Under His Desk
From Legalism to Love
By Karon Ruiz
Is God’s affection toward you a reality? If so, consider yourself blessed. When I became a believer in 1974, this assurance has been absent in my life. Unfortunately, since then, intimacy with God has been made up of short glimpses, not long, lingering gazes into the Father’s eyes.
An impenetrable curtain of fear hid God’s face from me. Similar to the same veil that hid God’s presence from an unholy people in ancient Jerusalem, a veil of unbelief hid God from me.
Made from embroidered linen, the veil in the Jewish temple was four inches thick. It hung at the height of sixty feet in the Temple, covering the access to the Holy of Holies. It took
three hundred priests to hang it and it was beyond human ability to tear. No one but the High Priest could enter past it, and he, only once per year. The terrifying presence of God dwelt behind it.
During His last moments on the cross, Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” and when He breathed his last, the veil split open, top to bottom, revealing the Holy of Holies, the place where God dwelled. Like a courtroom judge who slams a gavel, the renting of fabric served as the Father’s declaration, “Separation is finished!”
Some of us come into the Kingdom broken, injured from hurtful upbringings. Our parents, in their own brokenness, unknowingly distort Father God’s true heart toward us. My sister Beth once told me, “Some are given a Rolls Royce and some are given a jalopy to drive through life.” I was given the latter. My Beverly Hillbillies jalopy leaked oil, sputtered and coughed, and rattled its way down the human highway. Yet I wouldn’t trade it for a lean, mean luxury machine. That old “car” drove me to Christ! It was my upbringing in the Conkle family that gave me a hunger to be fathered. What the enemy meant for evil, God meant for good.
Brokenness provides an invitation to the grace of God. Such glimpses of grace throughout my life have paved a way of understanding into God’s love I couldn’t have seen otherwise. My walk with God has been made up with momentary glimpses of the Father’s love. Such glimpses would lift that veil of unbelief that shrouded His face. I believed a lot of lies about God.
I grew up in the chaotic sixties. The devastation of alcoholism, rage and neglect brought similar disorder to my home, Authentic love was doled out sparingly. Affection, affirmation, the calling out of children, was absent in my upbringing.
We three Conkle children faired better unseen, hidden away in our bedrooms, or out of ear-shot in our expansive
back yard. When Dad came home sloppy wet kisses were replaced with a lot of yelling, including the words, “Hit the cave!” We went to our rooms immediately. Children and double martinis never mixed well.
Dad’s rants had damaging effects on all of us. My older brother, Steve, was told he was stupid. my younger sister was told needed a nose job. And I was only eight years old when my father told me I was fat.
Old family photos tell a different story. During that time period, I wasn't fat at all. I might have appeared larger than then my skinny siblings but was a healthy weight for my age and height. What was ingrained in me resulted in
in a twisted relationship with food which produced years of yo-yo dieting and a poor self-image in which I struggle with to this day.
My parents parented with what they knew. Coming from similar upbringings made them incapable of giving us anything other than material things like a nice home and adequate clothing and toys. I was taken to Girl Scouts, ice skating and summer camp. Anyone inspecting our family from the outside might have thought inside our Scottsdale ranch home nestled at the base of Camelback Mountain, were five people who loved each other, a place where everyone felt safe and nurtured. Not the case. Because of my father's repeated infidelity, my parent's marriage finally shattered in 1968. Mom, my sister and me, moved to California while my troubled fourteen-year-old brother Steve and my father, stayed in Phoenix.
Now California latch-key kids, my sister and I escaped the tension from our previous home and things begin to get better as Mom made an effort to connect with the both of us. She found her divorcee lifestyle appealing. Different men flowed in and out of her life, but eventually her emptiness deepened.
During the summer of 1974, I packed up my car and drove eight hours to Phoenix. Dad offered me a job and a full ride to Arizona State University. Excited about moving away from home for the first time, I reentered the Valley of the Sun where I enrolled A.S.U. as a business student.
I settled into an off-campus apartment and looked up an old elementary school friend for a night of barhopping. After a night of dancing and drinking, amazingly our conversation steered to the topic of prophetic end-times. With a drink in her hand and a cigarette in the other, Michelle insisted that Jesus was coming back soon and if I was interested, I should read a fantastic book called The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey. The following morning, while buying my textbooks in the A.S.U. bookstore, I encountered a display of this very book. I purchased it and voraciously read most of it that night.
The book was pretty convincing. I realized I wasn't a Christian and needed Christ or else I would be lost. I anxiously tried to find a church that would tell me what I had to do to be saved. I wasn’t really interested in a relationship with Jesus, but rather a get-out-hell free card. Discovering a rule-keeping religion seemed the way to go. As long as I kept my end of the contract, God would surely keep His. Sort of like my childhood. Just be good and Dad won’t yell too much, or worst yet--hit. In fact, hiding in religion was like hiding with my books in my room whenever my father came home. It felt safe and familiar.
That weekend I became a Christian in a little church in Tempe, Arizona. Father God graciously met me in this fragile place where the light of His Son remained hidden by my own faulty belief system. That night, after being baptized, I walked away with a verbal list of do's and don'ts. Tithing and church attendance. a must. Pre-marital sex and alcohol, a no-no. After months of being shamed for missteps, my enthusiasm for God waned. I returned to California but didn’t drift long from Christianity as I soon found myself smack right in the middle of The Jesus Movement, a phenomenal revival that began on the west coast of the United States.
God was on the move with young people across the country. While in Arizona, my sister and mother had come to Christ in California. Unlike me, both were on fire for God! We began attending Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, the hub of this revival which was featured in the recent movie, Jesus Revolution.
Pastor Chuck Smith’s expository teaching deepened my growth in the scriptures. I was blessed to hear inspiring believers like Corrie ten Boom and Brother Andrew both of whom fueled my desire to serve God, so much so, I attended a ten-month term with YWAM (Youth With A Mission). Despite the rich teaching, the mission field experience failed to untwist performance-based Christianity. Self-imposed legalism muffled an inner cry to know God as my Father. That’s what lies do to you. You are convinced God is like your own dad, harsh and critical. In spite of what you read in God’s Word, how He loves and forgives you, God still has the same personality and problems as your dad. As disappointing as it was, I accepted this as the best I would get this side of heaven.
Yet one evening, He broke through the darkness.
It was a night I would never forget.
