In fact the year I began my journey of faith was a great year...I was crowned homecoming king at my high school, started dating my future wife (marriage is easy, just read my other post, "The night I wanted to divorce my wife and why 4 years later, I'm so glad I didn't!") #enteremoticonhere, and my peers voted me "Most Romantic" (I borrowed Brian Fontana's Sex Panther cologne...which 60% of the time works everytime) #moreanchormanquotes AND I was even voted "Best Smile". Life was good...on the outside.
On the inside I was a mess (and mostly still am)...but it was in and through my (continual) understanding of who this God was and is that I began to put the pieces together of what life is really about...I discovered life that is really life.
One of the hardest things about having a relationship with God is reconciling the age old question, "If God is good and all powerful...how come there is so much evil in the world?" (in theology, this is called "Theodicy").
To those of you reading this (now that you have made it past my reminiscent narcissism) who don't "believe in God" or aren't quite sure what you believe...I want to apologize on behalf of the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Christians who have said phrases to you like "God is in control", "There is a reason for everything...", etc...in an attempt to comfort you, but in reality felt more like they were cussing at you or that they had just raked their nails on the proverbial chalkboard.
What they are trying to say to you when they say "God is in control" is..."I care about you, I love you...and I don't know why you are going through this, but I think I know someone who does."
This side of the holocausts of history, 9/11, sex trafficking around the globe and other like atrocities...it is hard to make sense of a benevolent God who is seemingly anything but, "in control".
I wish Theology was neat and tidy...but the truth is, it's quite messy. Karl Barth said that all Theology is "broken thought". My seminary President told my incoming classmates and I that in the reception of our graduate degrees we will realize not only do we not have all of the answers, but we won't even know all of the questions. Does this make God any less God?
I don't think so, I think it makes me and us, less God...and that is a good thing.
What I do know is that we live in a broken world, a world that was not God's original intent...when I start there, it at least gives me a few footholds to brace myself upon when I think about the tragedies I've faced in my own life (ie...child of divorced parents, death of my best friend in 7th grade, and even just 2 years ago as my dad was murdered...beaten to death) or look around at the constant cruelty in our world.
I wanted to write this post for a couple reasons...
- I wanted to apologize to those of you who have been frustrated with statements about God that seem to reduce your experiences of pain to fatalistic philosophic statements instead of REAL, and DEEP grief.
- I also wanted to write this to ask; Can we (the church) stop positing such statements in the midst of people's pain like a "mic drop" at an Eminem concert? The certainty of said "mic drop" can come across in a way that is anything but helpful. I'll never forget the time someone belittled my dad's murder by comparing it to their own experience of grief. Maybe start with saying, "I am so sorry...I love you" and then in the silence of your presence through the weeks and years ahead, maybe...just maybe you'll see the fingerprints of what God is or might be doing?
As a pastor...I truly believe in a God of loving grace who is absolutely in control. But this "control" that we profess on God's behalf, is an understanding that leads to peace and hope, and frees us from anxiety or fear, not a certainty that God is maneuvering the world like a cosmic puppet-master...so be careful how you use that phrase, "God is in Control".
For in the words of the great theologian, Inigo Montoyo..."I do not think it means what you think it means."
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