TILL HE COMES Blog

I am certain this post will get me some worried comments about my further slide into heresy. So let me say it clearly: “I do believe God exists! I believe there is a God, as revealed to us through nature, our conscience, Jesus, and Scripture.”

Now, on with my post.

I was recently having a discussion with a friend of mine who doesn’t believe God exists. He gave me some interesting books to read, which, in the format of a novel, present “god” and “satan” as highly evolved energy-based life forms. He believes there is a “force” out there, but it is not “god.” Instead, there are only ”aliens” who tweaked the evolutionary process on earth, and have been “playing” with us ever since.

So he says he doesn’t believe in “god.”

I asked him why he doesn’t believe in “god” but does believe in an advanced species of energy-based life forms.

He replied, “I just can’t believe in a god who kills innocent people, and slaughterers the Canaanites, and sends prophets and preachers who condemn gay people while secretly raping little boys and stealing money. The god we read about in the Bible tells us to obey the government no matter what, and pay our taxes so our armies can go steal the oil and wealth of other countries, and imprison innocent people. I don’t believe in a god who can create humans to live forever, but then decides to create of place of pain, suffering, and torture for billions of them to live in forever. And then in light of all this, he calls himself ‘good.’ If that is god, he sounds more like the devil.”

I think he was waiting for me to defend my belief in God. But I only looked at him, nodded my head in agreement, and said, “Yes, I don’t believe that god exists either.”

I certainly believe in God, but I don’t believe in the god my friend described. I don’t believe that kind of god exists. Also, I don’t believe that the god held forth by most of modern “Christianity” exists either. I certainly believe God exists; but not that god.

Which raises the question: Since I am certain that some of my beliefs about God are incorrect and inaccurate, does the God I believe in actually exist? How much of our view of God must be correct before we can say we are believing in the God who truly exists? (A similar question could be asked about Jesus. Lots of Christians accuse others of believing in the “wrong Jesus.” Some people believe in Jesus, but their views of Jesus are so warped from the real Jesus, that the Jesus they believe in doesn’t (or didn’t) actually exist. But none of us are 100% accurate in our beliefs about Jesus either, so does that mean we are believing in the wrong Jesus?)

What do you think about all this? Are these sorts of questions just a result of the effect of Platonic Dualism on our thinking (where all we know about God is some sort of dim reflection of reality) mixed with Hindu Brahmanism (where the most we can say about God is what he is not)? Also, what can you say or do to show a person who doesn’t believe in God that there is actually a God worth believing in? How can we show them that the God they don’t believe in is (most likely) not the God of the Bible?

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Have you ever experienced a “Dark Night of the Soul”? When God seems silent, the Bible seems devoid of meaning, every day seems to grow blacker, and other Christians seems like aliens from another planet? In such times, you will often experience doubts and fears about things that you never would have doubted or feared in times of blessing and being close to God.

In these times, you will often hear Christians say, “Don’t doubt in the dark what God revealed in the light.”  In other words, if God taught you something, or gave you a vision for your life in a time of blessing and being close to God, then don’t doubt these things in times of darkness, difficulty, and depression.

I’ve gone through several “Dark Nights” in my life. And while I used to believe this “Don’t doubt in the dark” slogan, I am beginning to question it’s wisdom. In the first place, who defines “dark”? Isn’t it the storms of life, and times of feeling distant from God that are able to make us cry out for Him even more, and learn to trust Him even more? Such times can, of course, drive us away from God, but (as the shirt says) “If the pain doesn’t kill you, it will only make  you stronger.” Maybe dark nights are when God is at work on us the most! Maybe dark nights of the soul are actually brilliant days of refining fire! I imagine that when we look back at our life, we will see that it was in the “dark nights” that God was most at work in our lives.

Which means that the doubts and fears we have in such times may actually be from God. Maybe, the best think you can do in a dark night is question some of the things you thought you knew from the “warm and fuzzy days of light.” Maybe it’s the truths we learn in the thunderous dark that God really wants to teach us, but we long for the emotions and feelings of a day at the beach.

Let me give you a personal example from my own life. In the light of the day, I was a pastor. I loved being a pastor. Every day, when I went to work, I couldn’t believe that I got paid to do what I was doing. And I think I was a fairly decent pastor. Not the best, but decent. They were giddy times for me. My family suffered, but I personally enjoyed it. Looking back, I think it was the time I felt the closest to God.

The last three years of my life have been a dark night. Storms and distress. Fear and failure. Depression. Anguish. Anger. During this time, I became quite disillusioned with the “religion” of Christianity. I saw it as empty and shallow. My view of God changed. My view of “ministry” changed. Several elements of my theology changed. During this time, people kept saying, “Don’t doubt in the dark what God revealed in the day. Stay the course. Things will get better.”

But I didn’t go back.

And now, I am somewhere in the dusk (or dawn?) between the night and day. And I’m trying to decide where the true light was. Was it when I was a pastor? Or was that just “ignorance is bliss” and now I know the real truth, revealed by God in the darkness and the stormy sea? Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t go back to the way I was, or the way I thought, for anything. It was a painful route to get here, but I would do it all over again if it was the only way to learn what I have learned.

So maybe the darkness is light after all.

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Here is something someone wrote to me recently. There are some great thoughts, great questions, and amazing insights. She is the wisest woman I know.

The last three years have been the hardest to comprehend. Why does it have to be so hard to follow Christ? Why do we have to be so badly broken to understand who He is? Why does it have to hurt in order to make sense? Why do we need to get totally lost before we can begin our trek home? Why must we get so mad at the very one who encompasses love?

2005-2008 was my journey of discovering these questions. Notice I said “questions” and not answers. The answers I believe are coming slowly and will continue to come as I try to understand just who God is.

Honestly, I actually have more respect for Him now than I did when I saw Him as only this great loving God who sent His Son to die for me. Now I see Him as much more complex than before. Answers are not just black and white. What seems best isn’t usually really best because His plan for us is beyond what we think as complex. He sees our souls, hearts. We can’t even begin to understand what that means.

But what I do know is what He has done to me through all of this pain, hurt, anger, and frustration. He has opened my eyes to what he wants His church to be, me to be, and who He is.

He really can change our life overnight, for the worse or better. But even the worse in the end is for His glory still.

If you have never gone through a time of being totally mad and angry at God I suggest you need to allow yourself the opportunity. I know that most Christians will say this is bad or unchristian or blasphamous, but I disagree. I think if you allow yourself to be honest enough with yourself to be honest with God, then you will awaken a part of you that God is trying to get through to.

So take off the mask of churchgoer and take a serious look at who church says that god is. If that God doesn’t satisfy you, get honest with yourself and God, get angry, get mad and cry out. Let Him show you who He really is.

Now I caution you, this will HURT immensly. Try to see it as heart surgery without the anesthesia (Yes, that bad). And it will last different lengths for all of us, but the healing process is incredible (And I have only just begun).

You will see His love for you in so many new ways and you’ll never look and HIm the same again. and you just may be able to sing those cheesy Christian worship songs and mean it (OK, maybe not the cheesy ones). But only because He is so much greater than those songs can even begin to describe.

God is complex and His way is not the easy way. But it is rewarding, even if it only feels like that one week every three years.

So anyways here is my heart summing up what God is teaching me, what do you think?

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Many people have difficulties with how God treats Job in the opening chapters of the book of Job. I raised some of these questions is my opening post of of this series, and then last time, explained why I was asking these questions in the first place. Now I want to begin to propose a solution to this dilemma. This post contains some background premises that form the basis to my tentative solution. I will post the conclusion tomorrow.

The Background Premises

First, I do believe that the events described in the book of Job truly did happen in history. However, if you believe Job is simply a parable, a story of fiction to make a point, I won’t argue with you. However, since I also believe the Bible is inspired by God, even if Job is just a story, I still have to ask why God inspired the author to write the story in the first place. We still have to ask ourselves what the story says about how God deals with humans, and what is going on behind the scenes in some (but not all) of the tragedies and difficulties of human life. In a way, the author is trying to answer the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Second, I do believe (as some of the comments noted) that the book of Job is the earliest book of the Bible. It was probably written during the reign of King David or King Solomon, but had an oral tradition that went way back to before the time of Abraham. This is important because I believe (as I think Flo pointed out), that in a way, the entire rest of the Bible was written to provide an answer for the questions raised by the book of Job. This means that if you have problems with how God treats Job, you are reading the book correctly! If you don’t have problems with how God treats Job, let me suggest you have a poor view of what kind of a God we worship! I believe the book is supposed raise questions about God and His dealings with His creation. And the answers to these questions are found in the rest of Scripture.

Third, one my favorite things to study is the historical/cultural background of the books of the Bible.  Reading Job from this perspective, it seems that the opening chapters of Job are like a call for champions from two warring tribes. In the Ancient Near East (ANE), sometimes battles could be fought and won simply by sending out a single champion from each opposing side to engage in mortal combat (remember David and Goliath?). Satan chooses the circumstances of life as his champion, and God chooses Job. The goal is to get Job to curse God. However, unlike such contests in the ANE, the victor of this battle does not gain mastery over the other (that contest comes later during the Satan vs. Jesus battle).

This battle theme permeates the entire Bible (e.g., see Eph 6:10-20). God is a God at War. This earth is the war zone. We are not here on planet earth as part of a vacation cruise through a cosmic wonderland, but instead find ourselves in the middle of a battle between two powerful enemies: God, the Creator of all, and Satan, who wants to be God. This is part of the reason we find so much wrong with our world.

Fourth, this war is not about us. Too much of our theology is man-centered. I sometimes hear it taught that since God is love, and He is a relational God, He created us because He wanted to have a relationship with part of His creation. How egotistical and self-centered of us! I’m not saying God doesn’t want to have a relationship with us, but that is not the primary reason He created us. I’m sure I’ll get some people calling me a heretic for saying such a thing, but the fact of the matter is that as humans, we always want to put ourselves at the center of everything. Remember when the church taught that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun, moon and stars all orbited around us? Guess what? God does not orbit around us either.

I do not think God created us so that He could battle Satan for our souls. That just seems foolish and petty. This battle is not about our souls, as if whoever gathers the most souls wins. Instead, I believe this war is about God trying to teach something to Satan and his angels. Satan, of course, is trying to prove God wrong. (By the way, isn’t it interesting that the created being in the universe who knows the most about God believes that God can be wrong and that God can be defeated? What does that say about Satan’s theology? What does it say about ours?) There are hints throughout Scripture that God created us to teach the angels (cf. 1 Pet 1:12). What are we teaching them? I have some speculative ideas, but I’m not getting into them here.

These four things are some preliminary ideas that helped form my tentative solution to the Job Problem, which I will post for your consideration tomorrow.

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Thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion from the previous post. These comments, along with several email comments I received, have helped form my tentative solution over the next few days. This first post will simply provide some personal background for why I am asking these questions in the first place.

Autobiography

As you have probably guessed, my questions about the book of Job are not purely academic. Many times during the past year, my wife and I have literally yelled to God, saying “We are not Job!” I dread waking up in the morning, because it seems the first question that pops into my mind is “How is my life going to get shredded today?”

Some people say, “Well, God must be disciplining you for something. Fix it, and life will get better.” Such people need to read the book of Job a little closer and see what God had to say about Job’s friends. Furthermore, people who believe that if you just “get right with God” then everything will be “peachy keen” are living in a fairytale land. In fact, if someones life is full of ease and comfort, I’d suggest that they are the ones who might need to “get right with God.” But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Not everyone is like Job’s friends. Many people have been telling us to “just focus on the positive things.” We tried that, but it seemed that just when we started focusing on something positive in our lives, it got taken away from us too. I also noticed that whenever I prayed for something, exactly the opposite happened. If I didn’t pray for something, but just hoped, things turned out as I hoped. It seemed that praying for something or focusing on something positive caused these things to become targets for God’s heavenly pea-shooter.

I know that lots of people have gone through far worse than I have. And lots of well-meaning individuals tried to remind me of that not-so-encouraging fact. To the contrary, becoming aware of how terrible some people’s lives have turned only tends to surface the question, “What in the world is God doing?”

This question brought me back to the book of Job. As stated in my previous post, I have always had issues with God’s treatment of Job in the book. The opening chapters of the book of Job remind me of the movie Trading Spaces where two rich, old men, in an attempt to answer the ”nature vs. nurture” debate, decide to gamble with the lives of two hapless victims for $1.

So in an attempt to figure out what God might be trying to do in my own life, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the book of Job, and the events it describes. In my last post, I raised the issue. I want to propose a possible solution, but as I wrote it, it became too long to publish in one blog post, so I will spread it out over the next couple days.

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A Story

I was at the park over the weekend with my three daughters and we were playing on the swings. I noticed a man watching us play, and after a while, he came up to me and said, “It sure is obvious your girls love you.”

Thinking it was an odd thing for a stranger to say, I cautiously replied, “Thanks?”

He continued, “Aside from giving them fun things to do here at the park, I bet in this economy, you work hard to give them food, clothes, and a roof over their heads.”

“Yep.” Now I was getting suspicious. “I try to provide for them the best I can.”

“Well, it’s obvious it is working. They adore you…”

I was starting to get a little upset. “I don’t give them that stuff to earn their love, but because I already love them. What are you trying to say?”

“Well, I’m just saying that I bet the only reason they love you is because you have provided so much for them. I bet they wouldn’t love you as much if you took some of that stuff away,” he said in a rather haughty tone. “I dare you to take some of that good stuff away and see if they still love you.”

Now I understood. And I was actually somewhat intrigued by the idea.”Okay,” I said. “Let’s try it. First, I’m going to not give them dinner tonight, and then tomorrow, when they wake up, all their clothes will be gone. When they come downstairs to ask my wife for clothes and food, we will be gone. When they come outside to see if we are working in the yard, I will have the house rigged so it burns to the ground. I’ll have some food sitting out there, but I’ll put something in so that when they eat it, they will get very, very sick. Then, I’ll send some neighbors over to tell them that their mommy and daddy did all this to them because they did something bad and we are angry with them. I am so sure they love me, that even through all this, I bet they will continue to love me.” 

“I bet they won’t,” he retorted.

“We’ll just have to see then, won’t we?”

Job Problems

Clearly, this story is fictional. I made it up, so don’t turn me in to CPS. Any parent who agrees to do these sorts of things to their children should have their children taken away from them. It’s monstrous, and it made me cringe just to write it. I cannot imagine doing anything so cruel to my three girls.

Which brings me to my Job problems. No, it is not problems with my job, but problems with the premise of the Book of Job in the Bible. Have you ever read the opening chapters of the Book of Job? The opening chapters have God and Satan deciding to test Job’s love for God by taking away everything Job loves and all he owns, and then have Job’s friends come and tell Job it is because God is punishing him. 

I’m not surprised that Satan suggests such a scheme. What surprises me is that God so readily agrees to it! And furthermore, God never tells Job why all this bad stuff happened to him. Job never finds out about this divine wager! God never tells Job that he was a pawn in a cosmic game of “chicken.” At the end of the book, when Job finally gets to ask God “Why?” God basically says, “I’m God and you’re not, so don’t question me.”

I understand that sometimes parents have to tell their children “Because I said so, that’s why!” or “Because I’m the parent!” but such answers are not adequate explanations when the parent is abusing the child.

People say, “Yeah, but God gave it all back!” But would any court in the country allow me to keep my daughters if I treated them as described above, and then at the end of it all, say, “Just kidding! Here’s more clothes and food and a bigger house! Now let’s get back to being a happy family!” I don’t think so.

I am not trying to be irreverent or blasphemous, but I just have problems with how God treats Job. What am I not seeing? What am I not understanding? 

(I am working on a possible solution to this Job Problem, which I will post later, but I want to see what you come up with first.)

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God is a stripper. No, not that kind. (Though if you believe Jesus, strippers are probably closer to the Kingdom of God than many religious people – Matt 21:31.)

When I say “God is a stripper” I am reminded of a “looking for work” advertisement I saw in the newspaper a few years ago. At the top of the ad in big bold letters it said, “I’ll strip for you!” This ad was placed by a lady who owned a furniture stripping company. She was offering to strip and refinish your wood furniture. If you have ever tried to refinished your furniture, you know how valuable her services are. If I had to refinish the antique table my wife and I own, I would hire a stripper.

But all of us have something more important than our furniture, and that is our life. And in the life of every single one of us there are blemishes and defects. We all have areas of our life that need to be refinished, refined, or removed. And when we pray, “God, make me usable to you! Make me into the kind of person who can do great things for you!” He comes in and begins stripping away all in your life that holds you back and drags you down. He makes you into something useful.

Such a process is long and painful. It feels as if God has abandoned or forgotten about you. But when you emerge out the other side, you are beautiful and usable for His purposes.

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For the past six weeks, I’ve had an all-out war with a family of squirrels. Sometime last fall, or over the winter, they decided to make our home their home. We certainly enjoy opening our home for guests, but a squirrel family, though cute, are unwelcome guests.

When I first discovered the holes they were chewing through our house, my thought was to get out my gun and shoot them. That’s what I would do if I were still in Montana. But being in a suburb of Dallas, I thought that the neighbors wouldn’t appreciate me shooting a gun next door, and so went down to Home Depot to get some poison. As it turns out, it’s illegal to poison squirrels in Texas. Instead, I was supposed to use to a live trap to capture them. So I went to the Irving Animal Shelter to get my trap.

I caught the first squirrel in about two days. I used apples and peanut butter as bait. Then I reset the trap and waited. For a week, I never heard another squirrel, so I figured they left. I returned the trap and got up on our treacherously steep roof to patch the holes, then went into the attic and put screen over the other holes.

The very next day, I heard the squirrels chewing new holes to get out of our house. Since I had closed off their exit doors, they decided to make new ones. So I went back down to the shelter, got the trap again, set it, and caught another squirrel, then waited and waited, and not hearing anything, patched the new holes, and returned the trap. 

The very next day, I heard the squirrels chewing new holes to get out of our house. Since I had closed off their exit doors, they decided to make new ones. So I went back down to the shelter, got the trap again, set it, and caught another squirrel, then waited and waited, and not hearing anything, patched the new holes, and returned the trap. (Yes, I meant to repeat the last paragraph. Do you see a pattern here?)

Two days ago, I got up on the roof and through some super-sleuthing, figured out where the nest was, and tore part of the roof off to get at it. I spent an hour or more pulling nesting out of my roof. In the process I found two dead squrrels. (I didn’t kill them, honest!) Today, I patched that hole in the roof and will return the trap to the Animal Shelter. Tomorrow, I fully expect to hear squirrels chewing holes in my house.

Why am I sharing all this? I believe that God wants to teach us things through nature. It is, of course, one of the four primary ways God teaches us things (the other three being Scripture, conscience, and other people). These squirrels have taught me that when a door is closed, sometimes you just have to chew a new one. If you throw up your hands in defeat and say “God’s not opening any doors for me!” you’ll starve to death.

I’m facing a time in my life right now when all the doors seem closed, and have been wondering why God doesn’t open one for me to walk through. “I’ve got a family to feed!” I tell Him. But I’m beginning to think that by listening to squirrels chew holes in my house, God is telling me He doesn’t want me to go through any of those doors I’ve been knocking on. Instead, He wants me to chew a new one. I’m excited to see where I come out, but I hope the owner of the house doesn’t get too mad…

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Some days, I’m ashamed to be a Christian. Today is one of those days, and I want to issue a public apology to all people everywhere who were ever hurt, slandered, abused, or hated in the name of Christ. I am sorry for what has been done.

The reason I feel this way today is because of a website I ran across which is solely dedicated to spreading the terrible idea that the God of the Bible hates everybody. The site is so mean and hurtful and angry, I kept wondering if it was just a terrible, horrible, awful joke. I am not going to post the site, because I don’t want anybody to go to it. It is the most despicable, hateful, hurtful, angry, website I have ever come across, and it is all run by “Christians” who claim to be working for “the Gospel.”

One entire section of the site is geared toward helping Christians gather and picket people and businesses with signs that say “God hates _______ (fill in the blank).” I am astounded at the people and places they are planning on picketing, and the way they do it is despicable. They call such events “Picket Crusades.” It’s very reminiscent of the actual Crusades, except that swords and horses have been swapped out for signs and bullhorns.

Personally, I think God hates “Christians” who do such things. Maybe some of us other Christians should get a group together and go picket these picketers. We could write signs that say “God hates people who make signs that say ‘God hates _____ (fill in the blank).’” I’m jesting, but that would be quite a circus.

The truth is that while I feel very sorry for what has been done in the name of Jesus, I also feel very sorry for the people who do it. What is going on in their lives, hearts, and minds to cause them to say and do such things? I feel awful that they think this is the way God is. I wonder what can be done to show them the true love and grace of God?

Anybody want to start a ministry focused on reaching Christian picketers?

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OK, this crisis series is starting to depress and bore me, so this will be my last post on it. I’m learning more and more every day, and so I am realizing the series could go on forever. But I want to move on. So in this post, I will close with three things: Some advice for those who have friends facing a crisis, some advice for those facing a crisis, and a story my wife ran across yesterday which sums it all up for us.

1. For those who have friends facing a crisis.

If you have a friend facing a crisis, just go be with them. Just listen to them vent. Don’t chide them for their emotions, fear, anger, hurt, despair. Please don’t quote Scripture unless they ask you to. Don’t offer theological truths which you think will help them. Don’t ask them what sin they might have committed to make God discipline them. In other words, don’t throw rocks. If you are afraid of saying the wrong thing, don’t say anything at all.

Most of the time, hurting people just want others to be there. If you see something tangible that they need, offer to provide it for them, food, clothing, money, helping hands, resources. The only intangible aid you should offer is prayer, and only say “I’ll pray for you” if you are also thinking of ways to be an answer to your own prayers.

Though our crisis is not catastrophic, my father died when I was two, and my mother says that what I have written above holds true in that sort of crisis as well. A friend of mine lost his brother in a hiking accident a few years ago, and he confirms this as well.

2. For those facing a crisis.

One of the things that bothered my wife and I initially is how when we shared with others that we were going through a crisis, they responded by sharing a crisis that they were facing or had faced in their own lives. Our first reaction was, “Don’t try to turn this around to you. I’m the one in pain!” But then we realized, “Wow, how self-centered is that?”

Yes, pain hurts, and sometimes life stinks. But it’s this way for everybody at times. And one way to get over your own pain, fear, hurt, and disappointment, is to realize that it’s part of life, that others are facing it too (and many of them much more than you are), and that you can either have a pity party for yourself, or try to help others through their own pain, which in turn helps you. And to help others through their own pain, go back and look at point number one above.

3. A Story

One day a Rabbi stood on a hill overlooking a certain city. The Rabbi watched in horror as a band of Cossacks on horseback suddenly attacked the town, killing innocent men, women, and children. Some of the slaughtered  were his own disciples. Looking up to heaven, the Rabbi exclaimed, “Oh, if only I were God.”

An astonished student, standing nearby, asked, “But, Master, if you were God, what would you do differently?” The Rabbi replied, “If I were God I would do nothing differently. If I were God, I would understand.”

Like it or not, I think the Rabbi is right. The best we can do in a crisis (and maybe the most we should do) is simply say, “I don’t understand.”

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