Couldn't sleep, watched the sun come up with endless coffee...decided that I don't know much. read this from my very much missed friend...seems he didn't know much either....maybe that's not such a bad thing after all....maybe
"I Don't Know"
by Mike Yaconelli
Dear youth worker,
Please tell me why God allowed innocent people to be murdered on September 11, 2001?
Answer?
I don’t know.
Where was God?
I don’t know.
When Leslie Weatherhead, a minister in London during the Second World War, was asked by a member in his congregation where God was when his son was killed in a bombing raid, Weatherhead replied, "I guess he was where he was when his son was killed."
And where was that?
I don’t know.
Isn’t "I don’t know" too ambiguous? Isn’t "I don’t know" an unconvincing way to convince young people Christianity is true?
Actually, "I don’t know" confirms one critical truth about Christianity…it’s a mystery!
Jesus loves us, right?
Of course.
So if he loves us, he protects us, right?
If he loves us…he is with us.
Jesus can heal, can’t he? And perform miracles?
Of course. Just not very often.
Why?
I don’t know.
What about God’s will?
My youth director says we’re supposed to seek God’s will. There are lots of verses in the Bible that tell us to do God’s will, aren’t there? God does have a will, right?
Absolutely.
Trouble is God’s will is not like a to-do list. It’s more like an undecipherable code. The Bible definitely gives us some clues about the code of God’s will, which means we can figure out part of it; but, because it’s God, we will never crack the code.
Clues?
Yeah, like, follow me, serve me, love me, live by my commandments, point people to me.
That’s it? Just follow me, serve me, love me and trust me?
That’s about it.
What do you mean "that’s about it?"
You don’t want to know.
Yes I do.
We get a cross.
Cross????? What does that mean?
I don’t know.
But God does heal people, doesn’t he?
Certainly.
And miracles do happen, don’t they.
Right.
So we can count on God helping us, can’t we?
We can count on God being God.
Which means…??
I don’t know.
And what does that mean?
It means we can trust God if we lost someone in the WTC or if they survived.
It means we can trust God when we have cancer and when we’re healed.
We can trust God if we survive a natural disaster or if we don’t.
We can trust God when we get a glimpse of Divine will and when we don’t.
We can trust God in the answers and the questions, in the good and the bad, in the light and the dark, when we’re winning and when we’re losing.
We can trust God even when the Truth doesn’t answer all our questions or leaves us with even more questions.
And, most importantly, just beyond our "I don’t know’s," Jesus is waiting with open arms to snuggle us in the mystery of his love.
14 comments:
oh boy. more of this please.
here's something else, well expressed, that i think changed my life when i read it. i often think of it.:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1385738,00.html
and hey we're back to the cold and broken hallelujah.
and thank god for that.
PS twas i removing those posts. someday i'll be able to use a computer properly. mysteries indeed....
if the above link doesn't work, stick a:
,00.html
on the end.
now i've made it look like you've got 5 comments when really they're all from me and two of them don't exist.... apologies. i hope you're not too disappointed!
must confess i was slightly surprised there were so many comments so quickly...sadly can't seem to locate the guardian piece - one day I'll figure out computers!
Will hook out some more Yac from the vaults
Great pic of him...
Yeah, good post.
I believe it, but I still want it all worked out. Clear peramiters to function within. If i grasp just a thread of this, I will be a lot better off.
Glad I found your blog!
I've often wondered at some peoples ability to keep faith in God when their children have died / been killed ... I'm not sure mine would stay the distance - I read this, it makes sense and is comforting, but thats reading from a safe place ... I guess maybe it's about never really knowing until you experience something - and perhaps I am grateful I know relatively little if that is the case
computers- not good for me. but i am a master of 'cut-and-paste'... here it is:
giles fraser: 'god is not the puppet master'
Rev Dr Giles Fraser
Saturday January 8, 2005
The Guardian
Churches are usually packed for the funeral of a baby. But this funeral had just four mourners: the baby's young mother, her best friend, and the baby's two sisters. For whatever reason, there was no wider circle of family and friends to offer emotional support. The tiny coffin was dwarfed by the freezing cold emptiness of my Anglo-Catholic church. Blood ran down the mother's arm. In utter desperation she had scored the name of the child into her arm with a knife just before the service.
That night, and for some weeks after, I lost my faith. Oxford theology hadn't prepared me for the realities of parish life in the Black Country. I thought of WH Auden: "Was it to meet such grinning evidence we left our richly odoured ignorance. Was the triumphant answer to be this? The pilgrim way has led to the abyss."
Since then, I have sat through endless undergraduate tutorials on the so-called "problem of evil". If God is all-powerful and all loving, how can suffering exist? The essays that are most difficult to stomach are those that seek some clever logical trick to get God off the hook, as if the cries of human suffering could be treated like a fascinating philosophical Rubik's cube in need of an ingenious solution. Such "solutions" include: the universe is set up like some cosmic Gordonstoun where suffering makes us better people. Or - without suffering the world would become some sort of toy world where nothing has moral weight. Or - (believe it or not) devils are responsible, not God. Of course, none of them work, and one has to question the moral health of those whose only concern in the face of great tragedy is to buy God some dubious alibi.
So why am I still a Christian? Because, in part, the intellectual problem of suffering does not accurately depict the reality of human pain and how we respond to it. It is significant that in more than 10 years of being a priest, of taking heartbreaking funerals and of being face to face with much human tragedy, no one has seen fit to ask me how God and suffering can co-exist. Yes, there is the burning question "why?" - and sometimes it's spat out with great bitterness - but it's not a tutorial-type question as much as a cry of deep despair. This is not the sort of suffering that can be traded as an intellectual commodity in some wider game of atheist versus believer. And far from being a reason for people to take their leave of God, many find that the language of God is the only language sufficient to express their pain and grief, even rage.
As Rowan Williams put it, quoting one of his predecessors as archbishop of Wales who had himself lost a child: "All I know is that the words in my Bible about God's promise to be alongside us have never lost their meaning for me. And now we have to work in God's name for the future."
But this does not offer the Christian worldview unlimited protection from the stormy blast of the tsunami. Christians cannot go on speaking about prayer as if it were an alternative way of getting things done in the world, or about divine power as if God were the puppet master of the universe. What is so terrifying about the Christmas story is that it offers us nothing but the protection of a vulnerable baby, of a God so pathetic that we need to protect Him. The idea of an omnipotent God who can calm the sea and defeat our enemies turns out to be a part of that great fantasy of power that has corrupted the Christian imagination for centuries. Instead, Christians are called to recognise that the essence of the divine being is not power but compassion and love. And it's this love, and this love only, that whispers to me in defiance of the darkness: all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
Wow! Top Post!( I mean comment)Mister Tumnus..
amen, amen.
Thanks Mr T
This is better than my post - i remember reading it now quite some time ago and it moving me very much - one of those spiritual depth charges i go on about (which I'm sure Stocki invented). thank you for posting it, it's kept me a wak for some time...paticularly the following:
So why am I still a Christian? Because, in part, the intellectual problem of suffering does not accurately depict the reality of human pain and how we respond to it
the language of God is the only language sufficient to express their pain and grief, even rage.
Christians cannot go on speaking about prayer as if it were an alternative way of getting things done in the world, or about divine power as if God were the puppet master of the universe. What is so terrifying about the Christmas story is that it offers us nothing but the protection of a vulnerable baby, of a God so pathetic that we need to protect Him.
mr Monk
am glad you found it too
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