In “other” Words on the Horizon

“Don’t blame suf­fer­ing the world on the anger of God. He’s not mad; he didn’t mess up. Fol­low our trou­bles to their head­wa­ters, and you won’t find any angry or befud­dled God. But you will find a sov­er­eign God.
Your pain has a purpose.

Your prob­lems, strug­gles, heartaches, and has­sles coöper­ate toward one end — the glory of God.”

~ Max Lucado ~
It’s Not About Me

A cou­ple of months ago, I attended a Chris­t­ian social event with a group of friends at which the sub­ject of the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia wild­fires came up in conversation.

One of the women seated at our table shared that ear­lier that day, she had watched a tel­e­van­ge­list opine that the fires con­sti­tuted God’s pun­ish­ment. As my good friend kicked me under the table, I found myself com­pelled to ask, in the most inno­cent tone I could muster, “Pun­ish­ment for what exactly?” I already knew the answer, but had to hear it from her lips in order to believe it.

Just as I knew she would, she pro­ceeded to explain that the fires were God’s way of send­ing a mes­sage to Cal­i­for­ni­ans about our “accep­tance of homo­sex­u­al­ity” and oth­er­wise overly-permissive cul­ture. She also men­tioned the “hor­ri­ble” things that our chil­dren are learn­ing in pub­lic schools.

As my friend’s kicks became more emphatic and my shins started to ache, I decided to let it go with a sim­ple, “Well, I don’t believe that’s how God works.” Then I quickly changed the sub­ject to some­thing benign like the unsea­son­ably warm weather, resumed eat­ing my typ­i­cally fla­vor­less banquet-variety chicken breast, and heard my friend breathe a huge sigh of relief as she too con­tin­ued eat­ing her dinner.

But when the event ended, my friend and I spent a good deal of time sit­ting in my car talk­ing about the idea of why ter­ri­ble things hap­pen to won­der­ful peo­ple. Her fam­ily knows a lot about that sub­ject: They are among the most stead­fastly faith­ful folks I have ever known, even as they have endured tremen­dous hard­ships over the years. If any­one deserves to ques­tion why good peo­ple must endure dif­fi­cul­ties, my friend does. But she con­tin­ues to believe that there is a plan for her life and those of her loved ones. And she does not buy into the “God is pun­ish­ing us” school of thought.

The con­ver­sa­tion brought me back to Max Lucado’s won­der­ful book, It’s Not About Me: Res­cue from the Life We Thought Would Make Us Happy. I love the way that Lucado writes. I don’t always agree with his the­o­log­i­cal stances and Bib­li­cal inter­pre­ta­tions, but I appre­ci­ate his no-nonsense, direct approach.

On this point, Lucado reminds us of the blind man. When the dis­ci­ples asked Jesus what sin he or his par­ents had com­mit­ted that caused him to be born blind, Jesus responded that sin was not to blame. Rather, he was born sight­less “so that the works of God might be dis­played in him.” (John 9:1–3)

It is a dif­fi­cult con­cept to grasp and still harder to accept and live out on a daily basis.

To illus­trate, Lucado recounts the story of a friend bat­tling can­cer. He was los­ing his faith as heal­ing eluded him and the doc­tors were able to stay the disease’s impact.

Rather, relief came when he real­ized that he had the power to reflect God and resigned him­self to the knowl­edge that his sick­ness was “in the scope of God’s sov­er­eign plan.” As Lucado describes it,

[h]is can­cer paraded the power to Jesus down the Main Street of his world. He, the blind man, Lazarus, and mil­lions of oth­ers form a unique soci­ety: selected to suf­fer for God’s glory. His light prisms through their aching lives and spills forth in a cas­cade of col­ors. God-glimpses.

From this per­spec­tive, the phi­los­o­phy of the woman at the social gath­er­ing can be seen as dia­met­ri­cally oppo­site from the Divine Creator’s actual pur­pose. In other words, it is not about pun­ish­ment or ret­ri­bu­tion at all. Instead, life’s adver­si­ties, chal­lenges, and con­flicts can all be viewed as oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to grow in our faith.

Do your prayers seem to be unan­swered? What you request and what you receive aren’t match­ing up? Don’t think God is not lis­ten­ing. Indeed he is. He may have higher plans.

Each one of our earthly strug­gles con­sti­tutes an oppor­tu­nity to not just live out our faith, but to model a life of faith for those with whom we come into con­tact. To see the prin­ci­ple in action and prove Lucado’s the­o­rem, I needed look no fur­ther than into the face of my good friend who, despite all the obsta­cles she and her fam­ily have faced over the many years that we have been known each other, has never lost faith or believed she or her love ones were being sin­gled out to suf­fer as a con­se­quence of some transgression.

The Divine Cre­ator does not cause fires, earth­quakes, ill­ness, hor­ri­ble acci­dents and the like in order to pun­ish us for our sin­ful natures. Instead, cat­a­stro­phes occur because this is a bro­ken world and we some­times mis­use the gift of free will. Lucado points out that, to believe oth­er­wise, you “need to scis­sor from your Bible some ten­der pas­sages such as:

God is sheer mercy and grace;
not eas­ily angered, he’s rich in love.
He doesn’t end­lessly nag and scold,
nor hold grudges for­ever.
He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve,
nor pay us back in full for our wrongs.
As high as heaven is over the earth,
so strong is his love to those who fear him.

Psalm 103:8–11

I chose the Lucado quote and this topic at this time of year because I can’t think of a bet­ter time to pon­der it. Although Andy Williams sang about “The Most Won­der­ful Time of the Year,” the hol­i­day sea­son is a decid­edly dif­fi­cult time for many peo­ple. They feel out of step as they lis­ten to happy car­ols about per­fect fam­i­lies gath­er­ing together. They won­der if they are being pun­ished for some prior wrong­do­ing because they are not part of a Nor­man Rockwell-esque fam­ily. They ques­tion whether the New­born King has for­got­ten them as the hol­i­days approach but they still don’t have a job, the fore­clo­sure notices from the bank keep arriv­ing in the mail­box or the doc­tor con­firms a dev­as­tat­ing prognosis.

There is no bet­ter time to dis­play the “works of God” in our lives than dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. Christ­mas­time affords us an oppor­tu­nity to “parade the power of Jesus down the Main Streets” that we tra­verse each day, not just to remind our­selves to be faith­ful and com­mit­ted to the sov­er­eign plan for our own lives, but also to model that behav­ior for those around us who are also fac­ing enor­mous challenges.

Now more than any other time of the year, we are called to be a reflec­tion of the love that came into the world in the most hum­ble cir­cum­stances imag­in­able — in a sta­ble on a quiet, oth­er­wise unre­mark­able night long, long ago.

An entry in the Car­ni­val of Chris­t­ian Women.

Tech­no­rati Tags: In “Other” Words

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