Leaping in the dark

Are you afraid of letting God get a grip on you? Do you stand at a distance, too scared to let him get close? Do you fear what he might do with you, or ask you to do, if you handed over your life to him?

In one sense, we should all be afraid of God. We should never underestimate his power and awesomeness. It is a dreadful thing to fall, unprepared, into the hands of the living God.

But it's not this reverent fear which holds many of us back from putting ourselves fully in God's hands. Our fear comes from other sources.

Some fear losing control. They've had unpleasant experiences of being controlled and manipulated by others. Perhaps they've been through a time where life was chaotically out of control and they've vowed (often subconsciously) never to let that happen to them again. They want to believe God can be trusted, but there's a dreadful emotional barrier in the way.

Some would like to be closer to God, but they're already committed to serving someone or something else - their career, their reputation, their parents or spouse, an ideology, an organization or a secret society. They're unwilling to depose their idol, and God allows no rivals.

Half-heartedness is sometimes a mask for laziness. While I continue to serve God on my terms, I can set limits to how much time and effort I give him. Being a paid servant is one thing, becoming a slave of Christ is quite another. But fear can also cause half-heartedness - what if God asked me to do more than I could cope with? What if I never achieve the things I want to achieve because I'm too busy doing God's work?

Satan uses our fears to keep us at a distance from God. He tells us God doesn't have our best interest at heart. He keeps the word "fanatic" fresh in our minds. He holds us over a dark abyss and whispers "This is faith. Do you really want to jump?"

Jesus calls to us, "Follow me". But where? What will happen along the way? Putting all our trust in him can seem like a leap in the dark, until we understand how he proved his trustworthiness on the cross. If you are afraid to trust your life to God, or know that he's asking you to trust him more, talk to another Christian about it and ask them to pray with you. The only truly safe place in the universe is in God's hands.

Photo by Mitchell Hartley on Unsplash

The illusions of the disillusioned

(Monday musings)

Something I learned rather late in life is that healing and wholeness never take place until we accept the truth, no matter how painful or sad the truth may be. I've seen it in my own life, as I've struggled with accepting my own failings and limitations and the limitations of people who are important to me. And I've seen it proved true many times in the lives of those I've counselled. Whether the healing required is emotional, physical or spiritual, the first bitter medicine that has to be applied is always the truth.

Most of us prefer to live with our illusions. We want to believe that our emotions are always appropriate, our motives are always pure, our bodies are strong and are going to last forever, no matter how we treat them.
We want to believe that athletes never use drugs, that politician from 'our' side of politics never lie, that religious leaders never feel or gratify lust, that businesses never sell us faulty or dangerous products.
When our illusions about ourselves are shattered, we feel sadness, shame and anxiety. It may take us a while to accept the truth, deal with reality, and start to change. When our illusions about others are destroyed, we feel betrayed and angry. We are 'dis-illusioned.'

At the moment we live in a very dis-illusioned society. Every day seems to bring more news of fallen heroes, guilty gods and godesses. The question is whether we will accept the truth, and recognise that our illusions were doing us more harm than good. Will we accept that we had put people on pedestals that couldn't support them. Or will we simply lash out at whoever comes within reach, until our anger subsides and we find some new illusions, some new idols.

It's not that we shouldn't have high expectations of those who are in positions of influence or power. Those who betray the trust society places in them should be called to account. But that needs to be done in a calm, legally-sanctioned manner, by the appropriate people. As a society we need to be careful that we are punishing the crimes or misdemeanors of which the offenders are guilty, not raging against their failure to be the perfect people we wanted them to be.

The rest of us need to ask what it was about ourselves that made us put such faith in mere human beings. Why did we cling to our illusions for so long? And how are we feeding the illusions of others who put us on pedestals and ask us to be their role models, their heroes, their ideals? We all need a regular dose of truth, but will we take it?

God's freedom and ours

Our God is in heaven, he does whatever pleases him. (Psalm 115.3)

The freedom of God seems a strange place to start a discussion of human freedom. God's sovereignty (which is essentially his freedom to do whatever he chooses) is often seen as being in opposition to the reality of human freewill. If God can do what he likes, including putting thoughts in our minds, where is our freedom to will and to act? If we are simply puppets in a cosmic play, or characters in a novel being written by God,* how can we even begin to discuss human freedom? It becomes an illusion, just part of the plot.

In any case, this is not intended to be a philosophical discussion of human free will. In general I will leave such discussion to others, and simply take for granted that, at least from our human perspective, we do have the experience of being able to choose our thoughts and actions.

The Bible encourages this point of view. How else could it include any sort of command or advice? What meaning would statements like "Do not murder", "Do not steal", "Do to others what you would have them do to you" have, if none of us had any real ability to choose our actions? If all our thoughts and actions were predetermined from eternity how could Jesus promise that "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (Jn8:31-32)? Passive acceptance of fate is not a Christian outlook. Christianity is nothing if it is not a call to choose and to act.

My own experience is that, at least in the moment, from my limited perspective, I choose what I think, say and do. The longer I have been a Christian, the more I have come to realise how much freedom I do have to choose. Yet in retrospect, I also see that God has enabled me to choose at every point. There is a mystery here that I cannot explain.

Paradoxically, our freedom rests in the freedom of God. God is the only truly and absolutely free being. Only he can do whatever he wills, with no-one to question him or hinder him or to command him to do otherwise. Only he has the power to achieve all that he wills to do. God is at no-one's mercy, no-one's beck and call.

If it were not so, any freedom we might have would be illusory and short-lived. If God could not guarantee the freedom he promises us with his own freedom to will and to act, we would be at the mercy of whatever or whoever could control him.

If God had to answer to anyone for his decisions and actions, if he had to give an account of himself to anyone, on earth or in heaven, then our freedom would also be called into question. A man may allow his children great freedom at home, but if that man is a slave, his children's' freedom is quite limited.

God is sovereign, God is free. Yet we all like to question God's freedom to do what he wills. "Lord" we ask, "why did you let this happen?" "Lord, why didn't you prevent this?" "Lord, why did you make me this way?" These can be valid questions, if we're seeking to deepen our relationship with God through better understanding. But they can also arise from a thinly-veiled belief that we know better than he does how the universe should be run.

Sometimes we speak as if God were answerable to some universal law of right and wrong. This is most obvious when we ask questions such as "How could a loving God allow suffering?" or "How could a good God command people to kill and destroy others?" The underlying assumption is that to allow suffering is wrong, to order killing and destruction is bad. We all "know" that.

Sometimes, of course, the questions arise because there seems to be some inconsistency between what we see happening and what we know of God's character. It is possible to ask such questions with an attitude of humility, in the same way that Abraham questioned God about his stated intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18). His questions were based on his knowledge of God's character.

But sometimes the question has behind it an assumption that we know more about what is right and wrong, loving and unloving, than God himself and God is being called to account. In this case the questioner is far from humble. In fact, they are putting themselves in the position of God.

Even those who are seeking to defend God sometimes fall into this trap. "God is good because he always does what is right". But who decides what is right, if it is not God himself?

We learn what is right and wrong, good and bad, loving and unloving from God. God does not love because its the right thing to do. God loves because he is love. He doesn't tell us to love because by doing so we will conform to some cosmic order of right and wrong. He tells us to love because he is love, and as creatures made in his image we are to be like him.

This isn't an easy concept to grasp. It may seem as if we are saying that right and wrong, good and bad are merely arbitrary terms for what God does and what God approves of, versus what he does not do and does not approve of. And in a sense that is, in fact, true.

The alternative, however, is to argue that God is to be judged by some outside standard. If that were the case, he would not be sovereign, he would not be free and he would not be God. If there were some universal moral law which philosophers or religious thinkers could study and describe, without reference to God, then we could only describe God as good if he met the requirements of that law.

Of course many philosophers have attempted to describe such a "natural law" or "universal moral code". Most religions, whether having one god, many gods or none, have a moral code. But if God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is real (and I'm assuming throughout this article that he is), and sovereign, then these laws or codes are to be evaluated by his character and decrees, not vice versa. We determine what is good, true, righteous, loving and so on by looking at God.

But if God acts righteously because his nature is righteousness, if he acts lovingly because he is love, if he judges with justice and mercy because he is just and merciful, does that mean that he really has no choice but to act in those ways? How then is he "free"?

Perhaps an analogy is the best way to understand this. By it's nature, fire is hot. Fire is not "free" to turn water into ice. No-one expects it to. Of course, fire has no ability to choose it's own actions. A better analogy might be a man or woman who is passionately in love. Such a person is "free" to hate the one they love, but to do so would be unthinkable. It would be quite out of character for them to do anything to deliberately harm or demean their lover.

God is totally free. We need to grasp this and rejoice in it if we want to be free ourselves. We want our freedom, but at times we resent God's freedom. We want to be free from all that controls us, including God, yet we would like to exert some control over God. So we choose our actions and frame our prayers in a way that we hope will 'persuade' God to do what we want him to.

If we behave this way toward another human being, our behaviour is called manipulation. When we try to manipulate God, it's called idolatry. We become our own idol. What we soon discover is that our self is a very difficult idol to serve. Real freedom begins in the recognition of God's freedom.

*an analogy used by C.S Lewis

This post is one of a series on what it means to be free in Christ:
Free in Christ - introduction

Choosing the right master

God's freedom and ours

Jesus and freedom

Going beyond personal freedom

Freed from the fear of death

Fools for Christ

Reputations