Separation Syndrome ~ God’s Hole in our Soul

Don Richardson in his book Eternity in Their Hearts writes about a God sized hole which yearns to be filled. This statement comes from Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament.

It is beautiful how God has done everything at the right time. He has put a sense of eternity in people’s minds. Yet, mortals still can’t grasp what God is doing from the beginning to the end of time. Ecclesiastes 3:11

The witness of people who venture into “savage” territory is that there is invariably a god narrative within the peoples culture. The deity may be very different to the “True God” as we Know Him and the culture may be short many of the icons that we are familiar with such as sheep and shepherds, mercy, forgiveness etc. What they do have is an understanding of their world as expressed through their social interactions and their faith/ religious dogma. The trick is to portray our faith dogma in terms of their experiences,

So then how is this significant in our “real world” lives?  God removed the “God spirit” from man after the Fall. This is the hole that Richardson was writing about. If you will, God took His spirit from man but significantly did not replace it with something else. hence there is something missing in everyone’s live.

We are meant for relationship, how many love songs can each of us recall about “Something missing”, until we find someone who meets our needs we are incomplete then when we find that person whom we believe will be there for us we feel a sense of completion.

It is not until sometime later, usually, that we discover that there is still a hole, a God sized hole, in our lives. We do not always make that association and set out to find something to fill it, this is the same as the “primitive tribal” experience.

So then how is this significant in our “real world” lives?  We have a mandate as Believers to Go Tell and Make Disciples: from Jesus. He has given us this bargaining chip in that we know the One who will fill the vacuum in the lives of others. Just like the missionary we can use this narrative to build bridges of understanding that are appropriate to the understanding and experience of the people we come across.

It does no one any good if a jackaroo is given a learned apologia of the death of Christ, usually, and an intellectual will probably have little connection with Jesus parable of the lost sheep. We need to know our people and deal with them appropriately

Finally returning to Richardson, he  writes in Peace Child about two tribes whose fundamental was treachery and who also held Judas Iscariot a role model. The tribes came to blows and he forced a peace treaty but how was this to be guaranteed? The solution was that the two chiefs were to produce a child who would live with the other tribe: the peace was to continue as long as the children lived. So for these people Jesus became God’s Peace Child.