Browsing through my iPod last night, I came upon a collection of songs that talked about brokenness. Just being curious, I went on amazon.com to search for CD albums with the word, broken, in the title. What I found was 2,323 of them... just albums, mind you. Typing in songs with broken in the title, I found over 13,078. I was quite amused.
Books, you find nearly 476,300 with broken in the title, telling you all there is to know about heartbreak, repairing your “inner self,” how to get over a lost pet... you get the gist. Here’s a couple of my favorites...
· The Broken American Male: And How to Fix Him
· It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy
· Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch
· The list goes on and on and on...
It seems that Americans know all about fixing things “broken” whether a
relationship or a toilet. There’s always a solution! There are thousands of books about getting over your latest crush, etc., etc., etc.
But what about a broken spirit? A TRULY broken spirit... What IS brokenness? Do we even know? Looking around on Amazon at books about brokenness- true spiritual, Christian brokenness- only got me a couple thousand or so. Granted, you’re saying... a couple thousand is still a lot, and I agree. But contrast this to the half million of all the other types of broken. It took me a while to soak it in. We, as America as a whole, don’t really know what brokenness is. We don’t want to admit that we’re all broken. To admit that we’re broken is to admit that we’re feeble and helpless, which breaks down the masks we put up, which breaks down the hypocrisy.
David cried out to God in Psalms 51: 16-17, saying, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are] a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” It’s what God wants most.
Going back to the Hebrew (which will make me sounds really geeky, but whatever) the word broken is shabar which is the same as to break into pieces, to reduce into splinters, etc. and dakah, meaning to beat out thin, to reduce. The spirit broken all to pieces, and the heart shattered into pieces, stamped and beaten are the sacrifices which God desires from us. We must come to Him humbled and beaten because we are nothing. Take Job, one of the best examples of a broken spirit. His wealth was taken away, his children killed, his whole life collapsed before his eyes... yet he could still say, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Talk about true brokenness.
I wonder if that’s why there are so many books having and fixing broken hearts, etc. Being broken lowers us down to the dirt, makes us see exactly how pitiful we are. We, as inbred with human nature, don’t want to be weak, so we come up with ways to “redeem” ourselves, trying to fix our own brokenness. But it won’t work. No matter how many thousands of books there are about fixing your broken hearts and yearning souls, we can’t do it. We just have to get to the point where we say in everything, even in our brokenness... blessed be the name of the Lord.
2 comments:
Very insightful post, I think. And I just love it when people go back to the Hebrew/Greek. I do that...
I love the book of Job for just that reason: it gives a very clear picture of what true brokenness is. Thanks. Keep blogging!
Very good post there. People can print all the books in the world about brokenness, but it won't do them any good unless they have Jesus. And we should probably check out our Bibles first before going out and buying 10 books on that subject.
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