I’m trying to be intellectually honest. That is, admit it when I've been thinking incorrectly. Even admit it OUT LOUD. I've done this in my thinking about God a lot, and I'll keep doing it because there is so much to know about Him- and so many ways for my thinking to go wrong. For example, I used to think that God didn't care about people individually, that He was too big and too busy to really be concerned about what we do (although I wouldn't have said it). I also used to think that God wasn't sovereign over salvation (and I did say it- loudly. That God is not cruel enough to choose some people and reject others. HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT, YOU CALVINIST YOU). I've changed my mind on both things. Because God has proven to me that He cares about me in every way- even in the things I think about. Because He has shown me through the Bible and through the wise teaching of several men (from a college professor to R.C. Sproul) that He would not be cruel enough to His Son to send Him to die on a cross, hoping that maybe, just maybe someone would take advantage of it and get saved. That in the beginning of time, He didn't say "you're going to Heaven, you're going to Heaven, you're going to Heaven, but oh, you- I don't like you- you're going to Hell, you're going to Hell, and YOU- no way, I don't want YOU in Heaven, you're going to Hell!" He reached out to this mass of humanity- all of us, willfully rushing toward Hell- and He said "I'm going to save you, and I'm going to save you, and you, and you. Not because of anything you have done, or anything else about you, but because I choose to have mercy on you." He didn't have to save anyone.
I used to have an acquaintance with a (now) atheist. She doesn't know about this blog, I'm fairly certain, or I wouldn't say this. I was fascinated with HER blog- because she was a LOT like me. Christian parents, little brothers, same church, same Christian college, same passion for writing… we weren't even friends, I only had- maybe- three conversations with her… but I wanted to know her when I met her. She was funny and likeable. Then she turned away from Christianity, her family, everything. She constantly wrote about her misery, darkness, the way she cut herself, her thoughts of suicide. It was scary. I had an impression of a warning. Something like, "this is where you could end up if you turn away from God."
One thing I realized through her blog is that she was thinking about God as though He were another human. She talked about how terrible He was for doing and saying things that would indeed be terrible if one human did and said them to another human. But God isn't a human. We can't think about Him that way. In fact, I realized that most people who try to discredit God- saying that He's a jerk, or worse- are making the same mistake. It's kind of irritating. Like, really? You haven't considered the fact that there could be a Being who is bigger and wiser than you are… a Person who wrote all the rules, and had every right to do so? Ever heard of Anselm's Ontological argument? Please tell me you've heard of Anselm's Ontological argument. Just kidding. I don't want to be annoying and arrogant, but even if I did want to be annoying and arrogant, I wouldn't go there. I don't completely understand the ontological argument myself. However, you must know that there's a Person who is bigger than you and a purpose for life that is bigger than you. If you deny it, you're squishing that knowledge down inside your head like you might do with any other unpleasant reality. Like you might shove piles of clothes under a bed because you just don't want to deal with them right now. You're not being intellectually honest. I could get really irritated about that if I didn't do the same thing, and didn't have to stop sometimes and tell myself, "Bonnie. THIS IS NOT ANOTHER HUMAN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. THIS IS GOD."
I tend to put God on a human level when I think about life and death.
We all want life- more of it, more and more of it. Preferably long, happy, peaceful and pain free. Have you ever looked at history and chosen an era in which to live, carefully avoiding the surrounding war years? It’s fun to pretend we can do that, but we can’t. We wish we could order our lives out of a catalogue, but we don't have that option. We can't exchange them when they arrive with imperfections, either. We don't get a lifetime warranty. We each get one, and only one- and it comes As Is .
"You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit."
Except- we do throw fits. At least, I do. And I have a great life- really- considering everything. I look at people whose lives arrived in their mailboxes with numerous flaws from the very beginning- with crippling pain and loss- and THEY'RE not throwing fits. And I say that they inspire me. Because their lives didn't seem to fit, but they made themselves fit, and they fittingly did not throw a fit. (Now just pretend that I didn't just say that, but I'm going to leave it, because it was fun to say, and this is my blog, and I get to say anything on it- yes, ANYTHING I PLEASE.)
Whether you're throwing a fit or making the best of it, I know one thing about you, and that is- your life is precious to you. It's really all you have on this earth. No human can take it away from you with impunity. How could they? How could any one person take away another person's everything, and go on enjoying his own everything, worry-free?
But God is different. God is allowed to take a person's everything. Because He gave that person everything in the first place. Because He's not a human, He's God.
Writing about life reminds me of Tuck Everlasting. I love that book. It's YA fiction… maybe even middle school fiction... but it is deep. It makes me think. It puts Natalie Babbitt on the Authors I Admire list. Here's a quote.
"Know what that is, all around us, Winnie?" said Tuck, his voice low. "Life. Moving, growing, changing, never the same two minutes together. This water, you look out at it every morning, and it looks the same, but it ain't. All night long it's been moving, coming in through the stream back there to the west, slipping out through the stream down east here, always quiet, always new, moving on…the water's always moving on, and someday, after a long while, it comes to the ocean… Know what happens then? To the water? The sun sucks some of it up right out of the ocean and carries it back to the clouds, and then it rains, and the rain falls into the stream, and the stream keeps moving on, taking it all back again. It's a wheel, Winnie. Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is… You, for instance. A child now, but someday a woman. And after that, moving on to make room for the new children."
Winnie blinked, and all at once her mind was drowned with understanding of what he was saying. For she- yes, even she- would go out of the world willy-nilly someday. Just go out, like the flame of a candle, and no use protesting. It was a certainty. She would try very hard not to think of it, but sometimes, as now, it would be forced upon her. She raged against it, helpless and insulted, and blurted at last, "I don't want to die."
I don't either. You don't. We feel defrauded when our lives are imperfect, and we feel defrauded when we get old. Most of all, we feel defrauded when we think about the fact that we're going to die. Defrauded by who? Well, by God- who else? Tuck had a lovely way of explaining life and death to Winnie, showing her how natural the process is. But his words didn't take away the sting of it. People cloak death in flowery words like his memory lives on and she's still with us in our hearts and it will be the most exciting adventure of all. Put on your best, boys, and I'll wear my pearls. But the truth is that death is frightening. It's ugly. I don't want to make its acquaintance, and you don't either. And we will be forced to do so one day.
When we think about death, though, we're thinking about the end of something good. So there's something else to consider- the fact that we had the good thing at all. We shouldn't feel resentment over the end of it- because we had it. If I died right now, God didn't have to give me the life I had. For me, apart from a little emotional pain, my life has been easy and good. If it hadn't- if I had lost someone in my immediate family, or if I had been in a serious car accident and had a leg amputated, or if I'd been born blind, or had acid thrown in my face, or lived in a homeless shelter- my life would still have been an unexpected gift. I guarantee, I would take any one of those lives over nothing. I would take my length of life in a shelter over 4 years in a palace. I would take 4 years in crippling pain over nothing. We look at the tiny coffin and we think that God is unjust and cruel. Why? He didn't have to give that child 1 or 2 or 4 years of life. It was a gift. If another human had taken it away, it would have been cruel, unjust, evil. That human would deserve to have his or her own life taken away. Absolutely. No question about it. If God takes a tiny child's life- He can do that. It was a gift, given for a shorter time than we, in our ignorance, expected. It doesn't mean that He is cruel.
I used to really struggle with the stories of the Israelites' "genocide"- which was commanded by God. They killed little children- they killed babies. Yeah, it's still really hard to accept. But God had the right to do that. He's different. He's above us. He gave us life, and He can take it away, and still be righteous and good, when a human person wouldn’t be.
Beyond our physical lives (which are so varied in length and painfulness), He offers eternal life. "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life." (Romans 6:22) He offers joyful life. "You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence." (Acts 2:28) He holds it out in His hand. God has not defrauded you. No matter what.
