 It has been a season of loss for me. Personally and professionally,
areas where I thought there was gain have been crushed by loss.
Expected areas of 'more' have turned to 'less'. I have some serious
questions for God right now, as these areas of loss have been outside
of my control. Not to be too dramatic, but in some small way, I feel a
little like Job. After a series of devastating losses- family, money,
health- he sat down in the dirt and waited for God. Friends came to
'comfort' Job, but ended up accusing him of sin. Even his wife told him
to, "curse God and die".
I'm not quite at Job's
stage. My season of loss cannot compare to his, but it has been
emotionally and spiritually significant for me. I love Job's response
to his wife's challenge to curse God and die. He says, "Shall we
accept good from God, and not trouble?". Wow. His kids are dead, his
wealth has evaporated, and his health is gone. His wife wants him to
turn his back on God, and accept the resulting (assumed) punishment of
death. Job sticks to his faith though. Both good and bad flows from our
relationship with God. Do we only want the good? I bet for most of
us, if we were honest, the answer would be yes.
Job's
friends assumed that because something bad happened in his life, then
Job must have sinned in some way to deserve this punishment from God.
He argues that he didn't do anything wrong. He was right. We learn that
God allowed Satan to take his best shot at Job, so that God could prove
a point about Job's faith. This does not mean that every time bad
things happen to us, that the devil is at the heart of it, or that we
are a stand-in for God in an epic spiritual battle between good and
evil. Life is not that simplistic, and God is not that repetitive. I
find that when something truly bad happens in life, there are those
superstitious Christians who are quick to say (or think), that loss is
a result of sin. This is nothing more than sick, twisted neo-paganist
thought creeping into the church, and its just plain wrong. Don't
believe me? Read John 9.
Jesus and his
disciples are walking down the road, and they see a man, blind from
birth, begging by the side of the road. The disciples ask Jesus,
"Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Pagan doctrine, plain and simple. Jesus blows their minds with his
answer, "Neither. This man was born blind that the power of God might
be revealed in him." Chew on that morsel for a while. Jesus says that
the man's infirmity is not linked to some earthly reason, but rather
has purpose so far beyond man's reasoning that it can not be fully
comprehended. Jesus then proceeds to heal the man. He can see, but the
social fall-out is immense. The Jewish leadership persecutes him, his
parents bail on him and he is left alone in world. Only at the end of
the chapter, when Jesus returns to him in relationship, do we see hope
for him. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble as well?
It
really irks me when I hear people talk about bad things happening in
their lives as though they were God's victims. "How could God allow
________ to happen?" Those same people would be the first to complain
if God set up his creation so that anytime we began to stray off the
path, He showed up and stopped us. "How could God be so controlling?"
We don't want an overly involved God in our lives if it means setting
aside our freedom, but the minute tragedy strikes, we blame him for not
showing up. I'm surprised he puts up with the bunch of us. He must be
grace indeed! God made us volitional, and has set up his creation with
certain consistent rules to ensure that our choices can be linked with
reason. If I choose to jump off a cliff, and gravity does its thing,
it's hardly God's fault.
We demand to know
what He is doing, when the whim takes us, and then we dare to get
pissed off when the answer doesn't come. Faith means being OK without
an answer. At the end of Job, after our hero has asked some pretty
serious questions of God, He shows up in a storm to have a talk with
Job. Job asks why. God answers, "I am". The answer was enough for Job.
Is it enough for us? When it isn't, we look to old heresies and pagan
religions to fill the gap. God says, "I am", but we say we know the
secret why (Gnosticism). God says, "I am", but we lay out a better
sacrifice to appease his anger (paganism). God says, "I am", and we
give the devil the credit (Satanism). The most honest of us will hear
God say, "I am", and will either accept that (faith) or walk away.
Anything in between is intellectually dishonest, like believing that I
can really live in Barbie's Dream House. It's perfect, it's pink, but
it is oh so small. Our God is so much bigger than that.
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