When I was 21, I had a spiritual dream. Spiritual in the sense that it made me wonder about the afterlife, not spiritual in the sense that it came from God. I know where it came from. It came from the wasteland of my subconscious understanding. It was a mix of pop culture images and the unoriginal disdain for organized religion. It went like this. I was driving a car on a bridge. Specifically, it was a vintage muscle car. And either I lost control or I purposefully steered it through the cement barrier and off the bridge. As the nose of the car made impact with the ground below, I was suddenly sitting in a room. I understood this to mean I had died. The room looked like a computer lab circa 2000. The bulky computers were spaced out across the tables and each monitor displayed some type of barometer. No one was talking but I understood the situation. I was dead and I was being judged. The barometer measured the religious levels of my past life. Then I woke up.
Again, a spiritual dream because it dealt with the pressing intangible questions of life. What happens after death? And is there a final judgement? I was so distraught by the dream that I told it to a group of friends the next day. To my memory, none of them were outwardly religious or showed any faith in anything beyond the mere survival of our unstable and self-inflicting lives. Like the magicians of Pharaoh, they interpreted my dream: avoid religion and shun the religious. And then we all went on with our day. And I went on with my life—a life marked by excessive self-destructive behaviors.
I still think about that dream. I think about how inaccurate it was and how wrong we all were in our interpretation. The dream was really a mirror. What we loathed was what we became: uniform. We could not see our own religion. In all our contempt for the supposed righteous, we all looked exactly the same in our unrighteousness. Our rebellion was and is the most accessible human component. It wasn’t the church or the rich or our parents or the government or the war in Iraq or our low paying jobs or the police. It was only us and our unrighteousness. We feared becoming normal and ended up right where we started: ingrained in selfishness. All of humanity starts there. But we never left. The theatrics and the artistic flair and the drama of addiction were all superficial coverings for an otherwise boring identity.
However, something happened to me. I was shown a new picture. And it was no mere dream, but truth. While that picture is deeply personal, it is likewise an eternal absolute. To paraphrase the apostle Paul’s words, it is not human will nor human effort that moves God to mercy and compassion. It is God and God alone. That is the picture. Instead of a computer lab, there is a cross. Instead of a car smashing into the ground, there is hope. And instead of a barometer to measure my behavior, there is only the risen Son extending salvation.
I cannot deny the mysteries to God’s sovereignty and neither can I deny that I have done absolutely nothing to change that dream. And for that, I am thankful.
“So then God’s choice is not dependent on human will, nor on human effort [the totality of human striving], but on God who shows mercy [to whomever He chooses—it is His sovereign gift].”
Romans 9:16 AMP
