“Hope Has It's Reasons ”
The words below are from the revised edition of Hope Has Its Reasons , c. 2001, by Rebecca Manley Pippert, Intervarsity Press.
She shows us the need for our life to be “hid with Christ in God” ( Colossians 3:3).
“Is there anyone who has identified what blocks us from what we seek but cannot find? Albert Camus has done so through Clamence, the central character in his novel The Fall …Camus' ruthless, scathing analysis of human nature forced me to take a deeper, more honest look at my own humanity than I ever had previously…One of Camus' central insights about human nature is that all humans live in hiding from themselves. We think, speak and act in “bad faith” because we do not want to face the truth. We are terrified of being discovered by others – and perhaps above all of unmasking ourselves – because we face the judgment that we are responsible for our inner condition. Consequently we live a life of denial…The more I explore the subtlety of denial, the more I realize that we are all afraid of facing ourselves as we really are. To embrace the whole of us, our dark side as well as the light, is just too painful… How does the lie that we are OK get in the way of our pursuit of happiness and love? It blocks true intimacy in relationships, be they romantic, familial or platonic… Most of us try to overcome scars or problems of the past by putting them out of our mind. At first sight, owning up to a painful truth looks like the worst thing that could happen to us. In reality, however, it's the best, because we have no hope of ever finding a solution if we will not admit we have a problem. There is just no way to jump over that step. There is no shortcut…Seeing that was a critical step in my own journey…Slowly I started to see that my claim to be “innocent of all charges” was ridiculous… I began to deal with the root problems in my life and not merely the symptoms. I saw that my pride and self-centeredness ran deep, far deeper than I had ever imagined. And I made an amazing discovery. The more I faced myself – my self-deceptions, pockets of unbelief, false confidence, controlling devices and so on – the more I found freedom…Those who want the last in their lives to be the best must face the worst first…We finally see the very being we dreaded to discover. At last we find out who we are. The cross brings us out of hiding. It breaks our denial, but only in the very instant that it shows us the possibility of forgiveness. It shows us our corruption, but in the same breath it tells us the price has been paid… Perhaps best of all, in the light of what we have looked at earlier, repentance reverses denial. We no longer hide from the truth,
or need to. And it isn't just that truth is inescapable: it's liberating. But it is at the point of repentance that we see that denial is not an invention of psychology. At its deepest, it is the diabolical face of sin. Long before psychology, the Bible said that sin means that we “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (See Romans 1:18)… But repentance is not just a once-and-for-all experience of a moment. For those who come to know God, it's a way of life. It has to be, because sin and self are not easily displaced at the center of our lives… The cross will always be confronting us, the central reality of history before which no fiction can endure.”