oh, how gullible we can be

inspirational posters by Andy Dwyer from "Parks & Rec"

As I mentioned yesterday, with a much undeserved shout-out to Ke$ha, the cafe is closing down two Fridays from now. I've been longing for this day for a while now; I've kept working there out of a desire to "see things through," because I like the tips I make, and I knew that my presence there enabled Eric to spend some time with his family. Bob wouldn't let Eric hire anyone, so as people kept quitting, Eric had to fill all their shifts on top of his other duties as Store Manager and Sales Manager. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all that extra time on my hands, but I'm hoping to devote a lot of it to biking, running, and writing.

Grad School update: I'm just waiting on C.C.U.
Two days ago I requested that my transcripts be sent.
I even paid $25 for same-day delivery.
I contacted the school I'm hoping to go to, and they're still waiting.
I contacted C.C.U. and they hadn't even sent the transcripts!
(but they made sure to deposit my check)
That school can be so damned frustrating.

My daily devotions as of late have centered around the story of Joseph, and how God was working through his circumstances to bring about His plan for Joseph's life. Every devo ends with the promise that God has a great and beautiful plan for your life, and you just need to trust Him and move forward. It's all very inspiring, comforting even... at least until you stop to think about it. And then you realize it's bullshit. The whole idea that God has a beautiful blueprint for your life is a relatively new one (shocker!), and it's been so widely accepted because, unfortunately, many Christians (just like many non-Christians) are so apt to believe something so long as it's palatable. I used to believe in such a thing, and the Wisconsinite even convinced me to believe in it again; but love can render us absent thought, and I guess she proved her evidence wrong, in the end. As far as the idea that God has a beautiful plan for our lives goes, here are some questions:

Where is His plan for those little girls sold into slavery and who are turned into shells of human beings by the age of sixteen after being raped forty times a day for ten years? Where is His plan for those whose lives are ended in their prime by enemy artillery? In North Africa in 1942, an American bomber, crippled by flak, had to make an emergency landing; they dropped the 500-pound bomb to avoid blowing themselves up, and the bomb obliterated an entire town of 4000 people. Was that God's plan for their lives? Was His intention all along, by orchestrating their lives so that they lived in that one spot at that one time, to destroy them by a stray bomb? Read history and escape the bubble of American life. Better yet (and far less work) just Google "world news" and read the stories. Where is God's plan for the children crushed by falling rubble in Syria, or the little boys abducted and trained as child soldiers, or the millions of babies born with AIDS in Africa? If God really does orchestrate everything in our lives, then we must accept that He is behind all that; and if He is the architect of everything that happens, then we mustn't automatically assume His plans for us are good. If His sovereignty is expressed in directly controlling everything, and if He is incapable of sinning or even tempting others to sin (as St. John says), then we have no choice to redefine our terms.

I would go so far to say that if we believe that He has some beautiful plan for our lives, it isn't just naive, it's also absurd; how much of a megalomania do you have to be to believe that you warrant from God's hand a better fate than those whose lives are characterized by endless suffering, disappointment, and pain? For every Joseph rising to the top, there's one hundred thousand other people living lonely, painful lives who are waiting on resolutions that will never come; why do we assume everyone is a Joseph? Why do you assume, because you are His son or daughter, that you will be spared the fate visited on Christians in Iraq: families torn apart, daughters and mothers raped, and everyone beheaded. 

Was that God's "beautiful plan" for their lives? 
Was that His plan to give them a "future and a hope"? 

A western culture saturated in individualism and blessed beyond measure with material goods, relative ease, and countless opportunities may be able to believe in such things as "God's marvelous plan for our lives," but that's a luxury for those at the top of the world's social pyramid. If you are fortunate enough to have a relatively easy time in life, lucky enough to have your dreams come true, then thank God and know that it could all be stripped away any minute without warning and without cause. That's reality. It's not all unicorns and lollipops, and we'd do well to remember that. And that's why I've stopped listening to Christian radio. It's all feel-goodery, and ninety percent of the songs ring hollow when confronted with the nature of the world. It makes me nauseous to think how gullible and stupid we can be.