All This on One Man?
How a loving God allows so much
It is, at once, the most honest and terrifying question someone could ask. If God is who he says he is, then how come he isn’t that for me? OK, I agree with you. Let’s make that sound a little more like it does in real life.
If God is love, then why doesn’t he love me enough to keep all this @#$%&! from happening to me?
If you are old enough, Jesus Follower or not, you know the weight of this question. Born from pain and raised in a cocktail of confusion, this thought represents spirituality in its adolescence. Unfortunately, it’s treated exactly this way by many Christian leaders. It receives the attention of an out-of-line teenager. I can almost see it, can’t you? The look down the nose, the crook in the side of the mouth, and the crossed arms.
Maybe those of us that lead out in churches suffer from the worst kind of amnesia. We forget how real this question was at one time in our own stories. Maybe the question is so honest it scares us. Maybe those who scoff at this question the most are the ones who have never truly settled it for themselves. Regardless, it cannot be argued that EVERYONE has gone a few rounds in the ring with this one.
Unfortunately, more of us lose the fight with this question than should. If we are ever going to grow into men, I mean real men, how we see things has to change.
Go with me on this. Before we make a home in sprawling and ever-expanding suburbia of “God isn’t for me,” we have some things to consider. Let’s start with the easiest to chase.
Origin
Undoubtedly, much of the negativity we experience we bring on ourselves. Harsh, but true. I don’t mean that all bad we experience is our own fault. That would be a ridiculous belief. I would propose, however, that many times our lives take turns for the worse due to simple cause and effect. The Bible talks about it this way:
The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it. // Proverbs 22:3
The silver lining here is that this part of the problem is easy to correct. Permission to speak freely? Thanks. Do you find yourself between a rock and a hard place repeatedly? Are you living in the strong paranoia that poor decisions create? If this is the case, don’t beat yourself up for it. Really, don’t. It won’t, in the end, do you any good. That kind of stuff is always sideways energy. The best thing you can do comes down to one word:
STOP.
Just stop. Stop creating the origins for the negativity you are experiencing. When you begin to understand this, you see that blaming God is simply a distraction tactic that keeps you from taking ownership for your own behavior.
At the Hangar, we take ownership for our actions. Good or bad, men, we must take ownership.
Timing
This one is slightly more nuanced, but every bit as powerful as its predecessor. Understanding that God does allow difficult things to happen to us is a reality that we can be thankful for. It’s all about timing. No one could argue that all of us suffer from the perspective predicament. Human’s are dramatically nearsighted when it comes to a life timeline. What drives our feelings? Those things that are immediately accessible.
But, what God knows is that what we are in is building something in us we will need. What we are in is building something in us. As hellacious as it may be, there is a chance that in time we will understand why God allowed it. Here are two places in the Bible that speak directly to this reality:
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. // Hebrews 12:11
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. // Romans 5:3–5
In the middle of your own Hell & Back? Maybe you need to give it some time. Allow God the space for his timing to work its way out. He’s a big planner. He likes order. We see this from his creation that surrounds us. Trust his heart toward you by giving the pain over to him and placing strong hope in his timing.`Examine what behaviors you have adopted that may be manufacturing that negative kickback in your life. And, perhaps best of all, allow God to father you through it. He is an excellent guide for path often trod by the greatest of men from Hell to Back.
