get off their backs
We all love beating up on other people. I don’t care what you say, I know you love doing it, so quit lying to yourself. You know why we love it? Because it helps us think for a few minutes that we aren’t quite the total screw-ups that we know we are. This is one of my favorite things to do!
The best part is when this activity is encouraged by the guys that usually make us feel terrible about ourselves: pastors. They always preach against gossip and judgmentalism and stuff, (except the really badass new wave of holy rollers, they love judgment! Hellfire and brimstone, bitches!) but there is always at least one group of people that they encourage us to bust up on. Bible characters. You know, Jonah didn’t want to do what God told Him to do, Joseph was going to ditch Mary for getting supernaturally knocked-up, Moses was always bitching about how he couldn’t speak well, that old hag Sarah laughed at God when he told her she was going to be popping out babies, those damned Jews were constantly doubting God when he was freeing them from slavery. Those bible people were so messed up. How could they not have trusted God better?
You wanna know why? Because no one would have! These are the few stories in the Bible that I don’t struggle to connect with. Be honest with yourself for five seconds: if some teenage girl told you that God had put a baby in her, it would make perfect sense, right? Give me a break, that girl is using a terrible excuse to try and fool people into thinking she isn’t a little whore. We would ALL think that. That is a fact. Virgins don’t get pregnant. Joseph had some balls though, cause he sucked up what must have been serious ridicule and after an angel told him it was legit he stayed with Mary.
How about God tells you to go talk to the president and let him know that you’re going to take a bunch of people (that he gets free labor out of) away from him? How could Moses have not trusted God? Because God wanted him to tell a king that he was going to take away all his slaves! Think about that. That is retarded. I would NEVER have done it. Moses had a way bigger sack than I will ever have!
Or those Jews, stuck in the dessert? Thousands and thousands of them. How dare they ever question the complete insanity of that situation! And then Sarah. She laughed when God told her she was going to have a baby. The woman was old enough to be a great-great grandmother. Seriously, that is some crazy shit!
I don’t know that this post has a point. I am thinking a lot about scripture lately. Thinking a lot about the stuff that i struggle to see fitting into reality. This list of people who doubted or questioned God’s plans are a few of the parts of the bible I think are perfectly realistic and sensible. I think if most of us were honest, or if we could live these stories, rather than reading them in our holy book, the reaction these people had to God’s plan would resonate with all of us.
Absolutely, Dan. And in these stories we see the true definition and example of faith: believing God against all natural appearances. Abraham (and ultimately Sarah) did it (although Abraham at one time tried to convince God to take Ishmael as the promised child), Mary and Joseph did it, Noah did it. Hebrews 11 is full of stories of people who refused to be swayed by the natural, and instead chose to believe the supernatural. This insistence doesn’t imply the complete absence of doubt. In my own life my struggle to walk in faith has been plagued by the doubt of my flesh. In my heart, however, I believed, and the longer I persistently and stubbornly stand the less the doubts win out. God honors our stubborn stance. Paul encourages us to stand (Ephesians 6:13: “and having done everything, to stand firm”). The thing that is so hard is to realize the separation between the temporal reality to which we are so accustomed to being ruled by, and the eternal reality to which we are called to live by. Like Paul speaks of in Galatians, regarding the elemental things of this world, etc. The truth is that its already complete. The work was finished on the cross. I am already perfected. I already possess all that I need. I already have perfect health. Now I just have to learn to walk that out, and this, of course, is what faith is all about, making what is true but unseen become seen.
Mark
Thanks Mark. When you say “in these stories we see the true definition and example of faith: believing God against all natural appearances.” I think I agree with you, and this is something I have been working on trying to understand. What is faith? I look at someone like Noah, and I think “Did he think it was crazy to build that boat in the middle of the dessert, but did it anyway because God told him to, or did he honestly think it made sense?” In a lot of ways, the first scenario seems to be more of a demonstration of faith, as it goes against his perception of “natural appearances.” I don’t know. Just thinking out loud, but that kinda makes sense to me.
From my own experience there is usually some degree of my being that can comprehend and go along with what I have been told. There is also usually a LARGE part of me that is uncomfortable. Often it doesn’t become apparent until the proverbial s*** hits the fan JUST how much of me is uncomfortable, as often what I’m told to do sounds great in theory, until my flesh is directly challenged.
I am undergoing a shift in my understanding of faith. I still define it as a persistent determination to believe God in spite of what my natural senses tell me. What is changing is my understanding of what happens in the mean time. I am realizing that that “mustering up” tendency still lies latent within me, more subtle than before, but still there. Probably the area in which I have been challenged the most is finances, and recently I felt a shift in the sphere of my operation in this regard. Of course, i don’t like discomfort, and so I hoped and anticipated that this shift meant that there would be no more struggle, and I felt (subconsciously) that I had to achieve, or get to, the point where I was no longer challenged to believe, and at this point I would have “enough faith”. I now am coming to believe that, in my current stage of life, my faith IS sufficient, but (hard as it is to believe), the results of that faith usually don’t come right away. I now see that there is a certain amount of “waiting it out”, standing, weathering the storm, accepting that in my natural mind I am not always strong. At the end of the day, however, as I continue to stand, eventually the breakthrough comes and I move into the next season.
This is where it gets sticky, because you could easily see this as “levels” of faith, and i guess at the base of it there are “levels” or degrees, of faith. Two years ago I had less faith than I have now. Next year I will walk in greater faith than I do now. What must be understood is that I am not striving to reach a higher level faith, I am simply striving to stand where He has me. As I do so my faith grows. I also am not condemned for “not having enough faith”, as I am where I am. He will always present us with challenges that we can meet where we are in our current walk. He won’t “give us more than we can bear”, so to speak.
Finally I’ll say this, maybe as a means of clarification. From the time I was young I prayed for 2 things: healing of my eyes (I wear thick glasses, or used to before thin lenses came along) and healing of my stuttering speech. You know what, I live with both of those things today. I do not walk in the degree of faith to even attempt to tackle these issues, and yet I know that, in Christ, these things have been dealt with on the cross. I know this about myself, and I am okay with that. On the other hand, I am getting to where I feel comfortable beginning to stand in faith for the health of my family. I am not solid at this, but it is something that I can begin walking towards.
So I guess I am learning that faith is about the journey, not the endpoint, as the cliche says. The word says that the righteous will live by “their faith”. it doesn’t say that the righteous will walk in perfect faith. That will obviously never be.
Mark