Grace & Camp Hope...

Like the rest of the world with access to a television, this white man has been moved in spirit by the amazing rescue effort in the Atacama Desert, Chile that saw 33 trapped miners freed from deep inside the earth after spending some 69 days underground. One-by-one the miners emerged from the bowels of captivity to joyous raptures of nationalistic fervour and emotional outpourings from families, friends, rescuers, media and the Chilean Prime Minister and First Lady. Truly, the execution of the brilliantly devised and implemented plan to free these trapped men will go down in history as one of the most incredible feats of human endeavour.

Physically, the miners all resurfaced in relatively good condition considering the scale of their plight over the past 10 weeks. Emotionally and psychologically-speaking, the toll exacted on these men's souls is sure to be revealed as they wrestle with the demons of their ordeal. Psychologists have already noted that there will be issues for these men in re-settling into normality. Issues with these men re-establishing their roles in their families and re-integrating into local communities. Issues with just basically finding the beat again of the rhythm of life. But one statement by a post-traumatic stress expert commenting on the Chilean rescue drama really got this white man thinking.

The quote went something like this - "some of these men may even miss the mine they were trapped in..." My immediate reaction to this was predictable - how could they miss being stuck 2000 feet underground for ten weeks?! But then I thought again about the statement and began to think through how this really could be true. For ten weeks those men had to re-frame their whole existence deep under the earth. They had to create a mini-society down there with order and structure. They had to submit to a communal code in order to survive - in body, mind and spirit. I could imagine they had to grow to respect, maybe even love the rocky walls hemming them in just to endure their sentence underground with some modicum of sanity. And so, in accordance with some perverse kind of subterranean-Stockholm Syndrome there may well be a man or two who at some point in the vast openness of their re-found freedom crave the walls of simplicity and the relative serenity of their 2000ft tomb. To the normal healthy mind this proposition is madness but we weren't down there...for 69 days...2000ft under.

Is it any different from the many Christians in churches today who have been afforded the greatest most liberating gift one could receive, GRACE, yet still crave to exist within stony tombs of law? Isn't it sadly ironic for the church today that we, as a redeemed and wholly free people of God find ourselves 'suffocating' in our freedom in Christ so we return to the 'oxygen' of law where misplaced comfort is found? Paul letter to the church in Galatia clearly warned that fellowship that law and grace were two realities that could not and should not be mixed. And yet I still see and know free people desperately clinging onto the four-walls of their stone-law entrapment believing that they can somehow traverse and co-exist between both worlds.

Let me provide an example. I recently encountered a worship leader in a church who, in what appears to be a moment of complete ecstacy and freedom in spirit, tells the congregation they must raise their hands and lift their eyes upwards to worship our God in the purest form of adoring perfect worship. New covenant bells and whistles with all the trappings of an old covenant stone foundation. The last time I checked my theological basics, God is believed to be omnipresent. Everywhere...up, down, sideways, diagonal and importantly, within. So who am I raising my hands and eyes to? The Sunday School God who looks like grandfather time and resides perched on a cloud in the sky up there? Life is so much simpler and uncomplicated within the solid walls of the spirit of law - you do it this way, you do it well and God will be pleased with you child...Otherwise....!

So the fact remains - it really is easy to imagine that a relatively small space of confinement that would appear obviously to be a hell-hole could transform into a place of comfort, a haven of safety and security. It works that way in the spiritual - I know that to be true because there's many trapped Christians deep underground in law who need to emerge to the surface of grace. Maybe one day they'll see the sunlight of the real Camp Hope...