THE BIBLE FREQUENTLY REFERS to pottery as a metaphor for the relationship between humans and their God. Just as pottery is shaped for a purpose, God’s hand shapes us for his purposes. Paul observes the analogous human condition. “In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use.” (2 Tim. 2:20) Isaiah, writing almost eight centuries earlier, says “You, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (Isa. 64:8)
Pottery-making is an ancient craft. The earliest examples found at archaeological digs date back some twenty-nine thousand years. Clay is a naturally occurring mineral that, when mixed with water and heated carefully in the pottery process, created vessels of great utility and sometimes great beauty. The clay is typically quite dry in its new shape prior to being placed in a kiln to harden. Vitrification is a gradual heating process during which the materials that melt most easily do so. They dissolve and fill in the spaces between the more refractory particles. The melted materials promote further melting, as well as compacting and strengthening the clay body. Too much vitrification may deform, slump, or even puddle the ware on the kiln shelf. Deformed vessels may still be useful for common purposes such as cooking or holding liquids. But such ancient processes cannot reform the damaged vessel, as the chemical nature of the clay has been permanently altered to a type of silica.
What is true of that hardened clay, however, is not true of mankind, made by God from the dust of the ground as he ‘breathed life’ into it. Note the two basic elements of pottery present when man is first created. “Streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Gen. 2:6-7) It is that warm exhalation that forms the human vessels meant to be filled with the Spirit of God. Further, mark also the deformation of mankind by sin, which hardened the heart of first man and first woman, and which hardens our hearts today. (cf. Gen. 3:6-19)
Sin deforms us. There are two ways in which this happens. One is this: we have been given free will, and in that exercise, have made – like Adam or Eve – the decision to rebel against God.
The second, however, is outside of our control at its inception; someone exerts an evil power over our lives as they sin against us. Consider the child abused by a critical parent, or the malevolence of a wicked person who both intends and carries out acts that traumatize us. Sin’s deformation of our identity is a wound that all-too-often matures into a hardened acceptance of a damaged and flawed self.
In the first circumstance, practicing Christians fully know that freedom lies in the path of repentance, and that the degree of repentance implemented has a direct correlation to being set free. This comes in relationship to the finished work of Jesus on the Cross. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36) In the latter event, there is also a pathway to that same freedom. In what we call the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.” (Luke 11:4)
How hard this is for us, on either path! “Lord,” we groan, or perhaps even cry out in anguish, “I’m just not capable of this.” But the one who came to set the captives free (cf. Isa. 61:1, Luke 4:18), smiling tenderly even at the point of intersection with our desolate suffering, refers us to the voice of the Father. “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘You did not make me?’ Can the pot say to the potter, ‘You know nothing?’” (Isa. 29:16)
The heat of sin hardens our hearts, and deforms our self-image. Holding stubbornly onto our own view of self – rejecting either or both repentance and forgiveness — always puts those calling out for relief from the Lord into discipline from the Father. It is most likely that we will accept such discipline in our adult life when the hardening has come as a result of our own actions. This comes at a healthy cost to self-image – that which Paul calls “godly repentance.” (2 Cor. 7:10)
The harder part so often is that of forgiving others for the wounds inflicted upon us. Hardest of all, perhaps, is that same issue when the wounds have been imposed upon the young and helpless by a flawed, sometimes greatly flawed, parental figure. Those latter injuries go in early and deep, and traumatize self-image before there are any defenses. This is a wound at the center of being, and the cost for this cure may seem steep indeed.
God’s remedy for this is a painful surgery. It’s also a death-dealing surgery; that is, death to the malformed or deformed image of self. And make no mistake about this: this image of self does not want to give up its hold on us. Its grip is bone-deep and cellular, ages-old and powerful. The older we are – the longer we’ve been settled in our intuitive and accepted self-knowledge – the more painful this spiritual surgery is. It’s a surgery that must be undergone without anesthesia, and yet, it is God’s mercy, if we can accept it. It begins with a journey to the depths of self, and a steely-eyed objective analysis through God’s eyes at the wound itself, and past the wound to the wounder. It calls us along the pathway of acceptance and forgiveness towards intentional and purposeful deconstruction of a distorted self-view. Consider this in the context of Jesus dying words: “Father, forgive them, *for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) These initial steps must be taken in order to break free of arrested spiritual development. But the benefit of this is nonpareil.
In our modern age of technology, vitrified pottery actually can be reused, though it is rare. It is first ground into a powder, after which it is reconstituted with refined clay to produce an extremely dense pottery that is exceptionally durable. In the context of being ‘set free,’ as you attempt to cross a seemingly great chasm (it is), fix your inner eye steadfastly on this promised outcome: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:1)
Part of this journey is the healing for the inner child. Part of it is the liberation of the adult in bondage.
Q. Do I fully accept, believe, and receive the power of Jesus Christ to make me new?
*And the ones who do know what they are doing are deemed wicked, and of them, the Father says, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” (Deut. 32:35)
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