How can I get this jumble of thoughts out of my brain and into this well defined and manageable space? I'm starting to wonder if it's possible. I'm wrestling with Christian pop-culture and the messages we're inundating ourselves with in regards to hardship, pain, and suffering. I'm wrestling, because I don't have an answer. The rest of this may just end up being word vomit...
You must, you must think I'm strong
To give me what I'm going through
The above lyrics are the first lines from a great song, Strong Enough, by Matthew West. BUT...I don't like them. I really really really really don't like them. I have to remind myself not to let what, in my opinion, is a poorly written set of lyrics take away from the rest of the message, that only God has the strength to get us through the turmoil of life. We can't do it on our own.
So what don't I like about those first few lyrics? It's the same thing I don't like about the kitchy "encouragement" I keep hearing on The Message between songs: God won't protect you from it, if he can refine you through it.
Those aren't the only two examples of what's bugging me, or what I'm wrestling with, they're just two of the best, most recent, examples. I feel like the message from them is that God allows us to, and/or makes us, suffer...on purpose. I'm wrestling with this because I do know and believe that God "allows" us to suffer, sin is in the world...suffering is part of the curse. However, I get this sense that it's not that He's allowing it, He's just not preventing it...not yet. He could...He's the creator of all that we know and everything we don't, Lord of the Heavens and the earth...but He doesn't. What I'm wrestling with is the concept of Him purposefully, as part of "His plan," making us suffer. That feels like the message I'm receiving in so many sermons, songs, and pithy Chrisianisms...the message that God "afflicts" us with suffering as part of His plan.
Does God actually give us suffering and pain as part of His plan? Or...does His plan just account for the suffering and pain that a broken and sinful world brings to us? I realize it might sound like I'm quibbling, mostly internally, over semantics...but it doesn't feel like it. "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11 I'm trying to reconcile the God who has plans to prosper me and not harm me, plans to give me hope and a future, with the same God who, according to what I feel I'm being taught, gives me suffering...on purpose.
Have you ever read something, had it eat at you for a few weeks, and then had to go back and re-read it again, just to make sure you were getting it? I have, I did it today...chapter 4 of Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis. It's a chapter where he talks about the need for us to not only turn to God in our times of great pain and suffering but to turn to each other or, more specifically, to people who have been trained to provide emotional and psychological support as we navigate the often dark and difficult waters of this life. Until recently, I believed in the power of counseling...for other people. Weak people. I didn't need it. After all, God won't give me more than I can handle on my own, right? That's the message I've been receiving for years. God will never put more on my plate than what I can eat.
In Velvet Elvis, Bell opens up about his own breakdown as "superpastor" of Mars Hill, the megachurch he started in Grand Rapids, Michigan, back in 1999. He shares about the pain of healing. How true healing, coming to terms with our junk, is not possible without an incredible amount of pain, "It was in that abyss that I broke and got help...because it's only when you hit the bottom and are desperate enough that things start to bet better." It can mean digging deep into our past to unearth the root causes and events that shape who we are and why we react to the world in the way we do. He talks about the healing power of salvation, the healing power of Christ, being a holistic healing, applying to the whole being, all of who we are. Healing that is supposed to bring us back in line with who God created us to be. Healing of our souls. He want's to experience shalom, which according to Bell is, "the presence of of the goodness of God. It's the presence of wholeness, completeness." Healing, shalom, that far too many Christians don't get...and that's left me wrestling with "why?"
What if God isn't giving us everything on our plates? What if the things in life that cause us the most pain, the greatest suffering, aren't from God? What if they're just really really bad things that happened to us because the world is broken? Things that happen because, until Christ returns, sin and death own this world? And what if it's this message, that God gives us suffering and only gives us what we can handle, that creates a false sense of "I can do this on my own" that keeps us from seeking help when we really really need it? A message that even imbues of with the ability to even forget that we must lean on Him? What if instead of inflicting suffering on us for our own good, and His Glory, God stands beside us, holding us, crying with us, and saying, "I'm sorry that this has happened to you, my child. It's not what I had planned, but I knew it would happen, and if you let me hold you and guide you, my plan will restore you."
What if?
Like I said, I've got more questions than answers...if I have any answers at all. I've got a reading list that's a mile wide, a mile deep, and as long as the Mississippi. Maybe He'll have an answer for me somewhere in there...maybe not. Maybe I'll just end up wrestling with it until my bones break.
Abba, I lay my brokenness at your feet. My humanness. Please help me find shalom in you.
Stupid one-liners.
ReplyDelete"God won't give you any more than you can handle." Worst. Line. Ever. (At least in my opinion in the context of the history of the church.) I don't find that it has any real basis in scripture. It is just a line people say when bad things happen because they don't know what to say. I find it falls along the same lines as "It was meant to be" and "God needed another angel", or my favorite, "It was all part of God's plan." All of these send me over the edge.
After losing our first baby - never knowing if it was a boy or girl and therefore never having a name or face to mourn, just an emptiness - we heard a lot of comments along those lines. I was broken physically, mentally, and emotionally, and almost no one was addressing my need for comfort and understanding of why I had lost the one thing (besides a Christian husband) I had prayed for my entire life. Instead, there were a few "I'm so sorry" notes and hugs and a lot of crappy "it was meant to be" lines.
I learned two things from that experience: 1)Christians really need to be taught and reminded, especially as adults, how to help others grieve. Stupid one-liners are NOT helpful. Period. 2)Praising God through pain is a test of faith and a growth experience. And some days it is a test we may fail. I know I failed for quite a while because I was MAD at God. But, just like my marriage, just because I was spitting-nails MAD didn't mean I didn't communicate with Him. And just because that communication wasn't always flowery and praising, it didn't mean I didn't love Him. It just meant I didn't understand. And that I was really, really mad. I think one of the reasons people have been so drawn to your blog is because you kept your faith real while being honest about your pain. Not everyone, even those who go through something as trivial as job loss, can be found calling on God for strength the way you have demonstrated.
Jeremiah 29:11
ReplyDeleteI didn't allow myself the luxury of grieving until almost a year and a half after we lost the baby. Then it hit me like an out-of-control freight train. While half of my brain couldn't function past crying almost constantly, the other half of my brain sought understanding and hope. I read books and blogs. I listened to music and was silent. I cried and screamed and sobbed.
The only answer I got was Jeremiah 29:11. "I have plans for you." My response? "I thought that baby WAS the plan you had for me!"
God's response: "You also thought I picked a different man to be your husband. You were wrong then, also."
Me: "Shut up." (I am not very nice when I'm grieving. Or mad. Or wrong.)
God: "I gave you a vision of a husband and son. I will fulfill that promise."
Me: "When?"
God: "You'll see."
Me: "Could you be more specific?"
God: "Just wait."
Me: "I thought I already had! This isn't fair! Everyone else has babies. Why don't I?"
God: "I always keep my promises." And He did fulfill the promise of a son. It took 4 more years and a LOT of tears and questioning occurred along the way.
I don't know what you and God have talked about outside of what you have posted online. I don't know what promises He has made to you. I don't know why, just when you and Sara were fulfilling your dreams of parenthood, God seemed to strip you of His protection and promise. I grieve for you all these months later and I pray that God will fulfill the hope and the future you desire. I can only testify that, as he did for Abraham and Sarah, He fulfilled His promise to me. I have to believe He would do the same for you.
I believe the Lord God grieves with us when we hurt. I believe He holds our hand in silence when the tears can no longer be contained. I believe He holds true to His promises made. I believe we have to hold onto Him as tightly as He is holding us. And I believe Jeremiah 29:11 for I have seen it fulfilled in many, many lives. I pray to see it fulfilled in yours.
Still praying, AMY