There are places in literature, history, film, all kinds of places that become symbolic. If I say Gettysburg, we’re instantly flung back to the Civil War and a harsh reminder of how deadly politics can really be. If I say Berlin Wall, we think of an act of defiance that ended an era. On the other side, if I say Tiananmen Square, the mind wanders to a lone person who would rather be rolled over by a tank than compromise his beliefs. And if I say Technodrome, well that’s when we really start to identify my fellow nerds.
In Jewish and Christian history there is one place that holds almost more symbolism than any other. The word is simple, almost deceptively ambiguous. We call it the Wilderness.
Wilderness is such a broad term. I would often refer to the strange, out of place stretch of small trees between my old back yard and my neighbor’s as “the Wilderness.” A confirmed non-camper, I’d also refer to anyplace where I can hear the creepy chirp of crickets as Wilderness. But to ancient Hebrews and others of that spiritual lineage, Wilderness is a term loaded down with all kinds of baggage.
See the Hebrews went from being a big ol’ family to a big ol’ nation all while under the nurturing gaze of Egypt’s slave-drivers. Eventually after a period of crying out and plagues, God intervened and saw to it that Egypt set Israel free to become their own nation. He told them about a promised land, a place that would make all of their wildest dreams come true, make them a national power unlike anything the world had seen!
Unfortunately the Israelites had apparently seen one miracle too few to really bolster their courage; they made their way to the promised land, and saw some big scary people inside, and that was enough to send them running. God was more than annoyed, and so he reacted by punishing them. An entire generation of Israelites were condemned to wander in the desert until they died, at which time their children would be allowed to enter the promised land.
So the word Wilderness has come to embody a period of…well, suffering I suppose. It’s a tough word to define. Distance feels like a good way of describing it; distance between God and his people. When we say we’re in the Wilderness, we often mean that God’s blessings feel far away. Many people use the word Wilderness to denote when they’re feeling far from God. I know that’s how I would’ve used it recently, and how I had intended to use it for this blog post at first. But that just didn’t sit right with me; for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to write that Wilderness is a bad thing.
See the more we look at it, the more we start to see that God wasn’t far from his people; on the contrary, in the Wilderness he was among them, leading them physically in the form of fire and clouds. And there was no big fancy shiny temple; God’s very presence dwelt in a building called The Tabernacle, that was at the very center of the Israelite people at all times. In fact, when you look at it closely, it seems like Israel was far closer to God in the Wilderness than they ever were when they settled.
So at this point in my thinking/research, I had settled on this idea that the Wilderness was good. That we needed to learn to exist in the Wilderness at all times. But still, I was not satisfied.
Suffering, good? Punishment good? No, that just didn’t sit right. I couldn’t take it. The Wilderness was never God’s plan! It was never what he wanted for them; it was just one more case of God doing great things with plan B. So again I had to go back to the drawing board and try to reconcile this whole idea of Wilderness.
See the Wilderness represents more for Judeo-Christian traditions than just a desert. The Wilderness is about problems in our relationship with God. Sometimes its about penance, trying to right our own wrongs. Other times its about an inexplicable feeling that for some reason we are not as close to God as we once were. And sometimes, we have a tendency to romanticize it. Maybe we’re melodramatic by nature, maybe we just need some kind of landmark event to draw us together, or our Western guilt makes us want to have some suffering to claim as our own. So no, it’s not a good thing. But it can’t possibly be a bad thing if it draws us so close to God as it did Israel…so what are we to do with Wilderness? Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be wandering the wilderness?
The reality is that the Wilderness is simply a part of the rhythm to spirituality. Love it or hate it, it’s a place that we all find ourselves eventually. But through it, we find God. We find a nearness to him that we’d only imagined before. Maybe it’s punishment that brings us to the Wilderness, or maybe it’s just a natural cycle that occurs when we insulate ourselves with nonsense and things that distract from God. Either way, there’s something to be said for rhythm. Maybe this post finds you at the end of a stretch of Wilderness, like me. If that’s the case, then enjoy the growth you’ve found, and never lose it. Maybe it comes to you at the beginning, in which case, stay faithful, endure the suffering, and know that at the end waits the promise. Wherever you are, may you find the blessings that God has promised you.
Jake currently serves at WMF as the Coordinator of Short Term Programs