The Dark Night of the Soul

by David Kyle Foster

Cotton candy Christianity. It pervades western ideas about life. It fills the temple of God here on earth.

In adopting a "Madison Avenue" approach to persuasion in our attempts to evangelize our culture, we've compromised the truth so as to only show the good side of what is a far more complex reality. In order to "close the deal", we sometimes tell the half truth and nothing but the half truth, to the detriment of those we are trying to help. We apologize for God's judgment and deny His wrath against unrighteousness. We minimize the gravity of sin and model compromise and half-heartedness in the way we live our lives before a lost and dying culture. Not wanting to be rejected in our witness, we reveal only the easy side of living for Christ.

When things don't show themselves as rosy as we've painted, an already jaded public concludes that it was just another bogus bill of goods that money-grubbing sheisters fooled them with once again.

They never were told about dying to self, about taking up one's cross daily, about forsaking the things of this world. We told them they could have it all. We implied that being a Christian was health, wealth and happiness all the way to the bank on our way to heaven.

Even in telling them about the intimate relationship with God that is offered us through Christ, we often fail to describe the complete picture of what such a relationship requires. We fail to tell them of the wilderness periods, when all evidence of God's love and acceptance seems to vanish. We conveniently forget to appraise them of the cost and of the schemes of the enemy designed to lead us astray during times of trial and temptation.

No one ever warned me about the dark night of the soul - no pastor, no seminary professor, no TV teacher or preacher, no Christian book or tape - no one! It has been an area of serious denial in modern western Christianity to avoid the mention of this aspect of the Christian life.

I'll never forget the day the music died for me. I was certain that I had failed God. It was after a particularly sweet and powerful period of intimacy and revelation in God that one day, unexplainably, began to fade. Finally, it just stopped and I was left with silence from God.

Problem was, I had no paradigm for a growth in Christ that would have periods where the sense of His favor and His presence would seem to diminish. I knew that if I were to go out and willfully enter into sin, there would be a diminishment of a sense of intimate relationship with Him, but as long as I remained faithful, seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, it should only get better in terms of the interior life, so I thought.

And so, I was left with questions. Why have you left me God? What have I done wrong? Am I not living up to your expectations? Have you raised the bar? (Can you see the performance orientation in this?)

As Gregory of Nyssa said (referring to future rewards): "disregarding all those things for which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God's friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God's friend the only thing worthy of honor or desire. This is the perfection of life."

I believed that my worst nightmare - that of falling from God's friendship - had come true, and I was utterly devastated. (Imagine how Jesus must have felt when God turned His face away from Him on the Cross!)

I knew that the common western prescription for this malaise was to read the Bible more and pray more, but in my anger of confusion, I chose to conclude that modern evangelical devotional expectations were the product of those who liked to parade their righteousness before men in order to receive praise from them (which is no doubt true in some cases). In my place of hurting, I chose to believe that it was "performance-oriented" control freaks in the church who were making up such rules.

It is important to understand that this is also the thinking of many people in the church who are gun shy of controlling ecclesiastical structures and individuals. Many of them do not maintain a regular devotional life because they look upon "super-spiritual types" as having dreamed up devotional systems in order to put their spirituality on display - to justify their existence or calling, or in order to get money from them, to control them, or maybe to get the extra wherewithal that "super-spiritual" types need in order to operate within their abnormal "super- spiritual" calling. And so they say to themselves: "If I'm not called to be the next Moses, why spend all that time preparing myself for something that just ain't going to happen! God's got me installing windshields in cars at the Saturn factory and that's all I'm ever going to do and that's all He's ever going to expect of me." All of these thoughts went through my mind as well.

Finally, in the silence one evening, God spoke clearly to me that He was teaching me to believe in His love, acceptance and protection even when I could not feel the spiritual feelings that had previously been my confirmation of those things.

So I made an attempt to embrace that lesson and, once learned, return to the intimate exchange of feeling and emotion that had previously existed in such awesome sweetness.

It did not come.

Then I got angry. Why are you playing such games with me God? Do you get your kicks from holding back such a priceless thing as intimacy from me to tease me? It makes me feel like a dumb ass who continually falls for the carrot on a stick trick. It makes me feel so controlled, so dependent, so much like the creature that, well, I guess I am. It was an anger born from the realization that I was not the God of the universe and that I could not command answers or action from God as though I were. It was the unveiling of yet another level of pride. And, of course, when you're angry with God, your progress in sanctification tends to slow down just a wee bit.

I also felt betrayed. I had consented to embrace the lesson, and in being so humbled felt deserving of a prize that was never delivered. Great subterranean systems of wrong thinking and misbelief came unraveled.

So I stewed for many more months.

God then sent Joyce Meyer, who taught a series on her own experience in this realm. She said that she had had that same expectation - that the experiential rewards of intimacy with God, once achieved, would never diminish as long as one remained faithful. But God removed those warm spiritual fuzzies as a means of growing her up into a mature woman - one who believes even though she cannot not see (or feel) the reality of God's presence and His promise. God taught her through her wilderness period of dry, unfruitful personal intimacy with Him, to believe in His faithfulness and His love even though all evidence was vanished, to see through a glass even more darkly, to be even more blessed in believing more, even as the seeing became less.

But, I then protested, How can I worship when there is no response? How can I pray or read Scripture when there's no evidence of your presence or that you even care?

Along came the writings of St. John of the Cross (a 16th century monk who wrote "The Dark Night of the Soul" while in prison, about how God works on the soul through sorrow and darkness). St. John taught me that it had been a self-focus that had elicited my devotional protest. Without consciously understanding why, I had been refusing to remain in the discipline of devotion until such time as God complied with my unspoken demand that He participate in ways that were felt and rewarding.

St. John of the Cross described me well when he wrote:

"The "dark night" is when those persons lose all the pleasure that they once experienced in their devotional life. This happens because God wants to purify them and move them on to greater heights. . . . .

. . . . There will come a time when God will bid them to grow deeper. He will remove the previous consolation from the soul in order to teach it virtue and prevent it from developing vice. . . .

. . . . . They beg God to take away their imperfections, but they do this only because they want to find inner peace and not for God's sake. They do not realize that if God were to take away their imperfections from them, they would probably become prouder and more presumptuous still. . . .

. . . . They will become discontented with what God gives them because they do not experience the consolation they think they deserve. . . .

. . . . Their hearts grow attached to the feelings they get from their devotional life. They focus on the affect, and not on the substance of devotion. . . . .

. . . . . But those who are on the right path will set their eyes on God and not on these outward things nor on their inner experiences. They will enter the dark night of the soul and find all of these things removed. They will have all the pleasure taken away so that the soul may be purified. For a soul will never grow until it is able to let go of the tight grasp it has on God. . . .

. . . . Their problem is that they lack the patience that waits for whatever God would give them and when God chooses to give them. They must learn spiritual meekness which will come about in the dark night. . . . .

. . . . They do these things not for God but for themselves, and for this reason they will soon grow weary in them. . . . The problem is this: when they have received no pleasure for their devotions, they think they have not accomplished anything. This is a grave error, and it judges God unfairly. For the truth is that the feelings we receive from our devotional life are the least of its benefits. The invisible and unfelt grace of God is much greater, and it is beyond our comprehension. . . .

. . . . Spiritual sloth happens when the pleasure is removed from the spiritual life. Such souls become weary with spiritual exercises because they do not yield any consolation, and thus, they abandon them. They become angry because they are called to do that which does not fit their needs. They begin to lose interest in God for they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God. . . . .

. . . . Let it suffice to say, then, that God perceives the imperfections within us, and because of His love for us, urges us to grow up. His love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason He takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness.

In doing so He is able to take away all these vices and create virtues within us. Through the dark night pride becomes humility, greed becomes simplicity, wrath becomes contentment, luxury becomes peace, gluttony becomes moderation, envy becomes joy, and sloth becomes strength. No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night."

In referring to a related problem having to do with the jealousy we sometimes feel in seeing God pour fruitful gifts into the lives of others, Francois Fenelon wrote: "Why would we prefer to see the gifts of God in ourselves rather than in others, if this is not attachment to self."

And so, I realized that the arrested devotional life that I had been experiencing had been partially related to a world-view that viewed self as the focus of intimacy with God. Thus, without tangible affirmation by God that He was participating in our relationship, I adopted the tragic figure of abandoned one, freezing in place and stamping my feet in protest. I did not go out and sin in protest, because I wanted God to be the guilty party in this crisis!

If only Thomas Merton had been there reminding me: "We should not judge the value of our meditation by how we feel." God is never closer than when He seems the most absent. We must believe that. We must move forward in serving Him, in declaring His praise, in telling our stories of His love and grace whether we receive immediate tangible reward or not. Why? Because He is worthy.

So keep telling your story. Tell it with words, with actions and by your example. Remember who is for you. Remember who is with you, never to leave you nor forsake you. Remember the chain of authority in which you stand. Remember who your Father is. Stay in His presence. Let Him fight your battles for you.

Dark night or party time, decide now that you are going to stand firm in the truth. feast or famine, hell or high water, Jesus Christ remains the way, the truth and the life. He is all that matters. His calling, His life, His healing power, His riches in glory, His love and grace are yours now and forevermore!

As the Apostle Peter said:

"You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light."