Deep Thought on Pain and Purpose
A month ago, right after I posted that blog entry on prayer, I was surprised. I had some new people find that article and write me about it. I had some friends who I never knew were religious talking to me in serious ways about religion. I don't consider myself an authority and, as such, am a bit reluctant to take the pulpit. That's my father's role. He's the one who's ordained. Regardless, I've had a couple of people ask me when I was getting around to writing another of these. Plus I've had thoughts percolating ever since the conversations started.
The thoughts I've been having are about God's plans for us, and about happiness. I've had some things slap me in the face this last month letting me know that I can't ever really know what God has in store for me. Even when my life seems to be set up in a direction and it seems obvious what the destination is I have found that I really, really have no clue what's about to happen.
On 3 different occasions in my life now I have had a series of extreme coincidences line up to make me think that God had a plan for me to spend the rest of my life with a particular woman. All of these women are great people. On one of those occasions it became obvious after a while that she and I weren't meant to be together because of who we are. The other 2 times it's not nearly as obvious that we wouldn't have stayed a great couple if it wasn't for the externalities of our lives. In both cases it seemed like there were things happening that I, honestly, had no control over that were leading me closer to her and preparing me and my life to merge with hers. In both cases I was severely disappointed.
I've said before though that I'm not sure that God wants me to be truly happy. I'm a lot more productive when I'm not completely happy.
That's something that gets peoples' attention. Not everyone likes that thought. "How can God love us and not want us to be happy?"
Let me turn the question around. Do you think that trust fund babies tend to be the most productive or happiest people in society? They are given every advantage. Their parents don't wish them to feel like their lives of privilege are for empty parties and sexual escapades until they inherit the business that gave them their initial wealth. However that is, all too often, the pathway for the especially entitled.
People who fall uphill too easily also have a tendency to turn cold. They don't think that poverty is a systemic problem and will claim things like "everyone living on the street is just lazy, and people on welfare just want to sit at home and collect their paycheck." I won't say that there exist no people in the world who fit that bill, but that is not a fair characterization of poverty.
I've never spent time in jail (aside from one night due to a clerical error by a judge where a speeding ticket that I had taken care of through defensive driving had not been cleared, so there was a warrant issued for my arrest) but I have friends who have. Their stories are tough to stomach. They hadn't done anything truly worthy of the charges that were leveled against them, but they went to jail anyway. They now are involved in prison ministries and have taught me a lot about the negatives of the legal system. Their pain has opened their hearts and my eyes.
I feel often that hardship is introduced into someone's life because God wants to show you exactly what that pain feels like and make you sensitive to it.
It also can drive you to improve things. I have found that most people are not willing to change anything about their lives. Change is hard. You don't normally change until it hurts more to stay where you are than it does to change.
So comfort can work exactly 100% counter to God's purpose. My pain often gets turned into songs that speak to people. It also will drive me out into the city to try and find new people and things. I never know how those interactions will change things or who will find me. I don't know if the new person in my life is there to change me or for me to help them. Or both. Or neither. The point is that I wouldn't be out in the world making an impact or being impacted if I was content with my life.
Now that doesn't change that I falter and fail. God gives me strength, but Satan also will put up props that I might lean on and then find them falling away. It isn't always obvious to me where I have put my faith until I find what is still there for me and where I'm at when I am falling and grasping at thin air. If I put too much faith in myself or in people then I will often find myself without any support at all.
Because that's happened to me frequently enough I have made a concerted effort to make sure that people will not look to me and find that I'm not there. That isn't always possible, but I really truly try. That is the nature of the net positive effect of that particular pain.
It has also taught me how to look inside and change my behaviors. When I am treated poorly then I can either learn from it or I can become bitter. If I was offended by another's behavior then I may never have an opportunity to tell them why what they think is "direct" is actually "pointlessly rude", but I can at least make sure that I don't excuse myself from similar behavior in the future by claiming that I am simply "blunt". I often would not have realized that I was treating others with disrespect if I hadn't first been disrespected.
To top it off, if Jesus wasn't exempt from pain then it stands to reason that I can't possibly expect to come through life unscathed. God even suffers pain when we reject Him in the face of his offered love.
Perhaps that is the point of me having my love spurned. It makes it more obvious to me how much it must hurt God to be rejected by me. It's an interesting thought anyway... one that I am still mulling.
I do know that the arguments that there was a mystical mechanism where God had to sacrifice Jesus for my sins don't make much sense to me. If God is omnipotent then He can simply erase my sin without any trade deals. It is my belief that Jesus's suffering was brought about not because it directly atoned for my sin. Rather it was necessary so that I would have a model of suffering to follow when I am in pain and alone. His suffering has been used to preach the Gospel throughout the ages to people who understood physical pain in ways I hope to never experience. A God who was free of the ability to shed blood would have made no sense to Mezzo-Americans in the 1600s or the Anglo-Saxons or Vikings in early medieval period. It would have been an empty God for a black slave in the antebellum period in the US. It likely would make little sense to someone living in Sudan today. Jesus' suffering served a purpose that doesn't have anything to do with his blood "covering my sin". Rather, His suffering seems to give him authenticity when I suffer. I can find God in my pain because God has been in that same pain before and I know it. He understands my loneliness and my fear that I will pass out of this world without ever having that pain salved. I can hope that one day I have that particular pain pass away while I am still on this plane, but even if it does it has left its mark on me. I am the foul-weather friend. I cannot willingly run away from someone who thinks they need me. I've been alone too many times. I can't turn someone away when they think they are truly alone.
I am told that I carry other peoples' burdens heavy on my soul. I find that is only true when I am also feeling totally alone. When my support is cut away from me then it is hard for me to find God while I try to help someone who is not capable of giving anything back to me. It can be a hard burden, but I feel compelled.
When I have felt forced to turn away from people for reasons that have to do with either my safety or because their means of attaching themselves to me binds them so tightly that they can't function on their own, it has really hurt me. Those stories though are not pretty, and I still pray for them. I wish that things had been different. I do everything in my power to keep heading into the storms when someone wants me to lash myself to their sail and help navigate a way home. As one of my friends keeps telling me "I don't like squalls, but calms undermine my spirits."
If we were meant to lead a pain free, happy life then we would be meant to lead a shallow, meaningless one. Fulfillment is found through hard work and hard times.
Or so sayeth the book of Patrick. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, I have no special knowledge. This is just the way I see it.
Pray with your head, then pray again with your hands and feet. Don't expect much in return, but remember the things that hurt you so that you can do unto others better than you have had done to yourself. Hang in there when the times are tough. And don't take life so seriously. After all, nobody gets out alive anyway.
The thoughts I've been having are about God's plans for us, and about happiness. I've had some things slap me in the face this last month letting me know that I can't ever really know what God has in store for me. Even when my life seems to be set up in a direction and it seems obvious what the destination is I have found that I really, really have no clue what's about to happen.
On 3 different occasions in my life now I have had a series of extreme coincidences line up to make me think that God had a plan for me to spend the rest of my life with a particular woman. All of these women are great people. On one of those occasions it became obvious after a while that she and I weren't meant to be together because of who we are. The other 2 times it's not nearly as obvious that we wouldn't have stayed a great couple if it wasn't for the externalities of our lives. In both cases it seemed like there were things happening that I, honestly, had no control over that were leading me closer to her and preparing me and my life to merge with hers. In both cases I was severely disappointed.
I've said before though that I'm not sure that God wants me to be truly happy. I'm a lot more productive when I'm not completely happy.
That's something that gets peoples' attention. Not everyone likes that thought. "How can God love us and not want us to be happy?"
Let me turn the question around. Do you think that trust fund babies tend to be the most productive or happiest people in society? They are given every advantage. Their parents don't wish them to feel like their lives of privilege are for empty parties and sexual escapades until they inherit the business that gave them their initial wealth. However that is, all too often, the pathway for the especially entitled.
People who fall uphill too easily also have a tendency to turn cold. They don't think that poverty is a systemic problem and will claim things like "everyone living on the street is just lazy, and people on welfare just want to sit at home and collect their paycheck." I won't say that there exist no people in the world who fit that bill, but that is not a fair characterization of poverty.
I've never spent time in jail (aside from one night due to a clerical error by a judge where a speeding ticket that I had taken care of through defensive driving had not been cleared, so there was a warrant issued for my arrest) but I have friends who have. Their stories are tough to stomach. They hadn't done anything truly worthy of the charges that were leveled against them, but they went to jail anyway. They now are involved in prison ministries and have taught me a lot about the negatives of the legal system. Their pain has opened their hearts and my eyes.
I feel often that hardship is introduced into someone's life because God wants to show you exactly what that pain feels like and make you sensitive to it.
It also can drive you to improve things. I have found that most people are not willing to change anything about their lives. Change is hard. You don't normally change until it hurts more to stay where you are than it does to change.
So comfort can work exactly 100% counter to God's purpose. My pain often gets turned into songs that speak to people. It also will drive me out into the city to try and find new people and things. I never know how those interactions will change things or who will find me. I don't know if the new person in my life is there to change me or for me to help them. Or both. Or neither. The point is that I wouldn't be out in the world making an impact or being impacted if I was content with my life.
Now that doesn't change that I falter and fail. God gives me strength, but Satan also will put up props that I might lean on and then find them falling away. It isn't always obvious to me where I have put my faith until I find what is still there for me and where I'm at when I am falling and grasping at thin air. If I put too much faith in myself or in people then I will often find myself without any support at all.
Because that's happened to me frequently enough I have made a concerted effort to make sure that people will not look to me and find that I'm not there. That isn't always possible, but I really truly try. That is the nature of the net positive effect of that particular pain.
It has also taught me how to look inside and change my behaviors. When I am treated poorly then I can either learn from it or I can become bitter. If I was offended by another's behavior then I may never have an opportunity to tell them why what they think is "direct" is actually "pointlessly rude", but I can at least make sure that I don't excuse myself from similar behavior in the future by claiming that I am simply "blunt". I often would not have realized that I was treating others with disrespect if I hadn't first been disrespected.
To top it off, if Jesus wasn't exempt from pain then it stands to reason that I can't possibly expect to come through life unscathed. God even suffers pain when we reject Him in the face of his offered love.
Perhaps that is the point of me having my love spurned. It makes it more obvious to me how much it must hurt God to be rejected by me. It's an interesting thought anyway... one that I am still mulling.
I do know that the arguments that there was a mystical mechanism where God had to sacrifice Jesus for my sins don't make much sense to me. If God is omnipotent then He can simply erase my sin without any trade deals. It is my belief that Jesus's suffering was brought about not because it directly atoned for my sin. Rather it was necessary so that I would have a model of suffering to follow when I am in pain and alone. His suffering has been used to preach the Gospel throughout the ages to people who understood physical pain in ways I hope to never experience. A God who was free of the ability to shed blood would have made no sense to Mezzo-Americans in the 1600s or the Anglo-Saxons or Vikings in early medieval period. It would have been an empty God for a black slave in the antebellum period in the US. It likely would make little sense to someone living in Sudan today. Jesus' suffering served a purpose that doesn't have anything to do with his blood "covering my sin". Rather, His suffering seems to give him authenticity when I suffer. I can find God in my pain because God has been in that same pain before and I know it. He understands my loneliness and my fear that I will pass out of this world without ever having that pain salved. I can hope that one day I have that particular pain pass away while I am still on this plane, but even if it does it has left its mark on me. I am the foul-weather friend. I cannot willingly run away from someone who thinks they need me. I've been alone too many times. I can't turn someone away when they think they are truly alone.
I am told that I carry other peoples' burdens heavy on my soul. I find that is only true when I am also feeling totally alone. When my support is cut away from me then it is hard for me to find God while I try to help someone who is not capable of giving anything back to me. It can be a hard burden, but I feel compelled.
When I have felt forced to turn away from people for reasons that have to do with either my safety or because their means of attaching themselves to me binds them so tightly that they can't function on their own, it has really hurt me. Those stories though are not pretty, and I still pray for them. I wish that things had been different. I do everything in my power to keep heading into the storms when someone wants me to lash myself to their sail and help navigate a way home. As one of my friends keeps telling me "I don't like squalls, but calms undermine my spirits."
If we were meant to lead a pain free, happy life then we would be meant to lead a shallow, meaningless one. Fulfillment is found through hard work and hard times.
Or so sayeth the book of Patrick. Maybe I'm wrong. Again, I have no special knowledge. This is just the way I see it.
Pray with your head, then pray again with your hands and feet. Don't expect much in return, but remember the things that hurt you so that you can do unto others better than you have had done to yourself. Hang in there when the times are tough. And don't take life so seriously. After all, nobody gets out alive anyway.