This summer has been more than rough (really, all of 2013’s been kind of a whore; perhaps all those triskaidekaphobes are onto something?), but it hasn’t been without its high points. My friends and I, we’ve had lots of parties, we’ve shared some great memories, and I know I’ll look back on this summer with a certain fondness. That’s how life (and memories) work: we tend to remember ages past with a silver lining. Certainly there will be things that won’t be forgotten: too many people I’ve known have died, and those I love have had family members snatched from them untimely and with an unnerving cruelty. In these darker moments I remember an old paraphrase of St. Paul I heard a while ago: “Life is a bitch, but we are more than conquerors in Christ.” All too often we Christians, not least myself, forget that though we are saved, justified, redeemed; though we are promised a wonderful inheritance; though we have the presence of Christ and God’s own Spirit within us, we still live in a world caught between Easter and Consummation, a world characterized by the tension between God’s burgeoning kingdom and “this present evil age”. Death and misery continue to scar God’s good world, and when we’re surprised by tragedy, when we’re shocked by how God’s own people suffer, and when we cry aloud as to why this is happening, it’s good to remember “the times in which we live.” I’ve had to come back to that again and again.
I’ve watched as people I love—John, Corey, and Amanda Lynn—endure the tragic and unexpected deaths of family members. John lost his dad; Corey lost his mom; Amanda lost her brother. I want to think that this is “just a bad year” (to put it lightly), but something tells me things will just get worse as I get older. Ecclesiastes tells us that this is the nature of the world, and to expect anything else is to be an ignorant fool. Part of me wonders, however, how we can enjoy the gifts of the present except by temporarily blinding ourselves to the world around us.
I’m reading 2 Corinthians, and again and again St. Paul competes, with a good dose of sarcasm, with the false teachers trying to supplant his authority. I’m struck by how much awful (“shit” in Greek; if Paul uses it in Phil 3.8, I think I can, too) he had to go through. There’s much ado about his devoted reverence, but it’s so easy to overlook how hard he had it. What can be deduced about him from his letters is that he was a passionate, devoted, and hurting man. It’s quite likely his wife divorced him at conversion, and Acts testifies to a prevalent loneliness. Is letters bear witness to him being tired and stretched-thin, often at the end of his rope. He’s known for all that he did, the high marks of his career (not least writing the majority of the New Testament), and the miraculous events around him, but the sufferings he endured, over & over, make it clear that his was no life to be envied. This strikes me because there is an assumption rampant within Christian circles that the more devoted to Christ we are, the more glorious and happy our lives will be. Yet St. Paul, who outranks all of us in measure of devotion, lived a life of pain, loneliness, betrayal and heartache sprinkled with miraculous deliverances here-and-there. And while it’s fun to see him delivered from jail, and encouraging to us who are suffering and praying for deliverance, let us not forget this:
Five times God did not spare Paul from forty lashes minus one.
Three times God did not spare Paul from being beaten.
Once God did not spare him from being stoned.
(and not in the good way like you want)
Three times God allowed him to be shipwrecked.
And constantly he was without food or water, void of shelter, cold and exposed, without any intervention by God. His life was marked by insults, persecution, hardships and calamities, and according to some, it would seem marked more by God’s absence than by his presence. Any thought that a life devoted to God brings about a rose-garden experience ignores not simply the fact that the scriptures tell us the opposite; it would also serve to lump anyone’s life similar to Paul’s as being indicative of a need for “more faith.”
And the truly sad thing is that regardless of how much I oppose this pie-in-the-sky, unicorns and lollipops idea that devotion to God makes one prosper, the fact that my own life has been met with subtle disappointments and enduring times of hardship and despair, of loneliness and sleepless nights, makes me question his love towards me.
Who are we to expect a better deal than Paul?
Who are we to expect our dreams and desires to be God's primary concern?
Why do we often assume increasing devotion to God will mean a "better" life?
(I speak in earthly terms)
There are good reasons and bad reasons to be devoted to God. I’m devoted to him not because I expect him to make my life everything I want it to be. Though I certainly hope his hand in my life pans out in such a manner, I’m far too much of a realist to expect it. There’s just not evidence for that. I’m devoted to God because, in the end, he is God and I am not. He is the Creator and I’m the creation. I don’t belong to myself, I belong to him. We all do, and some of us acknowledge it and others deny it. As for me, regardless of how my life turns out, my stake and my loyalty is on him. Life may suck, but I know God is loving, that he looks upon me not as a capricious, vindictive, malevolent deity but as a Father who knows what’s best for his children and who doesn’t fill their heads with fantasies. God is quite honest about the nature of the world, and in that honesty there’s a promise: “It won’t always be this way.” A time is coming when Death and suffering, when loneliness and despair, when the corruption and decay of our world is dealt with fully and finally. I long for that day as every Christian does, and every untimely death, every strike of grief, is a testament to our current state-of-affairs; and the feeling that it isn’t right, that Death is cruel and unnatural, is furthermore a testament to the future: “It will not always be so.” I take hope in that.
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