know are there, and that I know that can't fix. Smelling the odor of my unbelief is also what causes my heart to long for a righteousness not of my own that comes through the law (and the laws I create for others), but one that comes from Christ alone.