In the movie “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” one of the key areas in the establishment of the relationship between the two heroes is a serious discussion between Nick and Norah about serious ultimate questions of our brokenness as beings. I had a similar and similarly serious conversation today with a fellow teacher here at Legacy, which started with a discussion of personality type (an interest the two of us share) and continued into many and somewhat serious areas, like relationships, family history, and the general state of brokenness among the people we encounter in our personal and religious experiences. I often think about brokenness (it is a subject that is rather hard for me to avoid), and about wholeness, and so I would like to comment a little bit about the phenomenon, and more important, its potential purposes for divine providence.

No one likes the feeling of being broken. For some of us (far too many of us) it is unavoidable. There was simply no way for me to avoid being broken in some pretty fundamental ways by my life–I had no say in the matter. The same is true for many others–the traumas and experiences we face, once they reach a certain level of severity, will break everyone in deep and fundamental ways. It is unavoidable, and it is not by our own will or desires. This sort of experience can (and should) prompt a deep examination of purpose, because it forces us to believe in the reality of God and the reality of our traumas and brokenness if we are to avoid patterns of self-destruction, be they sexual or chemical or behavioral in nature. Once you have a dark night of the soul, once you stare into the black evil that exists in this world, you cannot come back unchanged. You cannot be the “normal” person you might have been otherwise. You must be something else, and whether that is good or bad, a saint or a monster, is your responsibility and yours alone. And hopefully you have some people who can help you be your better angels to talk you down from the ledges and help you do battle with the despair and wounded dignity that result from life in a deeply corrupted world.

Why does God allow this? I do not pretend to know the fullness of God’s plans or divine providence in the workings of humanity, but given my own deeply difficult life, I think I have at least some ability to discuss a few of those purposes from the point of view of a fellow traveler along the path of thorns, from someone who has carried heavy burdens for many miles and asked deep and dark questions of myself, my family, my surroundings, and my Creator. Why does God allow so much brokenness in this world? Why does God allow truly horrible sins to happen to others, particularly to the innocent and the small? These are not pleasant matters to think about, and most people would do anything possible to avoid wrestling with such darkness, unless they have no choice in the matter but to wrestle with them to understand themselves and the purpose and meaning of their own life and suffering.

At some level, I believe that we are broken because we have to be broken to be remade into the image and likeness of God. Because of our corrupt world, the deep and abiding influence of sin, and the corrupting nature of the culture around us, none of us can be whole and right with God based on the way we are naturally. No matter how ‘nice’ and ‘normal’ we are by nature, that nature is warped and influenced by the reality of thousands of years of sin and corruption that will manifest itself within our lives in some fashion. Left to our own wishes and inclinations, all of us will have some secret and not-so-secret sins that we will wallow in and practice on a regular basis that will prevent us from having God’s indwelling presence within us. It does not matter how we will be corrupted, whether in an absence of love for our neighbor or in an absence of love for God.

The problem is, though, that as long as we can feign a sense of wholeness, out of whatever we make to be an idol, whether it is our relationships, our God-given talents, our status and wealth and positions or possessions, or anything else, we cannot be right with God. We cannot be right as we are naturally, because that is carnal and flawed and corrupt, and so we cannot be saved and made into God’s children as we are. What is required is not merely a patch job, a fresh coat of paint, or some minor surface repairs. What is required is massive renovation and rebuilding, deep changes in giving us a new heart, a new mind, a new way of looking at life, a new perspective. This cannot be done overnight, as God basically has to guide us and mold us and shape us from a million little pieces to a whole person who is a model of God’s ways to others.

There are a few lessons we can and should take from this process. The first is that everyone who God works will be broken in some fashion (there are many ways to be broken, after all). Everyone will have deep and frustrated longings, deep wounds from the abuses suffered from family members, classmates, authority figures. Everyone will have deep insecurities and immense capacity for self-deception born from the need to project an image of competence and wholeness while feeling broken and shattered. Everyone who is called by God will be broken and deeply scarred in some way by their life, because it is only when we recognize our brokenness and our wounded self that God can start to work within us.

But our recognition of our own brokenness before God is not sufficient. We must recognize that everyone else is broken too. Everyone is walking wounded, carrying deep wounds that have never been healed, the scars and damage from broken relationships in their personal and family history, the traumas of life in a fallen world. And if we too know how we need gentleness and loving concern in our broken state, we ought to at least desire to be loving and gentle ourselves to fellow sufferers, and inclined to make it somewhat easy for others to be gentle and loving to us to the best of our abilities. To the extent that we recognize everyone is in the same situation, we can treat others as we wish to be treated in our own state of deep suffering and pain.

And we also need to recognize that though we must all be broken before God can make us whole and right again, we are not to remain broken. We can neither wallow in our brokenness as so many of us wallow in our sins and weaknesses. Our brokenness does not entitle us to an easy life, for everyone else is broken too, and we each have to grow so that we can bear our own easy yoke from Christ, a yoke of obedience to His laws of love that allow us to love God with our whole being and love everyone else as ourselves. As we become whole, we are not made merely to be whole in ourselves and self-sufficient, but as parts of the body of Christ to be fitted together as part of one Church and one body, of which we are all members.

So long as we think we are sufficient in ourselves, we cannot become proper parts of the larger bodies that God wishes of us. But rather than being co-dependent, we are to be inter-dependent, each performing our functions well as part of families, and congregations, and communities. It is not good that man should be alone. Our brokenness is supposed to remind us that we are not created to be in a solitary state of nature, but rather to be part of the family of God, citizens of His holy city, and godly members of our own human communities. We must recognize that we are broken before God can make us whole, but our wholeness is not for ourselves alone, but is to make us part of larger wholes and larger communities. In seeing this fact, we can see some of ways in which God works great good out of horrible evils. It is a shame that such suffering appears necessary for human beings to be able to be remade in the image and likeness of God and of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but it appears there is no easier way, given the tenacity to which people hold to our own illusions and pretenses of wholeness and goodness when left to our own devices.