Today I was mad at God. At least I thought I was mad at Him. I know for sure I was at least mad, at something or someone. Maybe it was me…
I find myself sometimes mingling with groups of people who seem to have the mindset that God co-ordinates all things. This used to be the way I thought. Then I saw the inner workings of mental illness, lived through the traumatic initial suicide attempt by my husband, had someone threaten to take our daughter, nearly lost my own mind, lost my husband, and am now trying to pick up the shattered pieces of what remains.
All this on top of living in a blatantly broken world.
“Dear God” is a song that I first heard on Sarah McLachlan’s album Rarities, B-Sides and Other Stuff. It was first put out by a band called XTC in the 1980′s. It is one man’s take on why he does not believe in God. The song starts out talking about the people God made starve because they can’t get enough food from Him. Next, wars and fighting are caused by people who can’t agree on what to think about God. It asks if God made disease, and takes a jab that “us crazy humans wrote (the Bible.)”
It is a passionate song that points the finger between God and all that’s gone wrong in the world. It ends with this rant:
“I won’t believe in heaven and hell.
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well.
No pearly gates, no thorny crown.
You’re always letting us humans down.
The wars you bring, the babes you drown.
Those lost at sea and never found,
And it’s the same the whole world ’round.
The hurts I see helps to compound
That Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody’s unholy hoax
And if you’re up there you’d perceive
That my heart’s here upon my sleeve.
If there’s one thing I don’t believe in…..it’s you.”
I’ve always been puzzled by one aspect of this song. It states the hard questions, and for that I appreciate its raw, emotional, transparency. But if there is no God then how can we blame Him for anything? If we can’t blame God because He doesn’t exist, then who is accountable? No God and no devil means we can only look to ourselves as responsible, so why is this song angry at God?
The other possibility is that there is a God and there is a devil. If there is a God, the hard questions remain. What kind of God is He? Is He the kind of God who takes joy in our torment? Does He steal our food so that we starve? Does He rile us up and confuse our minds so that we can’t agree on what to think about God? Or is He the God who gave us free will, and left much of the rest of history in our hands?
When I first heard this “Dear God” song, as Sarah McLachlan sang the line, “…all the people that you made in your image, see them starving on their feet, ’cause they don’t get enough to eat from God.”, I remember thinking, isn’t there enough food in the world to feed everyone? Isn’t there enough creativity to find solutions to war? Isn’t there enough money to bring aid to anyone who’s in need? When some of the richest people in the world are ruling over the poorest countries, exploiting their own people, is the problem God, or that when He gave humans free will some of us decided to better the world, and others chose to seriously screw it up?
My initial reaction today was anger towards God for my shortcomings. If I think of God as the coordinator of all, this thought alone angers me. It angers me that a Divine Coordinator allows war, drugs, hate, death, disease and torment. That the innocent should suffer, and the just be persecuted. Sure, it’s easy to see Him in the good, but what kind of God coordinates these kinds of things? If I look at my own life, just the past five years alone, I’m faced with trying to process all that has transpired.
When I am bombarded with messages like, “God opened this door. God coordinated this conversation. God did this. God did that.” I have to ask, did He? And if God paralyzed me in a car accident tomorrow could I be so giddy about His divine coordination then?
My agitation grows when I hear others speak this way because it is like hearing myself, five years ago. Who I was five years ago volunteered for this journey. Five years later what bothers me about this line of thinking is hearing it used so lightly. It scares me that I had come to see God in so many things, I then had to see Him in everything. At some point His voice, and my voice, became the same.
The coincidences in my life, what I use to call “God stories”, seemed ridiculously well-coordinated. How could they not have been coordinated by God? Then the worst happened. Prophetic words spoken over my husband were not fulfilled. My husband did not overcome his addictions or his mental illness in this life. Our marriage failed. I failed. I did not have enough love to resurrect us. And then he died.
Was it that the prophecies were untrue? Or that my husband veered off the path? Was his mental illness a slight from God for his sin? Or the result of poor nutritional health, and exposure to the chemicals he ingested, or the pollution that fogs our land? Was my lack of love from a lack of faith? A lack of prayer? Or from a lack of setting healthy boundaries earlier on in my life, the result of which is limited capacity to handle stress?
Whatever the answers, the ultimate fall out of these events changed me. I can no longer say I see God in everything. I also can’t say that He’s not. Perhaps He sets out a path He hopes we will follow. Then He leaves us to our free will to make the choice.
I tried for a long time to control my husband. To keep him from harm. To help him understand the cause and effect of his choices. It nearly killed me. Then one day I let him go. I gave the free will back to him that was always his to have. What happened next was a downward spiral that ended in his death.
Surely God is a risk taker, for giving us free will must have been His biggest venture.
Someone once pointed out to me that God’s first living creation was vegetation. Predictable, obedient, vegetative plants. That went pretty well. Then He created us.
God may be in all things, but I have a significant role to play. A role I will one day be held accountable for. Until then, what settles my anger about all that is broken, and all that’s gone wrong, is not the possibility of His coordination in all that I see. It is the probability, the future hope, of His redemption.
