It's Not That Simple

“He spoke to me on New Years Day”, Jonah began. It was now the 18th of January. “I was in prayer, Isra, after we hung up, and I prayed and prayed, asked and asked that I may see His glory. We’d read Exodus 33 that week in church, and I kept thinking about Moses. I kept thinking that the whole point to life was to know God. To build as intimate a relationship with him as possible. I kept thinking about how perfect He must be, that someone like Moses, who knew Him so closely, could see at most His back. I kept thinking these things, and I poured my heart out in prayer. I asked that I may be crucified alongside Christ, that He may live through me, like that passage you showed me a while ago. I asked and asked; I think I must’ve been on my knees for over an hour”, a dry chuckle escaped him, followed by a tired smile. He looked up at Isra, who– sat on his bed cross-armed and cross-legged– leant against the wall by his window; Jonah cowered on the very corner. Hunched over, and smaller than Isra, such that, though they were on a level surface, he had to look up. Isra did not look bemused. He was not listening with the usual enthusiasm or appreciation that came with talk of the scripture. He looked stern. And tentatively sad. Jonah’s shoulders buckled under the weight of his words. The weight of their consequence. The weight of Isra’s feelings and his own. He turned away, and spoke through a ragged breath “All of a sudden it was like the weight of the world was on my shoulders and my neck. I couldn’t lift my head, I couldn’t move a muscle. I was frightened, but also too frightened to be frightened, so I just waited. Like when you have sleep paralysis, but try not to panic. I don’t know how long it took, but I kept thinking I was hearing something around me. I couldn’t turn my head, but I kept thinking I could hear something around me and I strained my ears to make out what it was. It was like hearing a voice through a wall. I kept trying to make out what it was saying, but I couldn’t and I couldn’t and it hurt to remain in that position, and I was frightened, and I didn’t know what to do and then a resounding voice came from all around me and said “Jonah, Jonah”. 

“Then the spell was broken, and I shot up. There was nothing there, of course, and I heard nothing but the pulsating flow of blood in my ears. Then the fright that I’d felt was replaced by a kind of awe. And I knelt back on the ground and began to cry. I kept saying “here I am”, and I didn’t know why.”

At this point Jonah, like in his story, stood up. Not looking at Isra, who refused to move, he started pacing around his boyfriend’s room, thumb between his teeth, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. His staple white Radiohead T-shirt hung more loosely over his frame. He had bags under his eyes. His skin looked grey; his hair: unkempt. 

“When I woke up, I was happy. I’d heard the voice of God. He’d spoken to me. I’d asked and had received an answer. But when I tried to get out of bed, Isra, somehow I couldn’t. There was this pressing feeling, this pressure. I kept thinking about this passage that says “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth”. It’s my favourite passage because what a God God is, that the very first word He uses to describe– to establish– to reveal who He is is “merciful”! A merciful and gracious, forgiving, all forgiving, longsuffering God. But you know what He says next?”, he asked, but he knew Isra knew. Much of Jonah’s knowledge of scripture had been imparted to him by Isra.

“He says: “keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”” He looked at his boyfriend. Battered and beaten. For a moment the tension in Isra’s body gave slack, and he wanted to reach out to Jonah, but he continued.

“I have been cut to the heart. Cut to the heart, Isra, and I was made guilty before the Lord. You read these passages in passing, but you won’t know what it means until you’re feeling it. I was guilty before the Lord, Iz, and the weight pressed me deep into my mattress. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t pray, Izzy, I felt like I was dying. Have you ever felt the weight of sin?”, he stopped, stood, and waited for Isra to reply. But he didn’t. So he continued. “When the Israelites were cut to the heart Peter said to them “Repent, and let every one of you be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” This is what I was doing in that week you didn’t see me. That first week of January. My parents were thrilled about it anyway. They’d waited for me to bring up baptism on my own.

“So that was that and I felt better for a bit. I told you we’d been at my grandparents’ because you know they don’t have wifi. A white lie. Nothing I haven’t done a thousand times. But this time, Isra, my spirit protested. Violently it overcame me, this crippling guilt and shame so intense I thought for a moment I couldn’t go on living. This keeps happening, Iz. It happens when I do bad things, say bad things, it happens when I listen to music now, and they say bad things and I always knew they were bad, it just never mattered much to me. A merciful God, gracious, Izzy– all forgiving, all forgiving. 

“Suddenly, Izzy, I was made guilty before the Lord, and I understood what Peter meant when he said that you’d receive the Gift of The Holy Spirit. 

“Only it didn’t feel too much like a gift Izra, I didn’t enjoy the shows I loved, the books I loved, the people…

“Izzy, it started happening with you. It started happening when I’d hold you, when you’d–” he broke off there. He was facing into Isra’s room, so he could only see Jonah’s profile, toward his desk, eyes downcast, and his hunched over shoulders shook. He took a sudden inward breath, as though he were gathering strength, and said through a voice thick with grief and mourning “when you’d kiss me– It started happening because I love you, Isra and because I’m with you– it tastes like bile in my mouth to say this, Izzy, but I don’t know– I’ve been cut to the heart, Iz– cut to the heart and–” he’d stopped talking, but kept walking, gnawing at his thumb, occasionally glancing at Isra, his face streaked with tears, sweat and mucous.

Isra wanted to go over to him, fold him in his arms and make him stand still. Let the crying stop and let this be over. But this whole thing wasn’t like Jonah. For him to say these things, to be like this, something must have moved him. They’d become best friends in elementary school and in secondary school, they had loved each other. To recall a time in his life without Jonah took effort, and it had never occurred to him to imagine a future without– “I can’t anymore, Izzy, I can’t, I just–”

“Jo–” “It’s too much all at once, it’s too heavy, Izzy, I– I– can't bear– have you ever borne the weight of sin?”

Israel kept silent. The frantic nature of Jonah’s speech had all at once left him. And he said in a weary, sober voice “I don’t want to sin anymore.”

*

Three years had passed since then, and it was Jonah’s 20th birthday. February 14th. The first birthday he’d spent without Isra, he’d made his wish, his only wish, that his life may be used to glorify God. He tasted from his slice of cake, and threw up on himself.

All subsequent birthday wishes, including this one, expressed the hope that it might get easier.

That night, like every night, he prayed.

Father,

I come to you with a heart full of gratitude. I am grateful, father, for the ground I walk on, fashioned by your hands. I am grateful, Father, for the sun you have hung in the sky you have painted. Father, I am grateful for the community you have placed me in, Father I thank you for salvation– I thank you for your mercy that you gave unto us, this wretched generation, your only begotten son, that we might be made holy through His sacrifice.

I thank you, Father, that you have chosen your people to love and that I may be among them. I thank you Father, that you called forth Abraham, and kept the patriarchs, though they sinned. That you revealed your name to Moses and called him “Moses, Moses”, and he said “here I am”. Abba, Father. Abba, Father! Blessed be your kind heart. Your goodness, your glory. I thank you, Lord, that upon my creation, every hair on my head was numbered, Father, that you have set me upon a path of righteousness, guided me, that I may not dash my foot against a rock, Father, I ask for your strength and discernment, that I may not be tempted by evil, but delivered from it by your hand, as you brought out from Egypt your people by a mighty hand, Father; I ask for your strength, that the work given unto each day is sufficient. That those who take much have nothing left over and those who take little have no need for more. 

I ask for your strength, that I may bear my cross.

I ask, Father, that you strip me of this need for love and companionship. Mine is not akin to a matter of lust, Father, where it is wholly sin. Mine is goodness intertwined with sin, Father, such that I cannot taste goodness without the stench of sin. As such I plead: strip me bare! That I yearn not for love, companionship, fellowship, trust, help, sharing, Father, family, that I yearn not for support, for closeness, for affection, Father, that I am not lonely, Father, though I am alone, I pray for peace upon my heart Lord, for this heart, cannot be given unto anyone, but you, Lord.

I pray that I can manage, Father, to carry my cross over this path. Let thy will be done; let thy will be done.

So let it be, amen.

*

Jonah Siziba was found drowned on the shore of a lake by the botanical gardens of his university in the first week of July. He had been studying theology. The young woman that had found him rushed to give him CPR. Caught by zeal and haste, she had ripped open his button up shirt to find written:

Not everyone can live a fasted life.

I’d sooner be dead, than live in sin.