I had to save my cat from a tree recently.
She grew up a city cat, so our recent move to the country onto a property with a variety of farm animals proved quite scary for her. When I found her, she was over thirty feet up, on the lowest branch, with no easy way down. But she clearly wanted down. I could hear her distinctive meowing from inside—a clear cry for help. So I found an extension ladder, shored up the feet on the uneven ground, and ascended.
I quickly realized that her trap had become her refuge. This was not going to be easy.
She clung to the branch with her claws when I tried to pick her up. And after that didn’t work two or three more times, she started nipping at me. So I tried deploying some saving aids: She refused to step onto a board. She refused to climb into a crate. She started to step onto the upside-down crate but then leapt back into the tree the moment we began descending. She flirted with the metal ladder, but her claws could not get purchase. The natural curve of feline claws is great for climbing. But they are curved the wrong way for sheer descents. I tried picking her up again and narrowly dodged a nip for my trouble.
Stupid cat, I thought. I climbed down and went back inside. It was time to let her think about her life for a little while. I was tempted to just leave her: Either she’ll figure it out on her own or she won’t. And sometimes you can’t help stupid. But in the end, my heart won out over my head and I returned—this time with a large sack with some cat food in it. This plan seemed more promising. She was definitely interested in the food. But not so fast. She reached in only with her front paw and nose at first, and wouldn’t go in. To bag her, I had to give her a little push.
She thrashed and tried to jump back into the tree. But this time, she couldn’t. I held her firmly in my grip. Now I was her refuge. But she was still terrified. I had her chest firmly in my hand and could feel her heart racing. But, as we descended, her heartbeat noticeably slowed. She became totally relaxed. She seemed to know that her only hope was to trust me to save her. By the time we returned to terra firma, she was purring. This is not the first time I’ve saved Noche from a tree. And it’s likely not going to be the last.
The placement of one’s trust in any created good above God is precisely what sin consists in—and in a real sense, always gives some false promise of refuge.
As I reflected on the ordeal, it seemed there was a deeper meaning to the story. Was this not a pretty good metaphor for God’s love and offer of himself as refuge for every sinner?
The idea of God as “refuge”—a kind of safe haven, protected from danger—is replete in the Bible. For example, the psalmist chants, “Oh guard my life, and deliver me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in thee” (Psalm 25:20). Under the Old Covenant, in which God promises sundry worldly blessings to Israel on the condition that they keep his commandments, refuge is often conceptualized in a physical sense. Hence, God established six “cities of refuge” that accused manslayers who killed someone unintentionally could flee to (Numbers 35). Or again, in one of his Psalms, David asks God to be his refuge to protect him from a worldly foe, Cush the Benjamite.
But the Christian can read the Psalms in a spiritual and allegorical sense, in which God is the refuge of the wayfarer in the spiritual life. In this way, God is the refuge of the sinner, who seeks to be rescued from sin and the devil.
The Bible identifies rival refuges to God, like wealth: “See the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches, and sought refuge in his wealth!” (Psalm 52:7). Indeed, the placement of one’s trust in any created good above God is precisely what sin consists in—and in a real sense, always gives some false promise of refuge.
Wealth is a more obvious source of refuge, which is the good sought in a disordered way by the avaricious man. With enough money, one can build literal refuges that would be the envy of most humans who have ever walked the planet. One need only consider the doomsday bunkers that uber-wealthy moguls like Mark Zuckerberg are building. But other created goods are their own sources of apparent refuge, in which each capital sin substitutes some created good for God as one’s refuge. The envious person resents another for possessing some good, because he desires to possess it. This really amounts to a kind of resentment of God for not giving oneself the desired good, rather than trusting God and thanking him for one’s blessings, and rejoicing in the abundance of God’s blessings for one’s neighbor. The wrathful person rages at a perceived injustice, and becomes possessed by vindictiveness. Rather than take refuge in God’s promise to avenge all wrongs, and forgive trespasses as one has been forgiven, he takes pleasure assuming the roles of judge, jury, and executioner to effectuate justice, effectively distrusting God’s promise, and even resenting God’s sovereignty over the order of justice and mercy. And similarly with the sins of the flesh—gluttony and lust take refuge from the trials and toils of life in disordered pleasures.
The idea of sin as a false refuge is sharpened when sinful behavior becomes so habitual as to become an addiction. Many sinful patterns or addictions can be explained by the idea of sin as a false refuge, because every apparent good sought in a sinful act really is good in some sense. Otherwise, it could not continue to be chosen, since human beings can’t but will good to themselves. The mistake is that the apparent good is sought in the wrong way, or in the wrong respect, or at the wrong time, or with the wrong person, etc.
We can, to come full circle, see how the spiritual life is symbolized by the treed cat.
In the divine economy of grace, we all are, or have been, or will be, the cat in the tree. We assure ourselves that the branch—the created good we cling to in a way that places it above God—will save us. And it isn’t a crazy proposition: It certainly appears in the moment to be the only solid thing between us and the ground (the pain that comes with humility or meekness or sobriety or chastity, etc.). So the sinner, like the cat, turns out not to be simply stupid. But, clinging to the branch in the face of death, he is more clearly stubborn. We can bat away the loving Father’s saving hand over and over. But eventually we become exhausted by making not-God into God. And we might try to come to God, or return to God, but without the radical trust in him he asks of us. Such false steps leave us stuck on the branch. But like the impoverished prodigal son—or the treed, half-starved cat—we find ourselves not only exhausted but hungry. And maybe we have been let down, dropped, enough times in our lives to have difficulty trusting the claim that Jesus really does love each of us unconditionally and trusting in his promise that those whom he saves shall not be plucked out of his hand (John 10:28). We all require a little push—no one can come to the Lord unless he is drawn by the Father (John 6:44)—but we must respond to the premotion of grace and put our trust in him.
Wayfarers are like cats sometimes. Sometimes the wayfarer fails in faith or hope or charity when faced with the trials of life—and suddenly he is up in that tree again. And when he does fail, he is ashamed and scared. But as soon as he cries out for the Good Shepherd, help is on the way.