Does God get a pass?

I’m reading Job.  The book asks a lot of questions but has few answers.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Who is responsible?

How should we respond?

Does God get a pass for the bad things that happen to us?

This last question is the big one.  There are millions of people who reject God, Christianity,  and ultimately paradise over this last question. They usually say something like this:  “I refuse to accept a God who would let my son die.”  I can sympathise……two of my sons have died….. and I have struggled with this for a long time.

Spoiler alert……….I don’t know the answers;  but,  I’ll make my best guess.

There is evil in the world.  It was here before we were.  Did God create the evil?….. did he make the serpent? ……..Did he create Satan? I don’t know. I do know that God dislikes evil and told us how to avoid it,  how to control it.  He gave us guidelines (rules) to follow. Then he gave us free will….. the right to follow or break the rules.  This free will, for better or worse, is unlimited. There is no question that much of the evil in the world comes from the exercise of free will…… the other guy’s free will……. and ours. God also gave Satan free will. Even more, he gave Satan permission to attack Job. He also strictly limited Satan’s ability to do evil to Job. In a word, he set up the parameters for Satan’s attack on Job.

So…….Why do bad things happen?

Either God made them happen,  God allows them to happen, or they slipped in while God wasn’t looking (the devil made me do it).

I have trouble with the last choice. It speaks to a God who is at least careless and at worst impotent. It allows us to choose anything that we don’t like and blame it on Satan. We give God  credit for the good things and we blame Satan for the bad things. This leaves God as a nice guy, but not exactly the Clint Eastwood, superhero type.. I think that the creator of the universe is a little more potent than that.

So…..God either actively orchestrates the bad things or he stands by and allows them.

I think that both of these things are going on.  Clearly in Job,  God stands by and allows Satan to attack Job. He even dictates the terms of the attack. I don’t know why.  Could it be a test of faith? A sign of God’s confidence in Job? Could God have been using Job’s suffering to teach somebody nearby………..maybe me……..a lesson about faith? Job is ultimately restored but the question of why? is never answered. What I finally come to is this:  it is easy to love the benign, soft focus, smiling,  God in a cloud who gives you whatever you want. That is in fact Satan’s description of the relationship between God and Job before the attack. It takes a much stronger, more powerful and more trusting faith to love a God who allows bad things to happen, and who does things that we don’t approve of.

I think that there are bad things that happen that God actively orchestrates.  These are the things that are painful in our short term,  temporal world; but, that lead to positive eternal outcomes.  This is a bit like the chemo that makes your hair fall  out today but cures the cancer that would have killed you. When something undeniably bad happens to me, I say a prayer:

“God,  I thank you for what you have given;   even though I don’t understand it, I trust your wisdom in what you have taken away;   and I praise you for what I have left. ”

Job said a similar prayer in his pain.

So…… why do bad things happen?   I don’t know.

Who is responsible?       God is….. either actively or passively.

How should we respond?   We should recognise that God is smarter and more powerful than we are….. that he is in charge…. that he loves us and in the end will make it right.  We should trust him, we should love him,  and we should praise him……. even when we don’t understand…….today.

As a friend once said,  “I have to believe that he knows what he’s doing.”

So…… does God get a pass?  In a way this is a trick question. It assumes, as do many of us,  that we get to pass judgement on God….. that we are his supervisor.  It assumes that we are wiser and more in tune with creation than God. This is hubris at its peak. This is also the crux of the problem in our relationship with God. Either he is in charge……..or we are. Either God is external to us……..or we are God.

If we are God…..why haven’t we cleaned up this mess.  Why have we allowed poverty, disease, war and pain to go on? It’s pretty simple.  We haven’t cleaned up the mess,  because we can’t,   because we aren’t God.

I don’t know about you,  but I’m not feeling very Godlike today.

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

Toxic Christians and Marketing

There is hardly a day that goes by that I don’t spend some time trying to clean up the mess left behind by a toxic Christian. This is a difficult topic because it straddles a gap between Christians who are doing a bad job of showing Christ to the world and non-Christians who would use an episode with a toxic Christian as an excuse to avoid doing something that they weren’t going to do anyway.

So….what is a toxic Christian?    My definition is: “a Christian who is focused on some aspect of the faith other than loving God and loving his/her neighbor.”

First of all, they are Christians. They are saved. They will be in paradise. They honestly believe that they are doing God’s work. They tend to be legalistic. They focus on one or more of the 600 some odd rules that are scattered through the bible. Invariably, they choose a rule that is being broken by somebody else. This results in a self righteous presentation of our faith. This is often accompanied by an element of anger. This is often seen as hypocritical. The toxic Christian often speaks for the faith by condemning others. The subtext is “I’m better than you.”  FWIW they are not better than you.  By focusing on the sin of others they manage to push their own sinfulness into the background.

Why are toxic Christians a problem? It’s simple. Our job is to draw others to Christ. We are here to market Christianity to the “unchurched”.   A toxic Christian can drive more people away in a day than I can draw back in a year. How many times have you talked to somebody about Christ only to have them reject him outright based on something a toxic Christian did or said to them 20 years ago?

We often see Christianity portrayed in a bad light in the media. We are portrayed as angry, judgemental, and legalistic. This saddens and offends me. There are TV shows that I avoid because of their consistent portrayal of Christians as bad people. But, where does this come from? I believe that these shows are often striking back against toxic Christians. I also believe that these portrayals of toxic Christians do more damage to the faith than the many shows that portray and even glorify the occult.

My son was badly injured in a motorcycle accident. He was paralyzed for a while but was on crutches and was relearning how to walk. A young, devout, but toxic, Christian walked up to him and said, “I can heal you right now!” He said a brief prayer and then said “walk!”    Nothing changed.       He told my son that the reason that he wasn’t healed was due to my son’s failure of faith. You can argue about the theology involved all day. The point is that the presentation of Christianity by that young man moved my son further away from Christ not closer. Many years later, I still haven’t fully overcome the damage that that kid, and others like him, did in 10 minutes. By the way, my son can now walk!

Toxic Christianity is about bad marketing. It is about a narrow, legalistic focus on secondary rules. It misses the forest of God’s deep abiding love by focusing on a tree that is one of the hundreds of God’s rules. It is driven by something, anything, other than Christ’s love for all of us…..ALL OF US.

So, how do we market Christianity? I can begin with what will not work. You will not draw others to Christ with bulletproof dogma, with miracles, with bible quotations, with the promise of heaven or the threat of hell. You will not lead others to Christ by beating them up over rule #342. You will not save somebody with any message that implies, “If you were as good as me you might get into heaven.”

Others will come to Christ when they see what you do….how you live….when they feel the joy and love that radiates out from you. They will see the evidence of the great treasure that you have found. They will say to themselves. “I don’t know what he has……but I want some of it.”

I have heard it said that joy is the surest sign of the presence of God.

If you think that you might be toxic when interacting with somebody, ask yourself these questions. “Is what I am doing right now motivated by love for God and love for this person?” and ”Will what I am doing right now draw this person to Christ?” If you are not absolutely sure that the answer to these critical questions is yes, then just stop. By not driving them away you may give somebody else a chance to draw them to Christ somewhere down the road.

Let me be more blunt. If you are a toxic Christian, the most productive ministry that you can undertake may be to sit down, shut up, and let somebody who is focused on God’s love and love for their fellow man do the heavy lifting.

I am convinced that there are many people who will die unsaved because of an encounter with a well intentioned but toxic Christian decades ago.

If you are the victim of an encounter with a toxic Christian somewhere in the past,  I am truly sorry. Whatever he or she said or did…..it did not come from God but from a fallible human being…..just like me. Don’t let his or her bad job of marketing keep you from the love and joy that you are meant for.

There is a book called “The Giving Tree”, by Shel Silverstein.

I re-read it about every 10 years. Each time I read it I have a different reaction. Each time I read it, I receive a different message. Each time the message gets more powerful.

In short, there is a rather lopsided relationship between a boy and a tree. The tree loves the boy and gives the boy gifts. The gifts become progressively more and more sacrificial. The boy takes from the tree….. nothing more……no gratitude…….no reciprocation……. no appreciation of the sacrifice….nothing.

On the surface, it’s about giving and taking. For many years it was a metaphor for parenting and for my experiences as a parent. Lately, though, I have begun to experience the book as the child.

For most of my 30 or so years as a parent, I took a message from the book. It came in many forms. But, basically, the message was that parenting is not something that you do in order to fulfill yourself…….it is an exercise in learning how to give of yourself to others. I have learned that this ability to give to others is the secret of finding true happiness. I have found no other path.

Lately, I have come to know that in addition to being the tree(a parent), I am also the child(a taker). I take and take and take the gifts of God’s sacrificial love. Often, I don’t even recognize the sacrifice or say thanks. Just now, I’m beginning to explore how God, the tree, must feel about me as the child….and it’s humbling.

If you are a parent….. or are thinking about becoming one.

If you are a Christian…….or are thinking about becoming one.

If you are a tree……….or a child.

You need to read this book….every ten years or so.

If you are interested, here is a link to a you tube video of the author reading the entire book. It takes about 10 minutes. It will be worth your time.

Here is how judgement day will go for me.

I find myself in huge room. It’s a lot like customs at a large airport. I’m in a long line of strangers. They are all tired and strangely quiet. They are all shuffling forward. After what seems like hours, I reach the front of the line.

There is an old guy sitting on a stool behind a tall desk. It looks like something Bob Cratchet would have used. There is a very old, very large book on the desk. The book looks heavy. The old guy looks tired… it must be the end of a long shift. He’s not smiling……..come to think of it, neither is anybody in the room.

He opens the book and turns a couple of pages. He reads for what seems like a long time, then he looks up at me. He says, “would you care to explain this?” ………..as he gestures at the book. He’s still not smiling. This is not going well.

I try to assemble the stack of justifications, rationalizations, and excuses that I have used for a lifetime. I’m trying to find the one that will work……in this situation……in this place……with this man.

Then, I hear a voice behind me…….the voice says “It’s OK Peter……..he’s with me.”

The old guy gets a little half grin, and he motions me through.

As I walk past, he flips to the next page in the book……looks past me and says. …..”next”.

The little half grin is gone.

I worry a little about the next tired traveller in the line behind me….. and that is the reason for this blog.