Was I God? (Whose Adventure Is This?)

A little over fifty years ago I asked Jesus for the gift of tongues, and he utterly rejected me. He wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole, and I knew it. I was crushed, but sought to find out why--for what was I rejected--so that maybe I could get rid of it and become accepted.

Deep Inside

In my imagination (I had become entranced) I followed a trail on a river bed to a huge gray block. And I do mean block--I couldn't get past it, around it, or over it. Then I realized that I didn't need to get past it, for the trail I was following went down beneath it. The block blocked me. Jesus did not accept me, because I had not given to him whatever this block represented when I had given myself to him. I had held whatever this was in reserve. I hadn't actually surrendered myself to Jesus, not completely. I was a thief. An outcast thief.

The funny thing was I did not know what it was that I hadn't surrendered. I didn't know its name. How could I give it to Jesus if I couldn't name it, if I didn't even know what it was? Maybe it was something I would not want to give up. Perhaps it was a cost too great, something to do that was too onerous. But I resolved to give it anyway. I said, "Lord, I do not know what it is, but whatever it is, I give it to you."

I was beneath the block. I was in a darkened room like a command center. The question here is in the title of this post: Who was "I"? Was I dumb Danny, or was I God? I looked out a window or an opening in the wall. A plain of wet soil stretched out before me and unto the distant horizon. An invisible force scooped out the figure of a man from the soil, and the man was before me. The matter of his body, mud, became bone, muscle and sinew. Organs formed, and the systems of the body filled it. Skin cover it, and hair on the skin. The man became complete, except, I noticed, it had no life.

Life animated the man. He breathed. He opened his eyes, stood, and looked out at the plain. I wondered what he might think, seeing as he wasn't even alive a moment ago. Everything must be wonderous and new, and he had no language. "This is earth," I heard him think. "The sun will set, and it will get cold. I had better find shelter in those hills over there."

Watch This Transition

The mud man started walking toward the hills in the distance and the trees upon them. I was still wondering what he was thinking of what he saw, and from just behind him and to his left I followed, looking at what he looked at and listening to his mental banter. Without really noticing it, "I" slipped into being him--I was looking through his eyes, hearing his thoughts, and talking to myself as him. We had fused. I said, "I" had better make a fort of branches before it gets dark and animals come out, or maybe "I" can find a cave that doesn't have a wild animal already in it. (There was an iffy proposition: how would "I" be safe?) "I" will need firewood. Can "I" start a fire? Should "I" look for food, or plant seeds for tomorrow?

Suddenly, it hit me. I was in terror--abject horror. For I saw my sin, the thing I had held in reserve when I had "given" myself to the Lord: my self-lordship. "I" controlled and directed my life. "I" did whatever "I" thought "I" wanted to, whatever was good to me. God had given me life for his purposes, and I had stolen it. I lived for MY purposes, not his. I had never asked him what he had made me to live for; I had never even thanked him for making me to live at all.

No wonder God utterly rejected me; I was a rebel, an ungrateful and rebellious thief. Just moments ago he had made me, a mud man, by his grace to live--he OWNED me, and I in turn had given him no honor and no use of me.

Of whom? I recognized that "I" was the ignorant mud man, but it was "I", a separate being, who was thinking. I think. The mud man and "I" were melded into one. "I" had become him, but previously I had been . . . ?