Years
ago I purposed to write a book (and never did) called The Codependent Jesus. It
was a tongue-in-cheek response to a popular song of the ‘70s.
“Time after time I went searching for peace in some void
I was trying to blame All my ills on this world
I was in Surface relationships used me 'til I was done in
And all of the while someone was begging To free me from sin
He was there all the time
He was there all the time
Waiting patiently in line
He was there all the time
Never again Will I look for a fake rainbow's end
Now that I have the answer My life is just starting to rhyme
Sharing each new day with Him Is a cup of fresh wine
And oh what I missed, He's been waiting right there all the time.
Overlooking the bad poetry, the psychobabble, the false rhyme, and the reference to wine sung by Baptists, this song drove me batty. “He was there all the time, waiting patiently in line.” So God was essentially at the checkout line of you, as if at a Walmart, while you were wasting your life. He was begging for a relationship and you were oblivious. He was codependent.
This is a narcissistic version of what actually goes on, though. How we see it from our perspective is flawed, not a true representation of God’s love—a weak word in English to describe what is really going on in God’s heart, will, sovereignty, and total being, His hesed, His charis, His mercy.
Of course, I am reading Gentle and Lowly, and my mockery of this song is reprimanded, a bit (it’s still awful on so many levels). What Ortlund often returns to is how the fall and our own living in it for millennia has poisoned our ability to fathom and accept the depth of God’s love, so that it seems like codependency.
Let us remember that codependency was a concept that came out of addiction studies. The spouse or child of the substance abuser adopts behaviors over time that allow the addict to continue and not accept his/her consequences. I know whereof I speak here. Like the word “dysfunctional,” it’s easy to throw around. My last post, about mental illness, applies here. Mental illness is real and must be addressed, but we have taken the model so heavily that we think a diagnosis solves problems. Naming something does not cure it; it just says we recognize it.
Human codependency is complicated and the word should not be used as a weapon for self-aggrandizement or a tool of gossip. Steadfast love is not codependency. God waits for us like the father in the prodigal son. He put our sin on His Son so that we can return. If we don’t, that’s another matter. But He waits, not in line but in His providential purpose.
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