disturbs me. The more I
converse with those of my generation that truly have a desire to follow Christ,
the more I find this trend plays out.
What may make this trend so scary is that the hearts and intentions of
these individuals are sincere! Our
desire (notice I now include myself in this group…because I have unwittingly
adopted this trend, to my chagrin) is the pursuit of the truth, the pursuit of
righteousness, and a pursuit of the deeper things of God.
Here’s a scenario to put things in context:
Let’s say I’m overseas and I come across a blind man sitting
on the street corner begging for money.
I’m moved to compassion and take my companions over thinking maybe we
can introduce this man to the hope of Christ (if he isn’t yet aware of this
hope). We interact, we listen, and
we resolve to pray healing for this man.
Jesus did it all the time, right?
So why shouldn’t we?
We begin to pray.
We offer a litany of theologically correct prayers up to God being sure
to include the formulaic “if it’s your will” disclaimer. We remind God of how much attention and
glory He’d receive from moving in this way. We say “amen” and look…
“Well sometimes these things take time…”
“God’s still in control, maybe He has a greater plan…”
“Maybe we should pray something different…”
proofs. Here’s what disturbs me:
the second we saw that blind man, these theological proofs flashed through our
head. We actually engaged in this
situation with a Plan B, an explanation for why God wasn’t going to move.
I’ve recently had a couple of conversations that have shown
me how deep this disillusionment really goes. This is what I’ve heard:
“I pray but when God doesn’t answer I’m sure He’s just
waiting on me to decide something…”
“I ask God to reveal Himself in a new way but He stays
silent…He must be testing my faith…”
“I want God to move but [and here’s the holy grail]… it’s
probably just not his will.”
Is this the God we serve? A God who stays distant from us on purpose? A God who doesn’t move, doesn’t speak,
doesn’t respond to our cries for intimacy or move in compassionate, merciful
ways?
We live a life full of the “exceptions”. We watch God fail to miraculous move
and justify it. In fact, we end up
living lives of these “special cases” when God doesn’t move immediately and thus
we console our disappointment with faith in “God’s sovereignty” (ie. a greater
plan we’ll never be privy to…because that’s God’s M.O.: to keep things as
secretive and covert as possible and ultimately away from us).
I don’t want to disavow truth, but I want to expose the
contentedness we have with powerless and intimacy-less lives.
Why is it okay to believe that God speaks but live a life
without ever hearing His voice?
We say Jesus is our ultimate example but never once operate
as He did…we never heal the sick, multiply food for the hungry or raise the
dead.
But at the end of this discussion, it’s not about power,
it’s about a relationship. What
intimacy can we even conceive with someone who doesn’t speak and may not ever
be around…it’s like having a pen pal that wrote you one letter a long time ago,
but whom you consider your best friend of all time.
We believe God is present but often question if He’s spoken
because His words sound an awful lot like common sense.
It will always be academia until we truly encounter
God. God’s not hiding, we’re just
content only looking in the places we’ve already looked.
