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Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue “prepositional truth” by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.
Charles Darwin could never figure out tears.
As far as he could tell, they were “purposeless.” They fulfill no obvious evolutionary need.
For Darwin it remained a mystery why Homo Sapiens is the only creature on Earth that sheds emotional tears. Of course, if the famous scientist had ever watched that parting scene at the end of E.T. or spent a lifetime cheering for Purdue’s football team, he might have known why grown people cry.
Dutch psychologist Ad Vingerhoets, who’s become known as the world’s expert on crying, suggests something that’s no doubt closer to the mark. In his book Why Only Humans Weep; Unravelling theMystery of Tears, he writes, “We cry because we need other people.”
Tears are like flipping the Intimacy Switch. There’s something within us that is automatically drawn to someone who is weeping.
Crying babies touch our hearts. Help soon arrives on the scene. Something like that continues through our adult years as we experience others who weep in frustration, grief, or pain.
The apostle Paul tells the Christians at Rome, “Rejoice with (META) those who rejoice. Mourn with (META) those who mourn” (Romans 12:15).
Here again we encounter the great power of that simple preposition. META reinforces the centrality of “with-ness” in the Bible.
God tells his chosen people at Sinai that he will be their God, and he will be with them. There is nothing quite like this anywhere else on the global religious smorgasbord – a god who promises intimate nearness. In the ancient world, people were terrified even at the idea of encountering divinity. Old Testament characters like Moses, Gideon, and Isaiah at first are shaking in their sandals – only to realize that God is actually offering them a grace-based kind of partnership.
Jesus spends something like three years with his disciples. He promises to be always with them as they take his message to the world. Paul eagerly ponders the likelihood of his own death, knowing that at last he’ll get to be with his Lord face to face.
But Romans 12 is different. Here we see that the Bible’s vertical dimension of “God with us” becomes the very grounds for reaching out horizontally to others. We are to be with our brothers and sisters in Christ when they are rejoicing and when they are mourning, when they are singing and when they are sobbing, when everything seems beautiful and when everything seems to be turning to dust.
People in the ancient world thought this was crazy.
English philosopher Simon Blackburn has pointed out that Christianity introduced four unexpected virtues: humility, patience, chastity, and charity. None of the classic philosophers of Greece and Rome thought these were noble ideas.
Humility? The ultimate goal in the ancient world was to climb to the top of the heap, and to let everyone else know you had made it. Patience? Such restraint was undoubtedly for suckers. Chastity? You’ve got to be kidding. Sexual license was a given.
The Christian notion of charity was likewise considered a headscratcher. Why would anyone want to provide care for people who were not in their own family?
But this was Paul’s whole point. When we choose to “believe into” Jesus as our Leader and Forgiver, we automatically become members of a new kind of family. And we’re called to be with our sisters and brothers in the faith especially in their experiences of hopelessness and sorrow.
Notice that Paul doesn’t say, “Buy an inspiring book for those who mourn,” or, “Fix those who weep,” or, “Tell those crybabies to stop being so emotional,” or, “Remind them that God’s in charge, so there’s nothing to cry about.”
No. We are called to cry with those who cry.
When you think about it, that doesn’t really solve anything. It doesn’t erase someone’s problems or grief. But when we cry alongside another hurting person, their pain suddenly becomes shared pain. And that is often the first step to deep healing.
John 11:35 (“Jesus wept”) has become such a familiar verse that we have to do a bit of work just to imagine the reaction of those who first heard it.
Against all expectation, God cries in cemeteries. He weeps with us. This was a revolutionary idea in the ancient world. It was commonly assumed that God, in order to be God, had to be impassive or unfeeling. If God could somehow be moved or affected or even changed by our suffering, he would be disqualified as ruler of the cosmos.
Instead, the God who rules this broken world cries over its brokenness. He joins us in feeling the whole human bandwidth of suffering, pain, and death.
Tears are the ultimate non-verbal communication, and for a very interesting reason. We cannot hide them. They’re literally right before our eyes.
Psychologist Henry Cloud points out that tears seem to be “vulnerability by design.” After all, it’s conceivable we could have shed tears between our fingers. Or perhaps behind our knees. Instead, they show up right where the eyes of another person meet our eyes – out there for the whole world to see.
This seems to be a divine strategy to bring us closer to each other, especially when we might feel helpless and want to hide.
So go ahead and cry today. God himself shares whatever you are feeling.
And with time we’ll come to grasp the full truth of that old saying:
When I came into this world, I was crying and everybody else was laughing. When I leave this world, everybody else will be crying, but I will be laughing.
The God who is with us has made it so.