This week our pastor was gone on a mission trip. So they declared it "Youth Sunday" and had the young people from the church leading the service. Our congregation is small, and last year at this time we had only two families with teenagers in the church. I had the only children. Two more have become regulars since. So it wasn't at all the madhouse you might envision if you attend a church with lots of teenagers.
The 17-year-old Filipino boy who gave the message preached on a subject that has been a major part of my search for true Christianity. The "Prosperity Gospel." He pointed out how many Christians today think that evangelism means telling people all their problems will disappear if they trust in Jesus, and how baseless that concept is if we actually read Scripture. How that what faith truly means, is having the peace within to bear up under the trials that are a part of our everyday lot as humans on this planet. If Jesus had meant to bring us wealth, his disciples would have had fame and fortune, not prison cells and poverty and worse. He brings us hope, peace, forgiveness, and love. The intangible things that make the rest of this difficult life worth living.
I have often thought this past year about the Lord's Prayer and its requests. I think it shows in a nutshell what God feels we should expect from Him: daily bread, forgiveness from our trespasses, and deliverance from evil. That's all it asks for. And we aren't promised those things in this life either. If we receive them, it is only by His grace.
I wish the story of the widow's mite was more elaborated on. We tend to assume that because Jesus commended her decision to give her last coin to the temple, she received temporal abundance shortly thereafter. But we have no reason to believe that, in fact. Maybe she went home and starved to death. Does that mean she wasn't blessed? Every Christian who has ever lived knows the story of the widow. She is immortalized in human history. Blessings come in many forms.
Someone gave my husband a copy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." We read it and then bought the movie. (The book was better; the movie left out several pivotal moments, probably because they would not have been appropriate for visual depiction.) I felt I could relate to the father's feelings as he struggled with the reality he was faced with vs. the faith he once felt. He chose to believe that God must not exist, and tried to find another way to depict good and its importance for his son. In sharp contrast to that eventual conclusion is the flashback to one of his happiest moments as a young man, when he thought that "if he were God, he would have made the world just so."
Why do we so quickly accuse God when humans wreak destruction on His beautiful creation? I struggle with it, too. I can't understand why God didn't stop the abuse my husband suffered as a child, when he begged and pleaded and prayed with all the sincerity and faith a small child can muster. Just like Jesus said we are supposed to. Nevertheless, it was his mother's responsibility to stop it. His grandmother's responsibility to prevent it. They were the human beings to whom God entrusted this new life, and they failed to fulfil their obligations. God had the ability, but chose to let the consequences of their irresponsibility, and of the abuser's evil heart, play out. Maybe we don't have a right to blame God for that. But just like we feel better knowing there is a Creator out there, we feel better making it His fault when we (not as individuals, but as the human race) screw up.
I think "The Road" is eerily prophetic. Aliens aren't going to take over this planet; robots aren't going to destroy the human race. Our own ugly selfishness will eat us alive. As I mentioned once a while back, evil is not the opposite of good in the way that we typically think of opposites. It is merely the absence of good. Like heat and cold, light and dark. Humanity minus God (in other words, minus a respect for and belief in God) equals evil. Uninhibited cruelty, destruction, and uselessness. The curse of intelligence and free will.
The 17-year-old Filipino boy who gave the message preached on a subject that has been a major part of my search for true Christianity. The "Prosperity Gospel." He pointed out how many Christians today think that evangelism means telling people all their problems will disappear if they trust in Jesus, and how baseless that concept is if we actually read Scripture. How that what faith truly means, is having the peace within to bear up under the trials that are a part of our everyday lot as humans on this planet. If Jesus had meant to bring us wealth, his disciples would have had fame and fortune, not prison cells and poverty and worse. He brings us hope, peace, forgiveness, and love. The intangible things that make the rest of this difficult life worth living.
I have often thought this past year about the Lord's Prayer and its requests. I think it shows in a nutshell what God feels we should expect from Him: daily bread, forgiveness from our trespasses, and deliverance from evil. That's all it asks for. And we aren't promised those things in this life either. If we receive them, it is only by His grace.
I wish the story of the widow's mite was more elaborated on. We tend to assume that because Jesus commended her decision to give her last coin to the temple, she received temporal abundance shortly thereafter. But we have no reason to believe that, in fact. Maybe she went home and starved to death. Does that mean she wasn't blessed? Every Christian who has ever lived knows the story of the widow. She is immortalized in human history. Blessings come in many forms.
Someone gave my husband a copy of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road." We read it and then bought the movie. (The book was better; the movie left out several pivotal moments, probably because they would not have been appropriate for visual depiction.) I felt I could relate to the father's feelings as he struggled with the reality he was faced with vs. the faith he once felt. He chose to believe that God must not exist, and tried to find another way to depict good and its importance for his son. In sharp contrast to that eventual conclusion is the flashback to one of his happiest moments as a young man, when he thought that "if he were God, he would have made the world just so."
Why do we so quickly accuse God when humans wreak destruction on His beautiful creation? I struggle with it, too. I can't understand why God didn't stop the abuse my husband suffered as a child, when he begged and pleaded and prayed with all the sincerity and faith a small child can muster. Just like Jesus said we are supposed to. Nevertheless, it was his mother's responsibility to stop it. His grandmother's responsibility to prevent it. They were the human beings to whom God entrusted this new life, and they failed to fulfil their obligations. God had the ability, but chose to let the consequences of their irresponsibility, and of the abuser's evil heart, play out. Maybe we don't have a right to blame God for that. But just like we feel better knowing there is a Creator out there, we feel better making it His fault when we (not as individuals, but as the human race) screw up.
I think "The Road" is eerily prophetic. Aliens aren't going to take over this planet; robots aren't going to destroy the human race. Our own ugly selfishness will eat us alive. As I mentioned once a while back, evil is not the opposite of good in the way that we typically think of opposites. It is merely the absence of good. Like heat and cold, light and dark. Humanity minus God (in other words, minus a respect for and belief in God) equals evil. Uninhibited cruelty, destruction, and uselessness. The curse of intelligence and free will.
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