Who Do We See God As?
My personal testimony has always clung nearly to God. I realized from an early age the importance of cultivating that relationship, and my life’s journey has been moving in that direction ever since. I went to youth group, on mission trips, FCA, etc. I was a camp pastor at age 20, youth minister at 21, seminary student at age 22 and pastor at age 23. It is hard for me not to notice that God is moving me along. But wait, wasn’t I supposed to have a wife by now? Didn’t God promise, if I follow as closely as I have, that I could experience love?
Speaking of falling in love, I have made several friends along the way that share a strikingly similar testimony - not to mine but to one another. I have had both men and women look me in the face and tell me that they are waiting to date and/or kiss someone because God promised them a future companion. They are living their lives in anticipation to God’s alleged promise.
Is this wrong? I have no idea. I would think not. It is not what I chose because somewhere along the way in my journey I have learned that God is not a matchmaker. If so, wouldn’t I have been married by now? I’m 24. I’ve done a lot of things right to merit that marriage. Maybe, just maybe, God is not Cupid.
My middle brother played three years of professional baseball with the Baltimore Orioles organization. He was a hard throwing righty with a slider that made bats miss. Ever since he was little, people saw something spectacular in him. It was nothing for him to strike out 15-18 batters in a game. The boy was destined for greatness. Every success, every win affirmed the fact for him that God must be in this. And then one day he was let go. A lot of pitchers for the Orioles were let go and he was told that there just was not a spot for him anymore. I would imagine that this left Blake quite disillusioned with where he was in life. Didn’t God promise him he would make a career out of baseball? But what about all that affirmation throughout life? Are you telling me it wasn’t God’s will for Blake to play ball? Maybe, just maybe, God is not a Professional Baseball Scout.
We all have these stories of failures. I’m single. My brother’s working for a material’s company and not pitching at Fenway on a road game. You may have even suffered a loss of a job, thousands of dollars gone because of the economy’s recession, a broken marriage, a child who doesn’t love you, or a church that doesn’t reach out to you.
My point here is that all of us, whether we realize it or not, can blame these moments on God.
Who is God? Apparently not Cupid, a Scout, a Manager at work, the Stock Market, our Spouse’s love for us, our Child’s relationship with us, or our Church’s outreach ministry. So why do we blame God? There are a million other titles that we give God and over time we become disillusioned to them as well. God didn’t arrest the murderer. God must not be a policeman. God did not fix everything that was broken. God must not be a fixer. God failed to show up the way I wanted God to when I called. God must not be a crony. Who is God?
But down in the darkness below those dreams – in the place where all our notions about God have come to naught – there is still reason to hope, because disillusionment is not so bad. Disillusionment is the loss of illusion – about ourselves, about the world, about God – and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for the truth. (Barbara Brown Taylor)
My response to this – if this is you – is for you to keep on trucking. Don’t be afraid of your disillusionment but rather own it. Probe it. Listen to it. Question it. Wrestle it. Disillusionment is not half as bad when you’re walking through it, “. . . because the real danger is not the territory itself but getting stuck in it.” (Taylor)
Who is God to you? What is God’s role? How do you play into that role? What illusion of God do you need to let go of to experience the truth about God?
My word of hope to you is if you are experiencing a disillusion of who God is, just know that God is always more than you could imagine. God is always bigger. God is always more loving. It just might not be the way you are expecting. The real test of discipleship is not, “loving God when things are going well,” but rather, seeing God and choosing God when things could not be worse.
Comments
Anyway, I hope that makes sense. It's late and I am really tired!
Indeed, the scriptures always speak of marriage in terms of personal choice and human effort -- "a man FINDS a wife, and finds what is good" in Proverbs 18:22 and of course 1 Cor 7, which has been distorted into "the gift of singleness", but actually affirms the volitional nature of singleness and marriage (v.8-9 "it's good for them to remain as they are, but if they cannot contain, let them marry", v. 36 "let him do as he wishes", v. 39 she is free to marry whomever she wishes".
Unfortunately, the erroneous idea that 1 Cor 7:7 means that God gives some people the "gift of marriage" and some "the gift of singleness" originated with a mistranslation of that passage in The Living Bible (now the NLT), and it led to a generation of singles feeling they had to "wait on God" to drop someone in their laps. Fortunately, the NLT has since restored verse 7 back to something that more accurately reflects the original Greek, which basically says that God gives us each different gifts (ie. innate qualities). And based on your own discernment of those innate qualities, you can either choose singleness or marriage.
Here's to biblical accuracy and common sense!