so i’m sitting here eating raisins and drinking water from an old peanut butter jar, and i’m thinking about a movie that i watched a few years ago. this movie that hit theaters was a ‘christian movie’, and let me tell you people, the christians, they ate it up… mostly.
i had a problem with this movie, sketchy acting and accents that i have an aversion to aside, it really upset me how they portrayed christianity. i mean, i know christianity is portrayed poorly all the time in different ways- by him and her and me and you and them, but that’s not the point i’m making. the point is this, they made it seem as though if you loved God, all of the sudden life would be easy. things would be good. if you couldn’t have babies, instantly you’d become pregnant, and you’d have babies, if your football team sucked big time, you’d start winning trophies.
this makes me sad.
i have known many, and by many, i literally mean many women who have wanted so badly to be pregnant, and these women were lovely, these women loved jesus. so can i just say, that if it were that simple, if there were some spiritual moral code or formula that people could follow so that they could be pregnant, or so they could have success, then we’d have a lot more pregnant and rich people. also competitive sports would go extinct like dinosaurs because no one could loose, they all loved jesus too much.
now, bear with me, because you know me and my details and rambling, i’m getting somewhere… wait i’ think i’m here.
i’m afraid that my last blog came close to being a lot like that movie, which shall remain nameless.
as i pondered what i wrote, it occurred to me that i made having a proper perspective of God sound as if the “attainment” of that equaled having it all together, or like it would be relatively easy to do in the first place. this bothers me, because i don’t think it’s true. i wish it were true, and sometimes it troubles me deeply that it’s not true, but the reality of it is that it’s not.
just because i say i love jesus, and that God scares me (in a reverent way, that is) doesn’t mean that my life is easy. i think that those wonderful things i talked about, finding ultimate satisfaction and fulfillment in having a proper perspective of God, these can happen and they are beautiful things and they are true things. but taken together, they do not equate ‘the easy life’… that is, unless you believe in all that health wealth, and prosperity talk, in which case, you have another blog comin’ to you sista.
i’ll be blatently honest here, last year was one of the crappiest years ever. i felt like i was taken through the ringer over and over again, and when i finally thought i was out, i put a stress fracture in my hip, and then i was in the ringer again… and then when i thought i was out again, some kid on a skateboard made me fall off my bike and made me very very sore, which may sound non-ringer-ish, but trust me, it’s kind of like tetris; all the mismatched pieces just keep piling up and it doesn’t even matter the shape anymore- whether it’s a cube or a twisted piece, every one is bad and every piece just adds to the accumulating pile of crap, that was my life. and this is all said not to complain, because lots of people have way worse things happen then i have, but the point is even when i try to love jesus enough, even when i try to check off all of my morality and goodness boxes, things don’t necessarily get easy… all the pieces don’t start fitting so that the piled up crap just disappears.
and sometimes, no matter how much you love jesus, or how reverent, or afraid, or good you are, when the pieces aren’t fitting together, and everything does start piling up, you blame him. you blame him because the world seems so ugly and lonely, and because you can’t stop crying, and because it’s easier to be mad then it is to be sad.
i don’t like admitting that i blame God, but sometimes i do.
if everything was ideal and everything was easy things wouldn’t be like that, we would never have to blame God because whenever bad things happened, there he’d be holding us tight, answering all our questions, calming our fears, and quieting our doubt. does he do these things? yes! double yes! but every time? i don’t know… do we always feel that security? no.
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so this is the real story, not the christian script for the christian movie of life. this is really what it’s like to follow God and to revere him and to fear him and to love him. it can be messy, it can look irreverent when you blame, and it can be scary when you doubt, and there will be tears and there will be “why” and “how” questions that may never be answered.
but this isn’t the whole side of the story either because there is also happiness and laughter, there is security and peace, and in some mysterious way there is ultimate fulfillment, some things are true not because we feel it, but because they are. sometimes all you get are pieces that fit together, and the crap isn’t piling up and you are not being put through the ringer. life is good, birds chirp in the distance, your socks are striped, and you love life and God.
so i had to be clear on the balance, because the more i live life the more i learn that there is always balance in this mystery that is God. so even though it doesn’t seem ideal, it is, because christians have the beautiful securtiy of knowing that even when all the crap piles up, (because it will), at the end, when the “game is over”, we know that it’s actually just beginning.
