I'm bitterly disappointed in God
There's nothing magic in what follows and it's no "cure" for all our ills. I don't think there's anything profound in it. I'm just another person who has given some sustained thought about the God of the Bible and the suffering of the human family and feels the need to speak about it. I once heard an OT professor say we shouldn't talk about such matters; we should just get involved in the lives of people and help sustain them in their need, showing compassion and giving practical help where we can. But, bless me, most of the real sufferers I've come across in life want to talk about such matters. If speakers or authors don't bring the subject up the sufferers do and, in fact, Kushner was close to correct when he said that's all they want to talk about. The OT is filled with "why?" because people believed God had made a commitment to them and it looked like he hadn't been faithful to it. To say we shouldn't talk about it is astonishing, especially from an OT scholar.
People hanging by their thumbs don’t make good listeners and people who want to make students out of people hanging that way have their work cut out for them. So offerings like this should be modest in their expectations and they can only sensibly be addressed to people who aren’t in the throes of agony. People in agony don’t want “explanations” (good, bad or indifferent)—they just want the pain to stop or the crisis to be averted!
That makes sense but for millions it isn’t going to happen! And maybe you who are reading this will be one of those millions.
The Bible versus life’s harsh realities
If you read the Bible you have to come away thinking that God is supremely interested in the life of each one of us. Then there are those scattered but critically situated texts about prayer that seem to assure us that God hears our every prayer and that he will grant what we ask. Add to that the mass of books, written by people who say they are speaking for God, that assure us that our reading of the Bible is accurate. (“No, you haven’t misunderstood it; that is what it says.”)
So here comes Francois who wrestles with that way of reading scripture and those claims made by confident authors, because the texts and the books by cheer-filled authors don’t square with the realities he and a host of his friends and acquaintances meet in life.
The choice seems clear: believe the Bible and act blind, deaf and dumb when life crushes texts or believe pitiless life and have the courage to scrap the Bible and all these books.
Getting as much as you can of what you want
Of course, masses of us couldn’t care less. We’re off to the bars, the partying, the fishing, the travel or television re-runs in a comfortable chair with a good lie-in on Sunday mornings. We're too busy working five days a week or raising kids or both (and more) to want to bother. But there’s a host of people that work equally hard and face important responsibilities in life and they care if God exists and they care if the Bible is believable or not.
No simple answers
I’m one of those that think the Bible tells us the truth and that the harsh realities of life also tell us truth. I think our difficulties are the result—in part—from our inability to understand both life and scripture.
Our difficulties will always be with us and no one, not even God himself, can soothe our raw emotions and ease our mass of exposed nerve-endings. Bless me, if a couple of thousand years ago the psalms and the prophets are filled with protest and people asking for explanations what would make us think we’d come across simple answers?
It isn’t “explanations” we want
It isn’t that God hasn’t spoken clearly; it’s that he speaks to sinful and hurting people and it’s hard for people like us to hear even if Jesus himself is talking. People hanging by their thumbs aren’t the best students. But we’re not all in such torment that we’re incapable of reflecting and listening. As pained as Francois is he still asks questions and levels his protests. Some poor souls don’t have the time or energy to do even that. They only have the time to crawl into some hiding place before the Darfur rapists and murderers come around again; in Zimbabwe they only have the time to dig in the ground for mice and roots to feed their family and keep it alive or in some parts of Haiti they cook and eat soil. And nearer home vile people do the unspeakable to the defenseless who don’t want “answers” and wouldn’t understand them if you offered them; they just want someone to put a stop to their torment. There are some tortured souls whose experience is so extreme that we feel even to speak is obscene so we look at them—speechless. But for those whose lives are hard but not so hard that they can’t ask questions the wrestling is legitimate and warranted even though the gallant suffering of many around them makes the questioner wonder if they aren’t wimps to moan and lament.
Is the God of the Bible a heavenly sweetheart?
God has spoken clearly! He hasn’t spoken clearly on every conceivable question. He has said enough for us to work with. We don’t like the fact that God hasn’t spoken on every question we would like to ask, and that’s understandable. But I think that’s only part of a part of the problem. We don’t like it that he hasn’t said enough but we like even less much of what he has said.We go through and pick out the things that please and assure us and pay little or no attention to what he has said that we don’t want to hear.
But it’s worse than that. We who say we speak for him—don’t like a lot of what he says. What’s more, we’re not prepared to say many of the things he has said and said plainly. We come across people who don’t like much of what they hear in scripture and we hurry to assure them that that isn’t what the scriptures say. “Oh, no, God wouldn’t say something like that!” we tell them. We meet people who don’t like what they see in life and we hurry to assure them that God has nothing to do with things that are unpleasant. We who say we speak for God and scripture tell some biblical truths and rework the rest so that it suits the critics or the peeved or ourselves. We speak some truths about life and “explain” the rest in an attempt to please everyone but the God we say sent us to speak for him. We present “a biblical” picture of God and how he relates to the human race that is neither true to the whole counsel of God or life as it comes to us.
Some of the disappointment, desperation and pain (or at least their intensity) that suffering people endure rises because of the difference between their expectations and the reality they live with. We teach them to expect certain things and when they don’t arrive as promised they’re gutted. [You can see this in its most obvious form when people go to these big-wheeling “healers” and are diverted into a side tent or building and never get to see “the main man”. Or those that are bundled off the stage; assured that they’re healed when nothing’s happened and everyone concerned knows it!] I would guess that by far the bulk of the disappointment and pain that Western believers experience comes when the biblical promises fail—when God let’s you down.
Still, if we could just make sense of it
But here we go again, “explaining” why the promises aren’t fulfilled. Why doesn’t God just fulfill the promises and we wouldn’t need “explanations”? For those who have no time or interest in “explanations” the Bible has nothing to say, so you can be sure I have nothing to say and reading this is a waste of precious time. I can speak a little from my own limited experience and say that “explanation” has made some of my life much more bearable. I’ve known a little pain and disappointment down the years and even though I had explanations, now and then I’ve sobbed because the explanations didn’t remove the experience of hurt but they threw light on the hurt so that it didn’t consume me. Tens of millions experience that every day. If we can just “make sense” or get a glimpse of “purpose” it makes it easier to endure—easier but not always “easy”. If our child’s surgery is purely routine and he or she dies during it—we’re devastated, even more so than if we’d been told it was a touch and go operation. The husband or wife we love brings down the curtain on our marriage because we “cannot” behave—we’re devastated; but more so if they walked off without reason or explanation. Give us something to hold on to that makes sense and people are amazingly gallant.
I think we who talk for God and people have distorted the message in some really critical areas. I don’t believe that I have the answers for everything; I’m not even a minor verbal-messiah but I have deep convictions that enable me to work with the hurt that makes me weep; and they might be helpful to someone else. I struggle to speak to keep from saying nothing. They’re complex convictions that can’t be fully developed in a brief offering like this and you’d need to be patient even to hear them, and, then, having heard them you might well think them nonsense. But that’d be all right too; at least you would have heard them.
“Natural laws” are the will of God—don’t deny it
We speakers talk so much rubbish about prayer and create expectations that God nor Bible ever created. By the time we’re done talking God dare not say “no” or we’re sure he has proved himself faithless. That isn’t the biblical doctrine of prayer! Prayer is one of those massive and grand realities God has blessed the world with but it is one reality that functions within other larger realities.
The will of God is seen in what we call “the laws of nature”. It’d be foolish to suggest that he isn’t Lord of these laws but it’s equally foolish to suggest that they aren’t an expression of his will. The water that keeps us clean is capable of drowning us precisely because it’s capable of washing us. The fire that warms and cooks our food is capable of burning us precisely because it’s capable of warming and feeding us. Two cars meeting head on at speed results in injury or death—these are the “physics” of the matter. The “laws of nature” include the laws of personal development, including environment, relationships, neural pathways, genes and the rest. These “laws” are the expressed will of God. That God can work outside and above these is clear but that they’re his “normal” way of expressing himself is also clear; even when he answers prayer with a yes or no.
God can and does say “no” to personal requests
To say God couldn’t prevent a wreck (or a cancer or an earthquake) is nonsense but to say he must because we ask him to, that’s presumptuous. To understand a text of scripture to mean that whatever we ask for, God has already committed to give it to us is sheer nonsense.
Paul asked “three times” to have a chronic and gouging pain removed and God said no (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). Isolate the prayer from the context and we’re left with a perfectly reasonable request by a good man that a miserly and unfeeling Lord refused to grant, without offering a good reason. But look how the scene changes when we note the context that shows that a “no” to Paul’s request made perfect sense and that he was glad for the no when he finally understood. Yes, but what if we can’t see how a “no” would fit into a redemptive context? What if we view our requests as trivial compared with Paul’s and can see no good reason why they got a no? What if we’ve had “no” so often that we wonder if God knows the word “yes”?
God’s ceaseless stream of “yeses”
I find all those questions sensible and reasonable—and human. But they’re questions that come from (understandably) irritated and disappointed people who are ignorant of so much of God’s cosmic purpose. [Sometimes they come from people who care nothing for God or his purposes and who just like to hear themselves talk.] In any case, believers need to remember that we’re showered with “yeses” from God day in and day out. I’m not now speaking about people in extreme poverty and danger—even if they had the time and energy to read this—they’d fling it from them and sob for it all to stop; I have the rest of us in mind. Day in and day out God gives us blessings. Clean water, fresh air, a democratic government, health, a clear mind (with which to criticize him), friends and acquaintances, good education, decent jobs, warm clothes, homes, parents and a mass lovely things. He knows how to say “yes” but because we’ve had a lot of “no” and have to endure severe trials we tend to forget this.
The connection’s real even when we can’t stomach it
And when we say we can’t see the connection between our losses, disappointments, pains and God’s cosmic purpose we’re expressing only our ignorance—pained ignorance but ignorance just the same. But because we don’t know the connection doesn’t mean there isn’t one. What if in bringing the human family to a glorious finale that “no” is one necessary strand of God’s way of working? What if he isn’t mad at you, what if he isn’t mad at anyone at that point? What if in the “land of the Trinity” where the redemption and glorification of a sinful humanity has been planned that “no” is as much a part of the way to life for the family as “yes”? In a wise and loving human family “no” is required for many good reasons. And “no” is required even to reasonable requests. Because children often have conflicting desires and needs, a “no” to someone is the wise and loving response. If only in this phase of living we had hope then every “no” would be magnified. If the final purpose was our being happy then every “no” could be a black hole that swallowed all.
If God was kind he would…
Yes, but if God’s kind he would prevent an injustice, a car wreck or a rape or a murder. Would he indeed? Did he prevent the injustice heaped on his own Son or the brutal murder of that Son? When the holy and obedient Son expressed his desire to avoid the cup, the Father refused to grant it. A kind Father would have exempted his Son from the cup! Would he indeed? It was precisely because he was a kind and holy Father who loved all the children he created that he wouldn’t exempt this unique Son from the cup. His “no” to the Son was part of his “yes” to all his created sons and daughters. Christ’s request was perfectly reasonable, it wasn’t that he was asking for a billion dollars in a Swiss bank account; agony was tearing him apart and he asked to be released from it. If we ignore the biblical Story as a whole, if ever there was a time when a prayer should have been given the green light it was then. If you isolate his request from the larger world and vaster purpose within which it occurredyou have a different prayer! Rip his prayer out of its cosmic, redemptive and holy context and it isn’t the prayer that was prayed in the garden. Place the prayer in the biblical context and the “no” becomes not only understandable, it becomes the only answer we can expect and the one we’re glad to hear.
What if it’s true that…
And what does all this prove? Well, for starter’s it proves that God can love supremely and say “no”. And what if it’s the case that his “no” to Jesus and his “no” to the followers of Jesus (and to his human family at large) on a host of occasions—what if they have the same nature and are part of the unfolding saving drama? What if his “no” to Christ and his no to us rise out of the same soil? What if we bear loss and pain as part of God’s redeeming agenda and method? Of course Christ is unique! But what he experienced isn’t unique—it’s because he is unique that what he shared with us in common becomes the redemption of the world. What if he continues to rehearse his suffering in those who are the body of Christ?
What if “no” to all the righteous women and men and boys and girls down the ages comes to focus and crowning glory in the no to the sinless Christ? What if it is part of the means by which God exposes sin, teaches utter dependence, bears the sin of the world and brings humanity to glory?
What if the pain and disappointment that the believers experience is nothing other than Christ filling up the cup of suffering that he is destined to suffer in and through his body? Compare Colossians 1:24 and Acts 9:4-5.
God’s “no” to a man who should have had a “yes”
Whatever Paul’s thorn in the flesh was it was causing severe distress (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). It was “to buffet” him and the word doesn’t suggest anything like “inconvenience”. The very reading of the text suggests that the distress and pain is enduring and in light of God’s response it was to last even longer.
Paul tells us he prayed to God about it and asked him three times to remove it. Three times might be literal and it might also reflect his imaging out of the Christ’s experience in Gethsemane. Imaging it; not in any slavish artificial way. And since he models his own life on that of Moses we will remember that Moses spoke to God more than once, asking God to let him into the promised land. We’ll recall that God told Moses the burden wouldn’t be lifted and that he was not to mention the matter again (Deuteronomy 3:23-27). We’ll remember too that in 1 Corinthians 9:27 Paul doesn’t wish to experience the rejection Moses experienced at the end of his life of service.
In any case, Paul prayed fervently and asked for relief. In saying he asked he used an aorist verb in the indicative. This suggests that his days of asking were decisively in the past; he did it back then and was done with it. The reason he was done with it is because the Lord (in this text probably the Lord Jesus) who knew all about being denied a request denied his request and gave him assurance.
When he tells us about the Lord’s response Paul uses a verb in the perfect tense. And if we allow it to function as a perfect tense verb then Paul hears the word of the Lord ringing in his ear even as he writes to the Corinthians. Back then Paul used to ask for relief but he put a stop to it. And he stopped it because the Lord said something to him that he hears even now as he writes.
Before we read what it was that the Lord said we need to note that for Paul it was decisive and satisfying. We need to note also that the man who was begging for relief was God’s faithful servant who was on the rack. Instead of rushing over that truth to get to another we need to feel for the depths of it.
This was such a person that we might have thought should get a “yes” to the plea for relief. We sort of feel that he “earned” it. This was the sort of person we would be especially eager to relieve and if the Lord has any compassion about him the kind of “compassion” that means something to us surely Paul’s hurt was a strong appeal.
Making it easy for God to trust us!
But this was such a person that in some ways made it easy for the Lord to say “no”.Paul’s desire for ease was real and urgent because the pain was prolonged and severe. (Underscoring the obvious sound of the text, the lexical work and grammar make that clear.) But down below his strong desire for relief was something profoundly stronger; his hunger to serve God’s redeeming purposes. The situation here was such that relief would not have served God’s gracious purposes best and that more than he wanted relief Paul wanted God’s glory and our redemption in Christ. In this we find Paul going through his own Gethsemane. His Master too had longed for relief but below the hunger for ease there was a deeper and more pulsating hunger to do his Holy Father’s will. In this text Paul is finding part of what he longed for in Philippians 3, to enter into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. And listen, because Paul was that kind of man and because Jesus was that kind of Son they made it easier for God to say “no”. God knew he could trust them. They so responded to God that he knew he could trust them!
Is God heartless then?
Here is a section of scripture that urges us to believe that pain and loss delivered by the hand of some satanic messenger is made to serve the glorious purposes of God. Here is a section that urges us to believe that God looks at some among us and by the depth of their devotion to him and to the world that he loves God is free to say “no” to their fervent pleas for ease.
And it isn’t that God’s glorious purposes are heartless! The person and work of Jesus Christ bury that notion forever. God says “yes” to teeming millions of requests but he not only reserves the right to say “no,” he does it. Sometimes the no is at awful cost to the sufferer and it makes perfect sense that they would rather have a yes—how could it be otherwise? We’re dreaming if we think Paul always walked around grinning and didn’t at times double up in pain and wish the answer could be yes. Christ left the garden as faithful as he went in but you can be sure he came out trembling. No one waved a magic wand and pain and anguish vanished. There was assurance, explanation and comfort (comfort, and not mere consolation).
Job’s later word to God could have been: “You know, for a while you made it hard for me to believe in you.” God’s word to Job could have been: “Isn’t that interesting, you made it easy for me to believe in you.”
So should we just shut our mouths and obey?
So are we not to expect anything from God? Does prayer make no difference? Does what we need have no effect on God’s governing of human affairs? Does the fine print in the Bible effectively empty the more obvious words of their meaning?
Well...yes and no!
Should we expect God to provide for us? Jesus insists that God does provide for us whether we pray or not and even whether we believe in him or not. He sends the sun and the rain on both the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45 and Luke 6:35). [What about those places where he sends the rain on neither the evil nor good? It’s a good question but it’s for another time. I’m addressing those of us that have no experience of extreme poverty.] For those who are able and willing to believe what Christ said, God gives life and the things necessary to sustain life. Paul insists in Acts 14:16-17 and 17:25 that God not only gives to all nations fruitful seasons and times to be glad, he gives them “everything else”. Why this isn’t the present experience of every individual in the world is an important question but at this moment we need to settle the one we’re working with.
There are people who enjoy countless blessings of friendship, health, income, food, family, job, political freedom, education and more. Who provides these? Biblical writers insist that they come from God and Jesus, in the Lord's Prayer, urges us to believe that. It simply won’t do to look at life and say it in no way matches the biblical claims and promises. Yes, of course, there are many reasonable desires that we ask God for and don’t get. To say that is correct but to move from that to claim he gives us nothing makes no sense at all.
So, should we just be grateful for what we get and shut our mouths? We certainly should be thankful but he doesn’t speak to shut us up and neither should those that profess to speak for him. Philippians 4:6 and Ephesians 6:18 urge believers to make their requests known to God. Loving parents provide for their children and should one of them ask for something that is beyond the basics we wouldn’t expect to hear them told that they’re not to ask for anything beyond what the parents have decided to provide. It’s very clear from both scripture and life that God has blessed some people with more than others and it’s very clear that he has blessed them with a lot more than they need simply to exist. [He also expects them to share!]
God to Job: “You think you know what’s going on?”
I understand that some non-believers find that too much to swallow but then I’m not addressing non-believers at this moment. Those who are willing to give scripture a hearing will accept that claim. All right, it generates difficult questions even for believers but why should that surprise us? Just trying to figure out how to take care of the conflicting needs and wants of a small family can tax the brain and patience of loving and wise parents. As soon as you increase the size of the family, the urgency of their needs and the depth of their desire for some beyond-the-basic things everything is so much more complex and harder to assess. When it becomes a national family and you watch a government trying to satisfy the needs and wants of various sectors—if you’re fair—you begin to see the difficulty in providing. But more than that—again, if you’re fair—you know that the rank and file that are being represented by government are not able to see the difficulties involved in providing. I don’t say God sits wringing his hands wondering what to do. I do say that needy and acquisitive humans aren’t able (or always willing) to admit the complexities of the situation. Job, the wise man, knew he was hurting and so did his wise friends but they hadn’t a clue about the cosmic ramifications of what was going on.
“I want you to give me…” and “What will you give me?”
And then there’s this—and we don’t like to be reminded of this, especially when life has been hard for a long time—it just isn’t right to see our relationship with God as a one way affair where he does all the giving and we do all the taking. What if he asks us to give him something? What if he wants to use us to bless others and it means that it’ll cost us something?
He called on Joseph to serve him in Egypt and despite the boy’s pleas (Genesis 42:21) God chained him and sold into Egypt (Genesis 45:5-8a, Psalm 105:17-18). Joseph wanted to go home and God said no and sent him into slavery. If we didn’t know the whole story we could easily—and understandably—think this was another case where God shrugged at injustice and cruelty or wrung his hands in despair because he could do nothing about the evil that humans choose to do. But the Bible doesn’t see things that way. God’s no to Joseph was his yes to tens of thousands of others in time of famine and it meant the elect line was kept alive and finally led to the Messiah. God’s no to Joseph meant thirteen long years away from home but if you asked Joseph, the lord of Egypt, if he would rather that God had let him go back home instead of into Egypt he would have said “no!”
The Bible is filled with texts that believers avoid while they’re rooting out all the “assuring” texts. Amos 4 tells us explicitly that God sent drought and famine and pestilence and war on apostate Israel [in order to bring them back to him and to life] but what of the innocent children and the righteous men and women who didn’t turn from God? They suffered along with the guilty. God wasn’t punishing them but they got it in the neck just the same! What would we have said to such men, women and children? Well? When they said they just wanted the pain to stop what would we have said? When they prayed for their family to be exempted what would we have said? It was a bad request? They were just being wimps? That their pain wasn’t real and excruciating? A pox on that kind of talk! They were bearing and sharing God’s judgment on the guilty that he might bring the guilty back to life and God wouldn’t exempt them just as he wouldn’t spare his own Son (Romans 8:32).
God’s “no” to Jesus as his definitive and eternal “yes”
It’s true that in scripture prophets, psalmists, kings and peasants all cried to God in protest at the profusion of “no’s” without explicit explanation, but why should that startle us? They were just like us, bewildered and disappointed. The Bible wants us to understand that God understands our protests and feelings. But when you take the biblical narrative as a whole and have Jesus as the final “yes” to all the promises of God (2 Corinthians 1:20) then we have the normative teaching. In Christ as the “Yes” of God we hear that all that we rightly expect from God is being and will be fulfilled.
We will discover in the end that the “no” is a purposed part of the complex whole and that we to whom so many no’s were said are part of the redeeming vehicle. God eternally purposed to say no and then did say no to his own unique Son, though it led that Child to sob his heart out and feel as though he was being crushed to death (Hebrew 5:7, Matthew 26:38). If that’s true then surely we need to embrace his “no” as part of a glorious and ultimately life-bringing agenda.
And if we say he could have worked world redemption without a “no” or that he could have created a world and a humanity in which “no” had no place, just look what we’ve done! To keep us from having to come to terms with a long list of painful disappointments we want the whole universe constructed differently. And maybe that’s understandable too. But what if God has made the right choice? What if his way of dealing with humanity’s rebellion and bringing us to deathless life and unbroken peace is the best way? What if “no” really is what must be in a world of choosing, inter-dependent humans where to say “yes” to some means “no” must be said to others? What if God is honoring us by saying “no” to us and by that lays on us a burden that we carry for others? What if “no” is one of the essential elements in bringing about the final and profoundly satisfying “yes” from a generous and holy God whose agenda is infinitely more wonderful than our present complete satisfaction? Imagine him coming into your room, looking you right in the eye and telling you, “I mean you no harm. Trust me when I tell you that in a sinful world ‘no’ is only part of the final ‘yes’ to which I’m bringing you.” As sinful as I am and as selfish as I’m capable of being I’m still assured by that thought.
Simple answers to complex questions—always “wrong”
We make complex matters too simple. We feel God lets us down—in part—because we don’t really know what we’re asking or what’s involved in getting what we want. John is unemployed and prays God to get him a job. He’s thrilled when he gets an interview at Holsen’s Machine Parts factory and thanks God for answered prayer. Hmmm. Holsen is expanding at the expense of Fleet’s and they had to lay-off seventy-five of their workers. Peter worked for Fleet for twenty years and needed the job. He knew lay-offs were coming and had prayed that he would be spared. Peter and John go to the same church, pray to the same God for the same but conflicting things.
Rachel has been praying for a fine Christian husband for her daughter Mary—why wouldn’t she? And the newcomer to their church—Charles Petrie—is just that. Despite Rachel’s fervent prayers Mary isn’t interested in Charles and, anyway, Belinda Hathaway has been praying as well—why wouldn’t she?—and she and Charles hit it off. They’re planning to get married in about six months. Rachel wanted what Mary didn’t want and Belinda got a “yes”, which meant that Rachel had to get a “no”.
The national economy is on the decline, tens of thousands pray for serious improvement—why wouldn’t they? And it comes—in the exports sector. The national currency has weakened so outsiders can buy more from the home nation so all who work in that sector thank God for answered prayer. But because the national currency has weakened the imports industries have to pay more for foreign goods and materials and this rise is passed on to the rank and file in either wage cuts, job losses or price increases for the goods. Import businesses go under and the whole workforce is laid off. Huge numbers in the export trade gain and huge numbers in the import trade are squeezed.
Nations go to war. Families pray for the safety of their loved ones—why wouldn’t they? But their Tom or Ann is kept alive at the expense of someone else’s son or daughter. Those now dead sons and daughters were prayed for and while some families celebrate a homecoming other families mourn the arrival of corpses.
Raw power can’t cure everything
Yes, yes, but why does there have to be all this confusion and conflict of interests? Why doesn’t an all-powerful and all wise God work it out where no one is ever disappointed or hurt? Maybe if we were as wise as God we would know not to ask such questions! Some things can’t be fixed with just “power”. If God had a jillion times more power than he now has (and he has all power) he still couldn’t do some things. Not being able to make a square circle or a four-sided triangle has nothing to do with power! And if we had half a brain we wouldn’t set such tasks within a “power” context. God can't give a “yes” to both Rachel and Belinda about Charles and it has nothing to do with how wise or powerful he is.
Sinful and limited humans can’t be trusted with prayer as a blank cheque
God’s wisdom and power and holy love serve an eternal agenda that takes into account our freedom to rebel against him, war against each other, be greedy and predatory. It takes into account that we are a single human family, inextricably bound one to another and who therefore affect one another for good or ill by our attitudes and behavior and desires. He has created us as one and means us to live in response to one another and he refuses to live our lives for us in a ceaseless stream of divine interventions that negate our humanity and responsibility toward each other. If he didn’t want us to live our lives he wouldn’t have given them to us!
If we don’t open our hearts to another way of looking at life we’re beat before we begin. There are tens of thousands every day and in every generation that are praying for the rich blessing and happiness of the whole human race. If all prayers got an automatic “yes” then no one would need to pray for anything because everyone would already have everything.
Don’t let anyone kid you into thinking that prayer is a simple matter. And don’t let them con you into believing that God has committed himself to say “yes” to every reasonable request. And don’t rob yourself by thinking that prayer is nothing more than asking for things. And don’t let life’s disappointment and pain lead you to be permanently angry with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Don’t let it become all about us wanting things and God being so stingy that he won’t give them to us. What if he doesn’t want to give them to us? What if he thinks it’s our turn to go without for reasons at present known only to himself? [Some of you who are suffering greatly must surely find yourself getting angry in light of such remarks. Get angry with me if you must but do your best to remember that you see him best in Jesus Christ and he would never treat your awful hurt as of no account. Trust him and believe that he will restore to you the years that the locusts have eaten—compare Joel 2:25.] What if the God who shed blood for us unto death in Jesus Christ is doing what is best for a sinful human family’s ultimate blessing? What if he came saying: “This is all too complex for you to grasp the whole. When the drama is completed you will understand and be glad that you committed to me in trust. I...will...not...let...you...down!”
What kind of God does he have to be to gain our commitment?
What kind of God must God be for us to serve him and rejoice in a relationship with him? This is a good and fundamentally important question. Whatever we say, we could not and should not worship a deity that is demonstrably worse than we are in our worst moments! If we have no good reason to believe he is good and if we have well-established reasons to believe he is cruel and capricious, we should renounce him. [We have a lot of people picking verses from here and there in the Bible to show God is cruel. We have a lot of believers who “explain” texts like that to keep God from getting bad press.]
Of course God could bludgeon us into saying worshipful things or he could turn us into automata and he’d get what he wanted. We would be afraid of him and grovel before him—if he tortured us enough he could make us do that but he could never get us to freely love and worship and enjoy him. I think the agnostic John S Mill took himself a bit too seriously but surely he was right when he said that God must be “good” in the way that good people are “good” if we are to praise him and love to be in his presence. If “good” has no meaning that we can recognize, then why would we praise him for being “good”?
So the question is a good one and an important one in the realm of moral philosophy but in the light of Jesus Christ in particular and the entire biblical witness as a unit it’s a redundant question. For those who commit to the truth about Christ the case is closed—God is good in the way that good people can understand goodness! [“If you, then, evil as you are know how to give good things to your children how much more does your Father in heaven…”] I realize that non-believers dispute that but at this moment we’re not dealing with non-believers. These remarks are addressed to disappointed and hurting believers whose questions arise precisely because they believe God is good. If they didn’t believe God existed or if they believed that he was cruel and capricious their questions about prayer and God’s behavior wouldn’t exist.
But even believers are tempted to debate about the kind of God they want to welcome into their lives. There are those who have trusted in God but because he didn’t or doesn’t respond as they think he should they have walked away from him. Oh, they’re pretty sure he’s still around; but what use is he if he doesn’t provide as they think God should provide? They too work with the question: What kind of God must God be for us to serve him and rejoice in a relationship with him? So the question remains a good one and an important one.
But the first question should be…
But it’s not the first question that should be asked! That question is asked from the creature’s standpoint and it’s asked very often from a selfish creature’s standpoint. A creature richly blessed but wanting more. The creature has become the center around which everything must revolve. Certainly it isn’t always selfishness that drives the question—sometimes it’s desperation and anguish but even then, it’s not the first question that should be asked! Even then that question comes from a human that sees him or herself as the center of reality. The hurt and anguish makes them their center!
The first question should be: “What kind of person must I be to welcome the only God there is into my life?” In light of Jesus Christ and the Hebrew-Christian scriptures God is good and has an agenda that offers fullness of life to a sinful humanity. As far as Christ and scripture is concerned it isn’t for us to make God in our image but for us to seek his image. He isn’t the one that needs to change.
So, that’s it, is it? God has all the power and we’re simply to knuckle down to him? We’re to grovel at the feet of the omnipotent bully that can out-talk and out-think us? No, that’s not it at all! We misunderstand the notion of “power” in relation to God and we certainly haven’t seen nor heard of Jesus Christ if we think God is an omnipotent bully. God help us, because we’re sad and lonely and hurt and high strung with anguish we want him to make the world work differently or we want him to change so as to give us some peace and longed-for joy. It all makes so much sense when we think we’ve taken as much as we can take. But give us some lovely days or weeks, give us some joy, some things that make us smile for a while and we know better. Ease the burden a while, give us a chance to gulp in some fresh air when we’ve been smothering, give us a few truths—especially if they’re embodied in gallant people—and we smile ruefully at God and tell him, “Don’t change. I wouldn’t want you to be unlike Jesus Christ. I’ll change.” [For a little more, click here.]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment