This cartoon from
the November 25, 2015 issue of The Christian
Century is not only an appropriate counterpoint to the unholy alliance of
sports and religion in our culture, but also to a presumptuous view of God
predicated on making our personal comfort and convenience the highest good and
holding God accountable for satisfying us. From internet memes promising God’s
blessing for reposting it to blatant prosperity gospel preaching, much of popular
Christianity reduces God to our petty gofer, as though that evinced faith. Job’s
words are prophetic corrective to such narcissism bordering on idolatry. “Shall
we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job
2:10)
In the six months
since finishing my last interim pastorate, I have prayed diligently for another
congregation to serve and to discern God’s presence and guidance on my path.
Recently someone asked if I had a call yet. To which I responded, “No, and it
doesn’t look like that’s on the horizon, so we’re recalculating our path with
changing objectives.” The person who asked, chuckled a bit and said, “Usually I
hear pious people cast that as God is changing my call. I found your candor
refreshing.” I can’t say that I feel particularly refreshed in this process,
but having received and thanked God for many wonderful gifts in 40+ years of
pastoral ministry, should I now blame God for this uncertain, uncomfortable,
confusing season?
Please understand,
I do believe God called me not just into pastoral ministry in general but also
to specific communities of service. Having said that, I am also very aware of
painful seasons on this journey, often direct outcomes of human brokenness, my
own and that of those with whom I have served. My understanding of God’s
sovereignty is not that God orchestrates daily details to teach me lessons or
manipulate my route, but that our human free will is not greater than God’s
sovereignty, so that as life’s joys and disasters come in the natural order of
things, God’s redemptive purposes will not be frustrated, and if I am
spiritually alert, I may be allowed to discern God’s presence even in the dark.
As with much of
what I have written, I am not so much seeking to teach or preach to others as
to sort out my own thinking, yearning to discern the nudges of the Holy Spirit.
So I give thanks for serendipitous provisions of financial means to keep on top
of costs of living without implying, for example, that God made certain people
die at specific times so I could get an honorarium for conducting their
funerals. That would be perverse.
My family and I
still have to make important decisions, not just about daily details but also
about the direction our journeys are to go in this transition from one stage of
life into the next. We must make those decisions by being as alert to possible
to the whispers of the Holy Spirit bellowing in our hearts, knowing that God is
much more concerned with the kind of person I am and how that influences my
decisions that with the specific choices I make. No matter where I am or how I
make the money to pay our bills, I need to be growing into “maturity, the
measure of the full stature of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13) I need to beware of “selfish
ambition” but look “to the interests of others” letting the Holy Spirit
cultivate in me “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus” … emptying myself and
taking on the form of a slave. (Philippians 2:3-7)
No comments:
Post a Comment