This blog will be more philosophical than other posts as I
have been contemplating life and its unfairness. I usually avoid talking about
my divorce because I do not choose to dwell on the negative and I also am usually
less open about my faith in God, but today I will not be. So consider yourself
warned!
I, like many other Christians, recently went and saw God’s Not Dead in the theater. And while
it was encouraging to hear some of the arguments for the existence of God, I
was also incredibly disappointed. In the movie the college professor had faced
a devastating loss and in his wrestling with God he turned away from God. He
made the same choice many people make and it is a choice many Christians have
to make at many times throughout their lives. But what the film never talked
about and one of the things I think is missing in many Christian’s relationships
with unbelievers is transparency about our wrestling
matches with God.
I have wrestled with God. My deepest wrestling with God
occurred after I found out my husband had been unfaithful to me. I had prayed
for him and for us, I tried to love him unconditionally, I tried to encourage
him while he struggled with a deep depression and still he was unfaithful. I
was working full-time and had two teenagers at home so I was hurt and tired. I
remember thinking one day – in a very detached manner, as I was not angry, just
numb – I wonder if God is real. I grew up being taught about God by my parents
who were taught about God by their parents. Did we all buy into a lie? I did
not question the reality of Jesus or the Bible; I knew that if God was real
then Jesus and the Bible were real too. But I did wonder about God and I
continued to wonder about God for the next couple of months. It was no coincidence that I was taking an
apologetic class at the time and I found this quote, “Conscience reveals to
us a moral law whose source cannot be found in the natural world, thus pointing
to a supernatural Lawgiver." C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity
Because I had grown up being taught about God I had also
been taught that all people were sinners. I did not have any difficulty
accepting this as a reality. Every day in the news there were stories of
parents doing horrible things to their kids, adults enslaving other adults and
children, and people killing other people over trivial things – the reality of
sin and people being sinners I did not question. There are those who argue that
man hasn’t always been bad – man started off good and has gotten progressively
worse. But the Code of Hammurabi, written somewhere around 1700 B.C., a point
we would consider to be at the beginning of civilization, seems to indicate a
need for rules. Because the Code
exists it seems logical to assume that mankind was not basically good. In my
questioning the reality of God I was considering all these things that I knew
to be true and the C.S. Lewis quote was always at the back of my mind. One day I
was in the break room at work listening to two of my co-workers – one of them
believed in God and the other was vocal in her disregard for God. They were
talking about their relationships with their boyfriends and the person who did
not believe in God made the comment that she would kill (figuratively not
literally) her boyfriend if he ever cheated on her. Then everything clicked. At
that point I knew God was real. A moral expectation from someone who didn’t
believe in God could only mean that there is a moral law. And with man’s
proclivity to do whatever he wants regardless of who gets hurt, the only way
there could be any moral law is if God was real. The C.S. Lewis quote went from
being a challenging thought to a reality for me that day.
Is it wrong to admit that I wrestle with God? I think if
we don’t admit to wrestling with God we are lying to ourselves and our lack of
sincerity and transparency is apparent to those around us. Does it make me weak
to admit that I wrestle with God? I suppose in some people’s eyes it does make
me weak, but the truth is that those who attack transparency show the depth of
their weakness and insecurity - it takes strength to admit questions and
uncertainties.
My faith in God is very important to me, but it is also
important to me that it is not a blind, mindless faith. Because of this it is
likely that I will always wrestle with God. I will wrestle with the reality of
good, godly, loving people dying and selfish, abusive people living, I will
wrestle with the horrors of human trafficking, women being raped and killed,
organizations and institutions who do not protect the vulnerable, and “godly”
people who do ungodly things. But never again will I wrestle with the reality
of God.
