Imagine you are born wearing a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses (this analogy on how we encounter new cultures comes from Michael Mercil). In addition to having arms and legs, eyes and hair, you are also born with these glasses that have a yellow tint to them and because of that everything you do, everything you process, everything you experience comes with a yellow tint.
Somewhere far off there are other people born with blue-tinted sunglasses. Everything they do, process, experience comes with a blue tint. For instance, let’s imagine that the glasses I wear are yellow-tinted and the glasses people living in Thailand wear are blue-tinted. Suppose I travel to Thailand to learn about their culture, wearing my yellow-tinted glasses. That will affect how I see their world. Of course, I could decide to put on a pair of blue-tinted glasses for visiting Thailand (so as to have a more authentic experience) but if I put those glasses on over my yellow ones, am I really getting an authentic view of that culture? Or just my view tinted by their view?
This same principle for experiencing cultures applies to how we experience things in general, and particularly how we experience the spiritual life. Because we are fallen people, we are born wearing a pair of internal glasses that tint how we see the world. That tint only intensifies as we age. Childhood wounds, rejection, loss … all those things further distort our perception of God’s design. We have taken on the sight of people wearing the “glasses” of spiritual exile.
This is the bad news about exile: it messes with your vision. When you’re in exile, you see everything through the lens of separation or rejection or loss, or whatever it is that exile has cheated you out of. Exile filters reality and to the extent that any of us lives outside the boundaries of the Kingdom of God, we are cursed with that distorted vision.
The redemption experience offered by Jesus Christ gives us a chance at a difference set of lenses. With these, we can actually begin to see the world as God’s sees it. Redemption glasses offer an entirely different worldview. But if we put those glasses on over our fallen ones, have we really changed anything?
Too often, this is the option we choose when we take on Christ and his worldview. Rather than completely changing our vision, we decide to superimpose his glasses over our exile glasses. We do that by refusing his healing, by not going after real transformation, by not taking on the mind of Christ. Which means that in the most important ways, we still don’t get the culture of the Kingdom.
When our wounds are the result of generational brokenness — passed down to us from parent to child over generations — we may not even realize that the lenses through which we filter the world are “exile” lenses. We may not consciously realize that our choices, relationships, failures and successes are all sifted through lenses that distort God’s design for us. And even if we have chosen to follow Jesus, we may still be wearing our old glasses beneath our new ones. We may even long for a more familiar life, even an enslaved one.
How do we shed our exile glasses in favor of a more thoroughly transformed Kingdom vision? Three thoughts:
Acknowledge your exile. The first step in any recovery process is to acknowledge what is. You can’t remove glasses you don’t believe are there. Acknowledge your exile, your distance from God and his design. Start with what is.
Get the map. To get out of exile, you need a plan and a path. Who will hold you accountable? Who will walk you toward healing? How will you engage the community of Christ so you aren’t overcome by the temptation to turn back toward slavery? Get a plan. Get a group around you. Get healing. It is your freedom you’re after; take responsibility for it.
Immerse yourself in a Kingdom community. I’m confident that community is essential for sustaining progress. Healing happens in relationship, not in a vacuum. Lean into your community and trust the voices of fellow travelers. Isolation will only return you to exile.
It won’t do to pretend we can wear a cultural tint over our redemption. If we’re going to get a vision for the in-breaking Kingdom, we must take off the glasses of exile and commit ourselves to a view of the promised land.
