Jen Smith has a really great blogpost on her blog about the Helmet of Salvation: here in reference to how the spiritual helmet guards one's thoughts. My dear roommate sent me some reading about how the helmet in the Roman soldier's armor was a key life-saving piece of armor. If the soldier sustained a head-injury there was no MRI, no neuro-surgeon standing by to care for his injury in a sterile environment. The soldier could bleed out from an open wound, sustain a stroke, have pressure build inside his skull, contract an infection after a few days, etc. Basically, head-injuries pretty much meant death back in the day. Even now, brain-trauma from open or closed head wounds can be debilitating. Depending on the nature and location of the injury, different and/or multiple functions can be damaged.
So why am I bringing this up? I had this thought after something happened with me this morning that made me react really badly in a situation where I didn't give anyone including myself grace for messing up. God informed me that I was getting spiritually attacked, thus I needed my armor on pronto. I indignantly asked Him, "Why do I need the helmet of salvation when my BRAIN'S MESSED UP ANYWAY!?!?!" (thanks to a mixture of genetics + early development btw). Then God gave me this word-picture that He knew only a nerdy HDFS / formerly premed person would understand.
He gave me this picture of a child being hit on the head repeatedly & throughout his/her early development. Blows could come from a parental figure, circumstances, lies from the world, or several of those sources. What I was reminded was that spiritually, I was that kid. I took repeated head-trauma to my soul with people & the world saying "I was not normal enough, I was too medically/developmentally difficult to be worthy of true unconditional love, I couldn't do enough to fill a void in someone's life." This damaged the function in my soul that connected to God rightly. You could say that I formed an avoidant attachment to God through this. I wanted to know God, but I felt like He was always mad at me & that He didn't really care because I felt like I was an inconvenience. I also felt a stronger pull than the normal population to pay for what I did wrong by beating myself up both mentally & physically. Therefore, I learned enough theology in Sunday school to get by, but I never praised Him as Creator, and only prayed during crisis moments. Even then I doubted that He would truly listen & come through.
Then in college someone explained to me: Yes, you are sinful. Yes, God is perfect. But God sent His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. God saves us not on our own merit, but because Christ paid our penalty for our sins. I accepted that because it made perfect sense. I couldn't try on my own to be perfect. I needed Christ.
On an eternal-security level, God has secured this attachment. I have His Spirit in me as a deposit as a guarantee (Ephesians 1). On an emotional level, sometimes I feel like I still have a disorganized attachment to God. This is when the head-injured part of my soul still feels the blows from my past. The old injuries are re-opened and God is always in the process of healing them. Will my walk with God be marked by my past soul-injuries for the rest of my earthly life? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe the wounds are so deep that God will be there to intervene to keep them from getting worse, but they may still be there. Maybe He will heal them completely. I know for certain that in Heaven, God will make my soul new, thus healing my wounds once and for eternity.
Like a child that might have had a head-injury & needs extra protection, I must always remember to keep the helmet of salvation on. I must always remind myself that I am saved & allow God to protect my thoughts, especially in crisis situations. I must allow God to keep hold of me in case I loose my step and fall, or something tries to hit me in the head & re-damage me. God, like a good therapeutic professional, knows exactly what I need, is there in a crisis when my wounds flare up & cause me to think or act out of the hurt rather than Truth, and He soothes those wounds & improves my functioning toward Him & the world. Clinging to Him also gives me hope & reassurance that because of His grace, I will walk around feeling the hurt & damage from my spiritual wounds only for this world, and will walk around in perfect relationship with Him forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment