We Christians say really screwed up things to people.
We do it so much I don’t even think we notice it anymore. Like these two gems, for instance: “You must find God’s perfect will for your life” (like that’s possible), and “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” I think this thought comes from reading stuff into Jeremiah 29:11. (That’s not what the verse says. It doesn’t even mention any sort of plan at all. It says, “I know the thoughts I think toward you. Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” -Jeremiah 29:11) Reading this verse now, and taking it at face value, it seems to only say, “I think peaceful thoughts with regard to you, and I will make sure your life will eventually end.”
"Look up in here! I shall now tell you which road thou shalt choose."
I wonder if people say this stuff about God’s Perfect Plan because they are under the impression that God’s Perfect Will For Your Life = The Life Least Likely to Appear on “Cops”, or The Life One Can Only Obtain After Attending Bible College and/or Surrendering Oneself to The Ministry, or maybe The Life Most Likely to Make Yer Mama Proud (read: Not Embarrass Her at Family Reunions and Church Potlucks), or The Life Most Likely to Involve a Nice Marriage, 2.3 Cute Kids With High I.Q.s and a Minivan, or The Life the Church Can Control, and, lest we forget, The Life Most Likely to be Financially Profitable.
The trouble is, God’s plan for our earthly lives are elusive at best (I actually think it pretty much boils down to the two most repeated scriptural commands: Fear not, and Sing), and though I hate to burst any bubbles, in most cases, they don’t include any of that other stuff. God’s plan is sort of vague, and not wonderful, even if you do give Him all you have to give. You know: living sacrifice and all that, complete with back ache, rope burns, heavy crosses and bloody mortal wounds.
We heard this lie about God’s perfect plan from pulpits and parents when we were young, and we believed it then, because children believe in happy endings and fair play, and those people loved us and so they wouldn’t lie to us. Not intentionally. Hopefully… We never seemed to hear (or notice on our own) the fact that those sweet peaceful thoughts of God came after seventy years of slavery in Babylon. Plus, those were Authority Figures who told us those things, and they Knew This Stuff. Who in the world were we to question them?
So many of us did whatever it is we thought we should do (or were told we should do by the Authorities) with our lives that would please God. We sat up straight. We did our devotions. We prayed. We separated from the world. We obeyed our parents. We rejected evolution. We tithed. We destroyed our U2 cd’s. We voted Republican. We set aside our dreams. But, we also grew up, and sat in pews silently wondering if “wonderful” could be a wrong interpretation. Because honest evaluation told us our lives were not wonderful, and no matter what personal sacrifices we made in an effort to follow the Perfect Will of God, nothing turned out right. We beat ourselves up for not trusting God enough and thinking such sinful thoughts, and raced up to the altar to “get right with God.” And, then, in the dark, we cried.
Because we know the truth: our lives are So Not Right with God.
We are Saved and On Our Way to Heaven, but we are hurt. We are uncertain. We are broke. We are tired. We are scared. We are manipulated and manipulative. We are confused. We are inadequate. We are lonely. We are sinful. We are exhausted.
We are broken.
Saved does not mean fixed. Living lives devoted to God, it turns out, doesn’t circumvent misery. Often, it concentrates it, because we mistakenly (?) view life’s tragedies as judgments or tests from God. Maybe they are. Maybe they have some meaning or value. I would like to think so.
I left the ministry because I could no longer be any part of the manipulation of organized religion. I couldn’t continue to say “Give your life to Jesus. God has a wonderful plan for your life.” For me, it was a cruel lie, even just by quiet submissive association. Even when I came to the place where I understood that God never promised us a rose garden, He only promised to be with us, I still couldn’t rid my faith of that hidden underpinning of “If you do/say/wear/think/_____, then God will bless you.”
But that’s not the way it works. God wants your life to bring Him glory, and He seems to take that glory in any way He can get it. All’s fair in love and war. I left the ministry because I was unable to submit and sing praises to the God who takes everything you are willing to give and simply tosses it in the pile of filthy rags behind His throne like some sort of hoarder, and proceeds with His agenda of Making a Name for Himself regardless of how it affects any of us down here. I am, as it turns out, not preacher’s wife material. My respect for those people who can devote themselves to the selfless calling of bringing people closer to God without manipulating or controlling them in the process has deepened greatly, because I know I am too weak to do it. Being devoted to God in a way that is profitable to others in a corporate setting requires attributes I do not possess.
Organized religion, for the most part, seems unable to look God in the eye. It has hitched its wagon to “God is Good all the time”, no matter what the evidence in the case shows. The corporate church can not give an honest representation of God: it’s really bad for business.
I had to learn the hard way that if I want an honest relationship with God, then I should humbly and freely give God what honest love I can, with no external motivation, and with no expectation of reward in this life. I had to understand that He will give and take whatever He chooses, and if I want to know Him, I have to accept that. In my life, anything less than that was not truly love; it was just telling God I could be bought. And then, there was this: I had to see the self-centeredness in the way I practiced my fundamental faith: I had become so religious and so arrogant that I had turned my Christian walk into a sick way to try and get stuff from God, improve my reputation as a Good Person, and then control, correct and judge everyone around me who wasn’t following My Godly Example. I was becoming a score-keeping Christian: tallying up the blessings given, level of devotion, and sins committed, and growing more and more furious with the inequities I saw. God was not playing fair: He was rewarding all the wrong people, and ignoring far to many of the rest of us. I was suffering for Jesus (I had laid my all, more or less, on the altar: opinions, interests, many dreams, large chunks of my intellect and personality) and I was intentionally trying to get other people to suffer too, because in my warped line of thinking, if you suffer enough “for the cause of Christ”, eventually God will get around to blessing you (read: making the struggle worthwhile). I had equated Following the Rules with Knowing God.
Many people come to a similar place in their relationship with God, and they can not bear the pain of it: if God is a Hands-on God, then He hurts people; if He’s a Sittin’-on-His-Hands God, then He just let’s crap happen. For some, the very real pain of this thought is so pronounced that they must reject God’s existence altogether. For others, they just reject God, which can be just as painful, if not more so, because to reject God is to reject the source of love.
The path is unclear, but there is beauty to be seen. Keep walking, friends...
But I can’t reject Him, because, God help me, I know God’s deepest desire is to be loved as He is, and that is something I can relate to: I want that same thing. That’s one of the few things I know for sure. He desires our focused fellowship and our pure praise. And, more often than not, He only gets these things after we’ve been broken.
So He breaks people. A lot. He broke me. But, I’m not alone, in fact, I am in good company. He’s broken a lot of very good people. He even quite literally ripped His own Son to shreds.