I used to serve a different God. I was a surfer, and the ocean was my god. I won’t ever forget the first wave I caught at Folly Beach, South Carolina that summer. I was probably only 11 or 12 years old and that wave was probably only three or four feet. But the feeling I got when I stood up on that board and made it down the face of that wave was like nothing I had ever experienced. Just like the addict who is hooked from the first hit off the pipe, I was an addict from that wave forward.
You may think that my god analogy is a bit extreme or radical …but I don’t. I view a god as anything that we look to for fulfillment, meaning, and purpose. I view a god as that which we orient our entire lives and futures around. My belief is, whatever it is that dominates our thoughts is most certainly a reflection of who or what god we are serving. And by that definition, the ocean was my god. I worshiped at the altar of the next great swell.
But the ocean left me frustrated and unfulfilled. It was undependable. It left me empty… still knowing in the depths of my heart that something was missing in my life. But as I sit here and reflect upon those frustrations and disappointments, I realize there is a specific frustration that I have found Christianity and surfing to have in common.
One of the great frustrations of surfing was the inability to articulate and share my experience to someone who was not there. You see, I can try to tell you about that day when I found myself in the water surrounded by 5-10 other men….all starting intently at the horizon…but no-one saying a word, our anxiety growing with each passing minute. We knew what was coming. I can try to describe to you how the atmosphere was so still, so quiet, so eerie. How the surface of the water was so calm that it just looked like one big sheet of dark blue glass…as we waited.
I can try to tell you what you feel when you finally see it rising up in the distance. How it approaches in a manner that seems so deceptively slow at first. And with each passing second it seems to be picking up pace as it gets larger and larger. What just a few minutes ago was a calm sheet of glass begins to stand straight up, vertical, and has developed this crest, this lip, that is getting ready to fold over on top of itself.
I can try to articulate what it was like when that lip finally descended and crashed down upon the surface of the ocean… how the stillness and the calm and the quiet was interrupted with a thunder that many surfers describe as like the sound of a freight train approaching. And like a freight train causes the ground to shake as it thunders toward you… the surface of the surrounding water began to ripple and shake even as the wave was still off in the distance…almost as if the water itself knew what was coming and began to tremble in fear.
But here is the frustration behind it…no matter how much time I take trying to craft the right words to convey the power and beauty of a wave and what it feels like to ride something so mighty… you will still never know. You simply were not there. You did not experience it! I can use words like “dark blue glass” and “thunder” and “roar” and use analogies that describe it like a “freight train”, but they are all inadequate. It is like trying to describe the taste of orange juice to someone who has never tasted it. You can try, but they will never know until they have tasted it for themselves.
And so I found that to be one of the great frustrations of surfing…that the greater and more epic the swell was…the greater desire I would have to share that experience with those I loved the most. I would have a yearning to share the excitement and joy of what I had just experienced but unable to do so because they did not share the experience with me. No matter how much joy and excitement and crafty words I would use, the countenance of their face said it all…they just didn’t get it.
And I have found that to be one of the great frustrations of Christianity as well…the inability to articulate this God that I have come to know. The inability to convey the beauty of what it’s like to hear His voice. The inability to express and share what it’s like in that moment when you truly realize you are in His presence. I can try to craft words and sentences to describe what it was like that day when I saw Him and I realized the insignificance of all the things I thought mattered. What it was like on that day when I wept in His presence as He revealed his goodness to me. I want to be able to describe how I have found that even His voice of conviction to be so sweet. But I simply cannot find words. They all fall woefully short. You only know if you have been there yourself. You only understand if you have heard the voice yourself.
And so, like surfing, I find myself frustrated. And I have found that frustration to lead to feelings of pity toward those that have not heard His voice and do not know Him. Now I don’t mean that pity of condescension and superiority as we think of it today. I mean that pity as it was used in the original meaning of the word… a pity that is full of genuine sorrow and sadness for them. A grieving in my heart and spirit because I have been somewhere and experienced something so good and yet cannot articulate it well enough to persuade them to experience it for themselves. I have sorrow for them because of what they are missing out on.
I wonder if that will be the greatest misery of hell. Maybe it won’t be the fire and the flames. Maybe it will be, that on that day of judgment, when every knee bows, the depths of their soul will weep and grieve because they will at last see the beauty for themselves. They will finally hear the voice. They will finally understand. But it will be too late. Maybe the greatest torment of hell won’t be where they are….but an eternity of knowing where they could have been.
