It's very hard not to derail the conversation sometimes ...

A friend of mine -- conservative Christian -- was telling me about a friend of hers. This friend had gotten married a few years ago, and the marriage didn't work out. It ended in divorce for a variety of reasons, such as the ex-husband was controlling, wasn't the devout Christian he pretended to be, and somewhat abusive. This person had told my friend that by the time of the wedding, she knew God didn't want her to marry him, but she went ahead and did so anyway.

Ergo, she did something that God did not want.

This woman and her ex-husband also have a son.

And here's where I had to bite my tongue and not derail the entire conversation. For what I wanted to say to my friend was, "You follow a belief system that believes every fertilized egg is specifically planned by God -- hence one of your reasons you oppose abortion. So clearly, your friend's son was very much planned for, and God wanted him to exist. At the same time, you're also telling me that God *didn't* want your friend to marry her now ex-husband. But in order for the son God wanted to exist, wouldn't in turn He also have wanted your friend to marry her ex-husband?"

Really, it sounded to me more like my friend's friend -- who also doesn't believe in divorce -- was subconsciously looking for a reason to justify why she had to get a divorce in the first place, and why her marriage didn't work.

Which isn't meant to sound as harsh as it looks in writing -- I truly was saddened by what this woman had gone through, and was sad for her that her marriage didn't work. But this is the same religion that my conservative friend is so desperately praying that I join, by accepting Jesus as my Savior, so I stop being so hell-bound.

He withholds no vague good etheral thing from us, part two

In which I continue my ruminations.

I've been pondering this whole "Good things God has for us." As well as the idea that in an effort to defend the conservative Christian ideology, a defense in one area greatly weakens another. Consider: Jesus advocated helping the "least of these." One great example is where those welcomed into heaven asked when they feed Jesus, or visited him in prison. As that was what earned them a place in Jesus' good graces, I would say it's a natural implication that performing such actions are what God wants, and thus are good.

Yet in Sara Groves response, she says that if God is helping someone through financial or health difficulties, then those are clearly not the good things God has for Christians. But if those are not the good things God has, why insist so strongly that Christians help those who are starving? Who are in horrible pain? Why insist that God gives someone a new heart that's filled with love for others, a love that God has, if God doesn't in turn provide those things?

He withholds no vague good etheral thing from us

BC: One of my favorite songs on the album is “Open Hands”. What’s the story behind this song?

Groves: I wrote this song with Alley Rogers who’s a great song writer out of Nashville and I was talking to her about the verse – you know it says in Psalm ‘He withholds no good things from those who love Him’ and I said, you know, that verse is hard for me to process. I know that its true in my own life yet its hard for me to process that He withholds no good thing.

And she had just been reading this devotional by Charles Spurgeon [that] says basically, how can this be true? How can this psalm be true when we know amazing men and women of God who struggle with health and finances and different troubles, and different troubles beset them? They have a lot of troubles. So how can we say that God withholds no good thing?

And he concludes, he says, we can only assume then that health and wealth are not the good things of God. The good things of God are peace of conscience and the joy of His holy spirit and the blessed assurance of His presence. These are the good things of God. And what we think are good things are like, hey, I want money, I wanna feel good and what Charles Spurgeon is saying is: these aren’t the good things of God. The good things of God, those things are for us.

We will get sick, we will have difficulty, we’ll have times like Paul said, we’ll have times of wealth and we’ll have times of poverty and we need to be content in both of those times.

What God offers us is peace that surpasses all understanding, the joy of His Holy Spirit, and the promise of His presence and I love that. I mean, I can say without hesitating that He withholds no good things from me if those are the good things of God.

So, in this song, I’m talking about, these are the things I’m grateful for. I’m grateful that when I did have trouble He was with me and when I was sick, I had peace, that when I did have a financial difficulty, I knew He was present and that He was working in my life. So, this song is acknowledging that He withholds no good thing from me and that doesn’t mean stuff. That means the true good things of God.


From an interview with Christian singer/songerwriter Sara Groves, on her upcoming release "Invisible Empires."

I put in bold the parts I found most interesting in this quote. It starts out saying that she has seen some people go through incredible hardships in terms of health and finances. Now, when I read that, I was thinking of big health things, like cancer or Alzheimer's. Financial difficulties where someone is about to lose his/her house, or can't support his/her family.

She admits that she struggles with reconciling a God who withholds no good thing with the struggles she sees. Yet, as she gets deeper into her answer, Sara seems to fall back on a default Christian response, where the implication is that these people are asking out of selfish desires -- such as saying, "I want money" or "I want to feel good." Or in her personal examples, such as when she was sick or had a financial difficulty.

I would think that for those who do suffer from a debilitating illness, their prayers go far, far behind "I want to feel good." These people are in pain. They're terrified. They're not able to live life as they could before.

Same with those who have no jobs, or who are about to lose their houses -- this goes so far beyond some prayer of "I want money." Again, there is terror, panic, possibly a feeling of hopelessness ...

And Sara downplays all of that in her response, trivializing the suffering. It's fascinating, really. You can basically see how she does still struggle with the reconciliation of a good God to said suffering, because she's shying away from a true reconciliation in her answer. It's like she's admitting on a subconscious level that any God who is defined as 'good' would not withhold healing for cancer, or money so people can afford food, and so she's saying, "Well, of course God is going to withhold if you say "I want money" or "I want to feel good because I'm sick." It's like she can't bring herself to say, "Well, of course God will withhold an alleviating of a debilitating , because that's not the good thing of God."

If said that way, it doesn't paint God in a good light.

Things I have been up to.

I started being more social. Joined a variety of groups. Met a boy. Dated a boy. Got engaged to said boy, and then married him over the summer.

So I've been a bit busy.

(Boy I'm now married to is an atheist, so we mesh well on the spiritual scale. And the political scale, and the variety of interests scale. We're just really good mesh-able people).

But I still find myself troubled by many aspects of Christianity, and the influence it has on people today, so back to the blogging world I go.

What is a relationship?

I was recently reading a blog, and the issue was dealing with why God is hidden. This was in relation to many agnostics/atheists saying that they had looked quite hard for evidence, and had found none. God has to remain hidden so that the ability people have to make moral decisions isn't coerced in any way. Furthermore, if God did make Himself so easily visible, it would interfere with the free will and autonomy of humanity. They would respond to God due to self-preservation and fear of punishment, as opposed to wanting to get to know God just for the sake of knowing Him.

I've seen this argument a few times, but it was only this past month that I realized I was confused over portions of it.

Any time we have a person point out the less than ethical Christians throughout history as to why some people don't view Christianity in a positive light, or why they might feel religion is harmful, one of the responses is inevitably the idea that many will claim to follow Jesus, but that at the day of judgment, Jesus will say something along the lines of how they are to depart, for they never knew him. Even though these people claimed to preach about him, do good works in his name, expel demons -- didn't matter. Jesus didn't know them.

So, obviously, the departed people didn't truly know God or have a relationship with Him. They had knowledge of God (presumably, given what they claimed to have done). But that knowledge of God, and that claim or belief to follow God, wasn't enough to ensure salvation.

So, if it wasn't enough in this case, wouldn't the same principle apply if God made Himself so completely obvious to everyone? If it's not enough to simply believe in God and try to follow Him, then how is any sort of revelation an issue? Why remain hidden? Surely, since God would know the inner workings of people, that if someone was only not robbing others out of punishment, but very much wanted to rob others and wasn't "convicted" of that sin or anything, such a desire would be factored into the equation.

Another issue I have with this argument is the assumption built into the answer. There are plenty of people who genuinely wish God was real, only don't see any evidence for the case. They do want a relationship with God because they want the unconditional love, or they want a purpose in life, or they want to be a better person. They've prayed, they've read the books, they've searched ... and they feel that the only honest solution is to be an agnostic or atheist, due to what they see as the lack of evidence.

So if God ceased to remain hidden in their cases, they would respond to Him, but not out of a fear of punishment. Except the argument contains the implication that those who claim God is too hidden would only respond to a revelation out of a fear of punishment.

Empathy could very well drive me to Hell.

I was reading a blog a few days back, and there was one comment from a conservative Christian that really stuck with me. Essentially, he made the claim that while he was an atheist, nothing prevented him from doing whatever he wanted. If he wanted to hit an innocent person, he did. If he wanted to hurt an innocent person, he did.

Now that he was a Christian and thus aware of the eternal consequences, he no longer acted as he might want to, but rather as God did. In his words, since atheists didn't think they faced those same consequences, there was nothing stopping them from doing whatever they wanted, nor was there any reason for them to stop.

The thing that really struck me about both of these scenarios is that the commenter doesn't demonstrate a sense of empathy in either case. He doesn't care who he's hurting, the pain they might feel or the humiliation.

And in the case when he's a Christian, the thing that's stopping him? Again, not empathy. Not the recognition that this is a fellow human being. What stops him is the threat of Hell. He doesn't want to suffer, and so he won't do whatever he wants.

(And, on an interesting note, if God truly had changed his heart, then shouldn't he no longer want to do the desires of the flesh/old man?)

If that's what prevents him from hurting others, then I'm all for it. But this isn't someone I'd want to maintain a connection with, nor be alone in the same room. Because the inference I'm getting from this is that he's not restrained by his lack of desire to cause me harm. He's restrained by his desire to not go to hell. He's restrained by a selfish desire, in terms of how the outcome would impact him.

Empericism vs. emotion.

A well-known Christian recently announced she was pregnant. She also explained how surprising that was, given that she and her husband were told it was unlikely they could ever conceive naturally. The reason why they have their first two children is because of fertility treatments.

I think it's thrilling that someone who wants kids and is told they're pretty much incapable of doing so finds themselves pregnant through no scientific intervention. But that was quickly overshadowed by my, for lack of a better word, "logical" nature. I'd like to think that if I ever engaged with this person face-to-face, I wouldn't be so quick to critique. However, I'd be somewhat lying to myself, because it's a lot easier for me to latch onto the logical implications of a statement than the emotional ones.

For instance, when she was describing the infertility of her and her husband, she said that it was a costly process that involved lots of shots. But, thanks to God, it worked and He gave them two miracles.

My first reaction? "No, it was the fertility treatments that allowed you to have your first two children. It was scientific knowledge of how the reproductive system works that allowed you to have your first two children."

Granted, my reaction is countered with the fact that this pregnancy did occur through natural means. In this case, I understand why it's referred to as a miracle, because it was highly unlikely.

But she went on to mention that the reason why the pregnancy occurred was because "with God, all things are possible." And then used the pregnancy to encourage others in trusting God, because God is the one in control, and can make anything happen. Only that doesn't necessarily mean that God will give someone the miracle they want, for His ways are higher than our ways. But God is still great.

I think what's bothering me about this (other than my inability to just be happy for someone in this situation and my mind's inability to shut off the "analysis" mode) is a) assigning God all the credit for the first pregnancy when it wouldn't have occurred without human intervention, period. Given how powerful God is, and what God can overcome, why was human intervention necessary? Why were fertility treatments needed in order for God to bless the parents?

and b) using the second pregnancy as a way of demonstrating how powerful God is, and how He can overcome anything, and we can rest in this. Only this doesn't mean that God will do everything we pray for Him to do, as "His ways our higher than our ways." It's pretty much a contradiction. She obviously wanted children, she's obviously thrilled, she's obviously using this situation to demonstrate that anything is possible with God, no matter what physical constraints one has, and that He always has "the last word in our lives."

But then goes on to say that this doesn't mean we'll always get what we're praying for. Then why use a scenario where God essentially did provide a prayed-for miracle, to show that all things are possible with Him, only to turn around and say that this doesn't mean that God will, in fact, do everything? How does one rest in the fact that God will have the last word in your lives, based on a prayer that God answered, when one is also told that the very example that proves all things are possible with God doesn't mean that God will, in fact, granted someone the impossible with each prayer?

If such a concrete example can be used as proof of God's last word, then shouldn't a lack of an example be used as proof of God lacking the last word in one's life? It's like saying that person A proves her parents loved her because they fed, clothed, and sheltered her. Those physical examples are the proof of love. But if person B's parents didn't do any of those things, that actually can't be used as proof. It just means that person B's parents ways are higher than the ways of person B. The standards of proof aren't consistent. Rather, they're relative to what occurs in each situation. And that's why this bothers me.