I can remember the Sunday, when I first realized this was an issue for me. The pastor asked us to stand when he described the version of God that we each believed in. Some stood for “God is a peaceful ruler, guiding us from Heaven,” others stood for “God is a vengeful warrior,” and lastly, “God is a loving father, who hurts and then punishes when we do wrong.”
I stood for the last description.
I honestly can’t remember the rest of the sermon; I’d had an epiphany and it shook me.
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I’ve been a Christian my whole life and I’m BLESSED with parents who love Jesus, love each other, and love us kids in a profoundly beautiful way.
I have no beef with my dad or any skewed view of my earthly father.
So, I was stumped to realize I’d developed a skewed view of my Heavenly Father.
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I’ve always been surrounded by good eggs…you know, the Christians who ooze sweetness, love, and kindness in a way that is both admirable and at times, shocking. And, well…I’ve never really considered myself one of them. But I’ve led a good life; I’ve followed the “rules,” I’ve been active in church, I’ve participated in ministry and missions, and have led people to Christ – I thought that counted for something.
At the same time, I’ve always been fully aware of my sins – I’m a good evangelical that way.
As I got older and older, and my life of rule-following and being a good (if not sweet) girl didn’t bear the fruit I was expecting, I assumed it was due to my own sinful nature.
In my mind, God was punishing me by withholding blessings and my heart’s desires.
And I have absolutely no idea where that came from.
I believed the good eggs were delighting themselves in the Lord and receiving their heart’s desires, but as hard as I tried, I was not…and there must have been a reason for it.
I immersed myself so much in Psalm 37:4 and also in 1 John 5:14-15, that I created a cause and effect version of the Lord. If I was truly good, then He’d bless me.
But I know, I KNOW, in my mind that our God is not a God of cause and effect…that His love is bigger than that box I’d put Him in and that through His mighty power at work within us, He is able to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). GLORY!
My mind knows these things, but it’s taking my heart a while to catch up. And until it does, I need to add lack of trust to my list of sins.
Psalm 37:4 (NLT)
4 Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you your heart’s desires.
1 John 5:14-15 (NLT)
14 And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. 15 And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.
Ephesians 3:20 (NLT)
20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.
Oh my, I could have written this. Similarly, I have parents who have always loved and wanted the very best for me. And similarly, I had an subconscious understanding of God (I obey, He blesses, a sort of exchange) that left me adrift when He allowed my unborn daughter to die.
I HAD been trying to follow His guidance in everything, and He HAD been blessing, and then this? Either I was missing something huge or He wasn’t as good as I’d been lead to believe. (Let’s blame grief/hormone stew for that bit of bad theology, shall we?)
Anyway, it’s dangerous to view God that way, as I learned. You don’t have much to stand on when life in a broken world happens. And God is good, and held me through it all, until I could come back and say what I wish I’d understood right away: I don’t understand but I know you love me – and her – and I’ll wait here with you until I do understand.
Jen — I could have written this as well. Thank you for not being afraid or ashamed to open up your heart and share this. And I love the fact that you left this ‘as is.’ You didn’t wait until how you feel was all resolved, didn’t present this to us out here tied up with a nice red ribbon. That means a lot to me, where I’m at now. Again, thank you!
Pam M.
Well said, friend. Totally understand this.
I love how you said your head knows but it takes a while for your heart to catch up. This, for me, is the crux of faith.
Love your honesty, Jen.
I love your honesty and your humility, friend. I completely relate to this, I have had seasons of life where I felt the same way. I finally realized that I so wanted to just KNOW God. Not worry anymore about being perfect or following all the rules or being a Christian but to actually KNOW Christ. It freed me up to fall in love again, to know that God the father loves me so much, and isn’t causing the hard times, but using them for good. He wastes nothing. xoxo
I wish I didn’t understand this so well. Most churches wouldn’t claim to teach the Prosperity Gospel but there is a subtle theology that pervades much of evangelical culture: if you follow the rules, God will bless you. So when the blessing doesn’t happen the way you think you should, it makes sense we’d question whether God really loves us or whether we screwed something up along the way. I don’t always trust that God has my best interests at heart in a few particular areas. Big stuff, like financial provision, jobs, etc.? Absolutely, He’s proven Himself faithful. But when it comes to relationships and matters of the heart, I’m still biding my time, trying to untangle why I’ve created that association. I believe God is the giver of all good gifts. I don’t know why we presently disagree about what those good gifts are but I can’t deny His goodness in my life. Thank you for your honesty, JJ.
I can so relate to your feelings here, Jen. I feel like I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop – for God to punish me for all of my past mistakes by taking away the blessings I wasn’t really meant to have. I love that you wrote this and now I want to talk into the wee hours about it with you.
I’ve been thinking of my view on God all day, due to a completely different thought line. I’ve landed on King Triton from The Little Mermaid. I promise it makes sense.
Thank you for this honest self-reflection, JJ. This is the good work of the Holy Spirit in you, work that needs to happen in all of us, over and over again. I’m still surprised to discover pieces of twisted thinking that I didn’t know I held onto, even at my advanced age. This is a particularly difficult one to unravel and re-settle, I think. I like the way Leigh phrased it – even though God and I may not currently agree about what good gifts look like! That’s how it feels sometimes, isn’t it? I don’t know what we do with the longing – that for me is the hardest part. We long for something to happen, someone to appear in order to . . . feel complete? be happy? enjoy life more? understand ourselves and God more? It takes time and intentionality to ask God to turn that longing in exactly the right direction, to realize that at the very deepest level, we long for God, for the resolution of all the mis-fits, mis-fires, painful challenges of life on earth. That’s where the only hope of contentment can be found, I think – being in connection with the deepest parts of ourselves, which takes us directly to the heart of God. It’s a paradox, but I’ve known it to be true and seen it happen in myself and in others, too. Many blessings as you continue to work this through, Jen. Thanks for writing about it.
I discovered this in myself during a personal crisis several years ago. At that time I started reading that weren’t modern, or evangelical. C.S. Lewis’s less popular works, G.K. Chesterton, Anselm, St. John of the Cross, Celtic Christian writings, Athanasius, Augustine — Just to name a few. Some weren’t very memorable, but others spoke of God in a way that I had never heard before. Instead of God’s Justice being satisfied by punishing Jesus, they would speak of God (who had no need of anything) satisfying a need in us at his own expense. It opened my eyes to how we often speak of God when we talk about the Cross, often coming dangerously close to painting him as abusive.