Finding God by Dr. Larry Crabb

About halfway through this...I got the realization that this is the most important book I've ever read (Bible notwithstanding). My senior pastor gave to me with the urging of "Eat this book" (in the words of Ezekiel and Eugene Peterson). Wow, what a find. I've now read twice in a row, and am starting it for a third time.

It's a forgone conclusion that life is not easier - one finds this out as the years roll on. We all get older, get jobs, change jobs, go to school, maybe go back to school, get/lose relationships, watch our families grow up and die, have health problems, to say none of the other issues of the world in which we live? What's the point then? Good question - many people have offered up many different ways and reasons for this.

Christian Psychologist, counselor, and author Dr. Larry Crabb offers up a revolutionary idea - that finding God is the reason and as such is more important than solving our problems as the current post-modern thinking would have us believe. Even the modern church is largely at fault in helping foster this mentality. Top priority is to help us feel better about ourselves - self betterment, self-empowerment, DIY books, and even more. We want to take charge of our lives - why? Because as Dr. Crabb asserts, we don't trust God (or believe in Him at all). Crabb defines a "fallen structure" that exists by default in all of us regardless of inclination, it is as follows:

Foundation: I Doubt God

First Floor: I Need you

Second Floor: I Hate you

Third Floor: I Hate Me

Fourth Floor: But I Will Survive

Fifth Floor: Here's How!

Wow! What a revelation, so to speak, that was for me, and I trust that it may be for you the reader as well. To realize at the core of my being, despite all of my church upbringing and pious intentions (read: hypocrisy), is the notion that I doubt God. Now granted, since I became a Christian, God is dismantling that in me, but I still fight with that notion every day. Since we believe that God is not good as he says, that makes us want to really take ownership of our lives, more often than not with disastrous results in the long run.

Now bear in mind, Crabb is not just talking about academic truth here. His words are couched in the fires of wrenching personal loss. The following is an excerpt from Finding God, where the author unpacks his own doubt, fear and pain. See how much of this resonates with your personal experiences...

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Journal Entry: July 1 1992

Sometimes my soul feels dead. Other times tortured. Right now I feel a terrible combination of both.

I hate these times. I wish I were a simple, happy man. I know people who seem so much happier than I. Why must I go through these bouts with despair? When I do I have trouble finding within me - or in anyone else - something brings me joy. I am utterly miserable, a terrible advertisement for Christianity. I wonder if people who read my books imagine I can get this low.

During these times of anguish, I am genuinely afraid. I feel it right now. Is there enough left of me to continue on, to do my work, to love my family, to face life? Or have I disappeared into a cave of dark, tangled tunnels, a cold black maze that angles downward from which I will never emerge?

I worry, but not with a productive frenzy that gets me moving. My worry feels more like despair, like falling into that black hole and wondering whether the next bump will be the final one that kills me or merely one more crash against the wall before I hit bottom.

What can I do? I can't stand feeling this way. I'm no good to anyone like this. Where's God? What's he supposed to doing? I want to move, to choose something aggressively. But a deep, angry boredom, a hopeless indifference has robbed me of energy. I can't run, walk, or stand. At best, I seem only to shuffle along the path of least resistance, pouting more than grumbling.

But if I continue to shuffle, merely to drift with the tide, I fear losing my mind. I long to become a more mature, stable, loving man, someone my wife can draw strength from any enjoy. I must not drift. I must take action.

But that's the problem. The idea of moving presupposes an energy within me capable of being harnessed. It assumes that I exist as a real separate entity, as someone who is able to choose a direction freely and then follow it.

Taking action presumes something further - a reason to move this way and not that, a benevolent Creator behind this whole mess with a good design that I just might miss if I ignore.

To move at all, I must believe two things: one, that I exist beneath my pain as a free person who can move, and, two, that there is an infinitely good Person who invites me to move towards the joy that he provides.

If I believe that God is good and I am free, than I can move through the ups and downs of life with hope - there is meaning to me found. Goodness is greater than badness. There's reason for cheer. If, however, I believe in only one or the other, then life is a hopeless tragedy, a cruel hoax, enticing me toward something that it cannot provide. It becomes a mockery, laughing at me, hatefully sneering at my every effort to rise above its pointlessness - or to retreat from it. I am then left with nothing but pain, unending and unendurable.

But even as I write, I cannot help but notice two things-and I smell hope. When I speak of unbelief, I still think of final reality as more than an "it". I just spoke of "it" mocking me. But things aren't capable of mockery. Only persons are. Matter mocks no one. Matter simply is. Only persons mock. Persons mock - or love- other persons. Laughing at a strange rock formation or a silly looking dog is entirely different than laughing at a friend. I believe God exists. And I believe I exist.

I can't get away from the idea that a personal energy outside of myself big enough to hem me in. I can think of this personal energy reality as good or bad, but I can't envision his (not "its") absence, his nonexistence.

Someone is there! Final reality is personal. I know it. It must be. The inconsolable longings within me, to say nothing of the intricate design of an insect can be explained no other way. The question then becomes: Is this Final Person good or bad?

And that question drives me to my second observation. Not only do I reflexively think of a Person beyond matter, but I also envision that Person moving toward me and feeling something for me as he moves closer.

I can't find that I break away from a bedrock fact: reality is defined by the interaction of two persons, one, an infinite Person who is either good or bad, and two, me, and a community of people just like me, individuals who are free to move away from or toward the infinite Person depending on what we believe about him.

What do I believe about him? I know I exist and I know he exists. But is he good and therefore worthy of trust and a legitimate basis of hope? Or is he bad, and am I therefore alone, abandoned to my resources to find happiness in a world that doesn't have it to give, unless I pretend I want less than I know I want.

When I push matters that far, I discover within me a strangely unshakable conviction that this Ultimate Person is, in fact, the God of the Bible, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, someone thoroughly good, relentlessly moral, unstoppably powerful, unimaginably loving, and determined to display his highest virtues by making me extremely happy.

If I make myself ask why I believe God is good, why the Supreme Being is not bad, my attention quickly goes my thirst for beauty: the beauty of love, the beauty of order, the beauty of joy. I know the lust for beauty is within me-I can't get away from it. And I know it is a good lust, one that I can deny but never eliminate. If beauty has no source, I don't know how to explain my desire for it.

I find myself being brought to a foundation that I cannot fall beneath. There is a God and he is good. And I am alive as a person with the capacity to trust him or turn away from him.

Now I see the final reality of a relational encounter between God and me for what it really is. The question to ask is not, "What will I do with God?", but rather "What will he do with me, someone who refuses to trust his goodness?"

The moment I ask that question with the urgency it deserves, something happens. It is then that I catch a glimpse of God's blazing glory. What has he done with me? He accepts me! He loves me! That glimpse gives me a taste of him, and I know that he is good beyond every imagination.

He sees my rebellion, my refusal to trust him, my determination to build my city here. He also sees how easily my feeble desire to do what is good is overwhelmed by stronger desires for bad things. And still he loves me! He feels compassion toward me! He wants me for a friend!

As I ponder that relationship between God and me - one that he has arranged- I sense the stirrings of hope. I see light. The cave is still black, but I am no longer falling more deeply into it. Through no power of mine, I feel myself being lifted out of it. I find myself walking in a meadow blooming with wild flowers, moving toward a stream of clear water, then lying down beside it on a grassy bank.

The sun is shining, warming my body, while a gentle breeze keeps me from becoming uncontrollably hot. And I am aware of the sheer joy of being alive. I seem to be resting and moving at the same time, resting in Christ and moving toward him, farther and farther away from the black hole that had so recently been my prison. And I think I shall never fall into that hole again.

Then something happens, perhaps small, perhaps big. A filling falls out of a tooth. I receive disturbing news about someone I love. I struggle to maintain perspective, but it slips away. I tell myself God is still good, that I can trust him, but the reality is gone. In an instant, the grassy bank disappears and I am again plummeting into darkness. Again my soul feels dead, tortured, alive only with pain and doubt.

The cycle repeats itself, this time with lower lows and higher highs. I'm pressed again to return to my foundations: Is God really good? Do I believe it? Am I alive with the power to pursue him? Is he still there? Will he let me find him? I become more aware of the importance of trusting him, of resting in his goodness, of choosing against sin.

Sometimes I wish I could settle for merely engaging pleasantly with life, brushing my teeth, paying my bills, and correcting my slice off the tee. But the pursuit of God requires more.

The more I see the real issues of life, the more I have no choice, but to move towards spiritual greatness or spiritual failure, towards powerful depth or bland impotence. I long to become a man of God, to know Christ well enough for him to be recognizable in me through my moody, fickle weirdness. I want him; sometimes I want him more than life itself. I must seek him with all my heart; only then will he let me find him. And only if I find him will I know the joy of living.

Lord, another glimpse, please!

(Larry Crabb, Finding God, pp. 154-58)

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Finding God has been a personal God-send, and spiritual realignment for me. And maybe it will be for you. Dr Crabb's words cut through the fog of my pain and past experiences like the brightest of lasers.

In this day and age, when the next self-help guide will hit the bookshelves tomorrow, and talk-shows promise all kinds of enlightenment, maybe its time to get back to where it all started....

Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Zondervan
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0310205441
ISBN-13: 978-0310205449