The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives (Hebrews 12:6).
Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of repairing pottery. In this repair, an already treasured piece of earthenware is not deemed to be devalued by its brokenness but is seen to take on a new quality through the imposed imperfection. No longer pristine, it is more beautiful for having been broken, for the resulting cracks in the piece are visible displays of its fragility. The idea of an added value through being damaged is foreign to our Western mindset. We do not think twice about casting a cracked piece of pottery in the trash. But there is much that can be appreciated and learned from a visible reminder of brokenness.
We are a broken people. We have a hard time admitting this, but we come into this world as damaged goods. You only need be with a toddler for a short time to learn there is no such thing as an innocent child. And as we grow into adulthood our brokenness grows with us. We see it in our relationships with others, including our spouses and our own children. We fail to love our family as we ought, because many times we think of ourselves instead of the welfare of others. Sometimes we inflate our ego because we have insecurities we would rather not deal with. And sometimes we put on airs of self-assurance to hide the cracks in our fabricated facade of healthiness instead of yearning for a true self-awareness.
But God is very aware of our brokenness, and His involvement in our lives reflects His concern for us. According to the author of Hebrews, God is a perfect Father who disciplines and chastises the ones He loves. He lovingly fractures our faulty facade to remind us just how broken we are and bring us to a place of dependence upon Him instead of ourselves. God does this because His principle goal for our lives is not to bring us self-centered happiness, but to conform us to the beautiful image of His dear Son.
For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers (Romans 8:29).
God is an artist working with an imperfect vessel to bring a new beauty into it, the beauty of Christ. God sanctifies us, or “makes us like His holy Son” by giving us the holiness of Christ as a gift. But God is progressively bringing the life of that holiness into our existing faulty condition. The more that faultiness is chipped away through God’s loving discipline, the more the life and beauty of Christ enters in. This new and beautiful life, therefore, co-exists with the brokenness of our nature. As Martin Luther said 500 years ago, “we are at the same time both saint and sinner.”
God’s loving discipline comes in manifold ways. Like the craftsmanship of a Master Builder, it is sometimes a work of construction, building up the new spiritual life He has given us. But sometimes it is a work of demolition that needs to take place, breaking our haughty spirit and fracturing our obstinate disposition to bring us to a place of repentance toward our sin. And so, this work of sanctification becomes a repeating cycle in our lives. This is the reality of our fallen and broken condition. It is also the reality of the depths of God’s love for us and of our absolute necessity of grace.
We see a similar cycle to this in the Old Testament book of Judges. During the early years of Israel’s life in the promised land, the people at times become unfaithful and “do what is evil in the sight of the Lord” (Judges 6:1). As a result of this unfaithfulness, God, in His disciplining providence, gives the Israelites over into the hands of an invading force to oppress them. The people cry out to God in repentance over their evil, and He raises up a judge who delivers them from the hands of their enemies and restores rest in the land. This rest continues until the people again “do what is evil in the sight of the Lord.” As this cycle repeats, God raises up judges like Samson, and Deborah and Jephthah. But one of the most intriguing cycles is when we meet a judge named Gideon.
Many of us are familiar with the story of Gideon from our childhood Sunday School classes. He delivers Israel from a massive Midianite army with only 300 men carrying not swords or spears or bows but trumpets in one hand and torches concealed in clay jars in the other. The 300 men surround the Midianite camp just after midnight, they blow their trumpets and break their jars. And as the noise sounds and the light shines out, God brings confusion on the Midianites and they turn on themselves in violence as they flee. Israel is restored, but not by strong military leadership, exceptional Israelite forces or superior weaponry. Israel is restored by the hand of God. For God intentionally took Gideon’s forces down to only 300 men so that they would not be tempted to boast, “saying, ‘My own hand has saved me’” (Judges 7:2).
The Apostle Paul draws upon this victory of Gideon’s in his second letter to the Corinthians when he says:
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:6–7).
Paul focuses on this treasure of light contained in jars of clay to take our eyes back to Gideon, but not for the purpose of simply teaching us about a battle that took place nearly 1,200 years earlier. Paul wants us to see the greater truth of the story of Gideon. For, as we mentioned last month, the Old Testament narrative does not stand in scripture simply for its own sake. It is there to teach us of the grace and power of God in the beautiful work of Christ. As interesting as Gideon’s victory is, we cannot miss the greater truth that the oppression of our sin and brokenness is defeated and destroyed, not by lights shining out of broken clay jars, but by the light of Christ’s beauty shining out of His brokenness. For Christ allowed Himself to be broken on the cross for our brokenness, and the beauty of that self-sacrificing love, like the beauty of the broken Japanese pottery, displays “the glory of God in the face of Jesus.”
Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:4–5).
But this beauty in brokenness is not only found in the beauty of Christ’s sacrifice. Paul goes on to tell us that the light which God has placed within our hearts is contained in the clay jars of our frail humanity, and just as Gideon’s torches could not be seen until the jars were broken, so is the beauty of our new life in Christ not seen as long as we prop up the facade which hides our fractured condition. The light of Christ’s beauty in us only shines through the cracks of our brokenness. And so, in our weakness and imperfection we find the true beauty of God in us.
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (I Corinthians 1:26–31).
I am penning this article as a broken person writing to broken people. God wants us to own our brokenness. But this is difficult for us, because humility is not one of our natural virtues. Whether we are religious or non-religious people, we would rather picture ourselves as self-sufficient, self-righteous and self-sustaining. But let us not think more highly of ourselves than we ought. Let us treat others with the care and concern of knowing we are all broken vessels reflecting the image of our Creator.
