Ever get tired of the same-old same-old Easter language? Its not that the familiar language we find in blogs, essays and sermons is unimportant, but that in our desire for therapeutic deism we've numbed ourselves to the deeper meanings of what is glibly stated.
I know two boys - I suppose I should say men since they're 20-something, but at the moment they're letting emotions batter their reason into submission, so I think of them as boys. They have hard questions: does God exist, why should they pay him any attention, and why can't they hear from him? Quite frankly, the whole thing is a bit of a mystery. I guess that's why we need faith: substantiated belief in what we can't completely understand. In class the other day I posed a question for the group to explore, and the response was "that's hard". I said, "Yes, and the hard questions are how we learn, the easy questions are boring". They students did not like that, they wanted me to hand out answers and were offended that I would not. The dangerous thing about questions is that there are usually answers. These two boys are going through what we should all do: question the basis of what we've been told in childhood. Until we do so our faith is a blind faith, and will remain shallow and weak. The danger, of course, is that we so easily mix our emotions and reason, and so build barriers to the answers we don't like. Add some youthful hormones driving desires of sex and rebellion, and its not surprisingly that those who come to this in their teens and twenties walk a tightrope. This Easter I've been thinking about the questions we pose to God, and the answers we could reasonably expect. I was raised with the teaching "Ask God, and he will say, yes, no, or wait". I always found this dissatisfying, because my experience didn't match. In fact, very often my experience was of speaking into a void of deafening silence. I wonder, if I was to talk with these two boy-men, what explanation could I give for a God who says he listens and loves and judges and acts and answers and ....? If I ask God a question, these are some of the wide range of the responses I might expect:
A few points on this:
Have you noticed the propensity among modern "evangelicals" (an increasingly meaningless word) to ask God for guidance about everything - you find this quite a lot among the independent churches and especially the youth. "Should we ask so-and-so to dinner", "should I go see that movie", "where should I invest my savings", etc., etc. Now of course God is involved in our lives, but I think this is sometimes taking it to the ridiculous. It's like being on a hike and asking the leader "should I step on or over that stone". It is like saying to God: "I abdicate responsibility, I have no competence to make decisions, I'm simply a robot, tell me everything I must do". We're created beings with creativity, a mind, reason, soul and emotions. Absconding from our responsibility to use our created abilities is like treating God as our personal on-demand hand-holder. God asks us to live as we were created to be - intelligent and creative - and do so in relationship with him. That means we employ all our capacity in full awareness of what God is doing, and engage as the much loved (very junior) partner. What I'd like to say to these two boys: put your emotions on a leash for the moment, rein in your anger (for you are angry). Think rationally about your questions in the light of a reason'able and substantiated belief in what you can never fully understand. Ask your questions, but also ask, is that the right question?
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Why?
Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
May 2017
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