Jesus

Where Was God?

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These posts are always a lot of fun to write because they address one of the most common questions non-believers have: “If God exists, why do bad things happen?”

Bad things… very bad things, mildly bad things, genocide-level bad things, bad things that shake a nation.

Of course I’m referring to the Charleston shooting.

Why did God let a man enter a church and kill eight people, some of them grandmothers, if he’s so real? It doesn’t get any more religious than sitting in a place of worship and praying to your god than what happened that night. There is literally nowhere else those people could have been that would have made them closer to God. And he didn’t save them.

Why? Why didn’t he stop it? The Bible is full of examples of God’s earth-shaking power–literally earth quaking–and he couldn’t stop the shooter than night?

Oh… so you mean to tell me he just DIDN’T stop the shooter. He could have because he’s God, but it didn’t suit his purposes so he didn’t so much as send a cherubim to blow dust in the shooter’s eyes, giving all those people time to flee.

This is one of the many, many times it’s hard to be a Christian, or any kind of spiritual believer, for that matter. Not only are we stuck trying to make sense of it, we’re stuck defending ourselves to the non-believers in our lives. No one was rejoicing over the news that eight people were savagely murdered by a man who said he almost didn’t go through with it because they were so nice to him, but I know plenty of non-believers who are asking the same question:

“Where the hell was your God on that one?”

The answer is I don’t know. Was he busy? Is he not really as powerful as I think he is? Is evil stronger than God?

NO. Of course not.

So here’s what I do know: God’s will is perfect. Ours is not. If the events of this evil place suit his purposes, then it shall be done, no matter what we think of it. We can’t see the eternal, but he can. So this is when I have to sift through the hurt to find any shred of good.

Good: the people of Charleston have come together like never before.

Good: whites and blacks have joined hands at that church to honor the ones who were killed and to say, “It has to stop.”

Good: a decrepit rag that symbolizes fear and hate in so many people’s hearts has finally come down from the government offices.

Good: Eight people who loved the Lord with all their hearts, and who looked the shooter in the face and let him do his worst because their Bible says to turn the other cheek, are sitting in the bosom of the Lord right now. It hurts to lose them, but they have attained the very thing they have prayed for their entire lives: salvation.

It’s so hard to remember these things when evil shows its face, and it’s even harder to force yourself to so callously say, “Those victims are the lucky ones, they’re with God now.” But that’s what we must do when evil tries to get the best of God. Remember that he has a plan, and it is good.

 

Of course I’m going to have to say SOMETHING…

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The Internet is currently awash in both love and hate right now. Rejoicing advocates and friends are painting the World Wide Web with rainbows and celebration posts while hate-mongers declare this to be the end of days. 

Yes, SCOTUS has handed down a decision that declares the legal institution of marriage to be available to all couples. Not threesomes, not human-goat partnerships, certainly not adult-child molestation…just two consenting adults whose genitalia happens to look similar. 

Is it an abomination unto the Lord? I don’t know. He didn’t consult me. 

Is my marriage or my status as a believer affected? No. 

Has my Bible been ripped from my hands and burned on the trash heap? No. 

Has anything at all about my life changed? No. 

So why are so many Christians so furious?

Because they’ve lost their privileged status. They no longer “own” America, and it’s pissing them off. They’re being forced to look around and acknowledge that they’re not the only ones here, and they can’t stand it. 

Face it, folks…this isn’t a Christian country. The founding fathers never intended it to be, but more importantly, God himself doesn’t intend for it to be. God has a Christian country waiting for all of us, and our job as his believers is to bring as many people as we can when we go. We can’t do that if we spread hatred and nastiness. 

We can’t reach out to non-believers if we don’t open our hearts and acknowledge them as people. This decision didn’t change a single thing about my life except this: there is now more opportunity to spread the gospel because the government has just officially recognized an entire segment if the population as being humans. You can’t hear the word and believe if you’re not bring recognized as one of the Lord’s own. 

We have work to do, Christians. It’s to love. 

God Don’t Make Mistakes

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“God don’t make mistakes.”

If I have to hear that one more time from a backwoods hillbilly who’s suddenly become an authority on what God does and does not do, I’m going to need s lot of forgiveness in a hurry. 

Of course, when I hear these words, it’s from someone blasting Caitlyn Jenner for her not-recent decision. They’re making this pronouncement to indicate that God made the person we knew as Bruce, and Caitlyn had no right to interfere with that decision.

Let’s break it down. 

Once again, for the millionth time about the hundredth issue, your/my beliefs in God don’t dictate others’ choices. Whether it’s abortion of gay marriage or buying beer on Sundays, if we’re forcing others to conform to the standards of our beliefs simply because we hold those standards dear, we are NOT welcoming others to the Lord. We are putting the thou-shalt-nots ahead of God’s love. 

More importantly, we have a fundamental inability to mind our own business and shut our own mouths. If we have a religious problem with Caitlyn Jenner’s choice…who cares? Certainly not Ms. Jenner, who obviously did not ask our opinions or permission. All we’re doing by speaking out is letting others know how intolerant we are. 

Finally, God might not make mistakes but he does change his mind. Aside from the Biblical passages in which he literally changed his mind, we have everyday examples to follow. People who were at death’s door who make miraculous recoveries, people whose marriages are on the brink of collapse when one party makes a dramatic change and saves the relationship. Who’s to say that wasn’t a divine mind change? And who’s to say that God didn’t change his mind and finally put it on Caitlyn’s heart that it was finally time to let Bruce go?

There is so much good we can do as Christians when an event like this makes headlines, but only if our first priority is to demonstrate love and acceptance. If we’re waiting with baited breath to demonstrate hate in God’s name, we’ve failed our brother or sister and we’ve failed God. 

Why I Won’t Be Watching the Duggar Interview

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Yes, America is waiting with baited breath for Fox News’ resident spiteful b**** (sorry, I should have said ONE of Fox News’ resident spiteful b****es) to sit down with the Duggars and ask that they explain themselves. The interview with the parents was slated for Wednesday night but the interview with two of the victims will be aired–making the Duggar family even more money for letting people gawk at their strange ways while judging them on Twitter–Friday night for our prime time enjoyment, a veritable Roman circus of sideshow freakhood.

Here’s where I stand on the Duggar scandal:

If you made a mistake, if you committed some sin, yes… as hard as it is to explain to non-believers, once you truly repent of that sin and confess it to God, it is done. It’s over. It’s forgiven.

And that is the only thing that keeps me going each day, knowing that every single screw up in my life (even the ones I haven’t thought to do yet!) are forgiven and washed clean.

But here’s my other take on it: we can rant all we want to about the hypocrisy of being a confessed child molester then going on to become one of the loudest voices against tolerance of the LGBTQ community. Josh Duggar is an a**hole for knowing he had this sin buried nicely in his past–and it’s allowed to be buried and forgotten if he’s truly confessed and repented–and then daring to blame the ills of society on people he doesn’t like.

Here’s where it’s really hard to be a Christian: Josh Duggar, flaming jerk and piece of human filth that he is, is forgiven. He does not have to hang his head in shame for the rest of his life and never have a home, a family, or a career because of a sin that God has already promised is washed clean. Jesus died so Josh Duggar could molest little girls, then go on to have a lucrative career as a TV personality and professional loudmouth.

It hurts to even write those words, but it’s true. Look it up.

The real reason I dislike the Duggars? They’re horrible ambassadors for Christ. They espouse the extremes of our faith, they paint a freakish picture of true faith and spirituality, and they espouse hatred and discrimination for people that GOD made. The LGBTQ community that they’ve worked so hard to squash is made up of people who were formed in God’s image, whose bones God knew before they knit in their mothers’ wombs. The non-believers who watch the overbreeders and woman-haters on TV are pointing their fingers at all Christians because of the Duggars.

Yes, they should all hang their heads in shame, not because of a sin and crime that they committed and covered up years ago, but because they are turning people away from God with every televised word that comes out of their mouths. Every long-haired, long-skirted, “courtship” episode tells non-Christian viewers that THIS is what it means to follow God, and they’re wrong.

There is nothing that the Duggars can say in this much-anticipated molestation interview that will lead anyone to Christ, and they should be ashamed of themselves for smearing the name of the Lord.

What Are You Trying To Say, God?

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Many years ago, my husband and I were at a crazy point in our lives, let alone our marriages. No, things between US were fine. It was the typical young couple stuff, though: I was teaching full-time and had just finished my Master’s, and my husband had finished his bachelor’s after years of selflessly working all day and then taking a full courseload at night, driving an hour each way to school in order to do it. With our degrees behind us and our jobs settling down, we decided the time was right to start a family.

And it didn’t go so well at first. Don’t get me wrong, all the attempting was nice, but there were no results.

Then one morning, I had a revelation. It wasn’t the kind where God speaks to you in a booming voice or where angels come down with a banner. No burning bushes, no tongues of fire… just the knowledge of something, and this feeling that it was 100% correct.

We’d let church attendance slip by. We’d been raised in church, dated in church, and were married in church, but between grad school and night school and coaching the cheerleading team and trying to keep up a house we’d just bought, we’d let that “day of rest” concept go a little farther than we should have. Instead of going to church, it was the time we usually slept in and got ready for all the crazy of the week ahead.

So this knowledge I woke up with that day was that we were never going to have a baby if we didn’t put our relationship with God back on the front burner. I told my husband my theory, and he kind of scoffed: “It doesn’t work that way, God doesn’t hand out presents for good behavior.” But he did get up and get dressed for church, mostly because I explained it this way: WHY should God trust us with a baby if we’re not going to raise it in church?

We were pregnant the next month.

Now, however, we’re in another dry spell. A house we’ve had on the market for four years finally had an offer and we had a signed contract… they backed out yesterday. We had a tenant renting the house for several years, just to offset the cost of us having TWO mortgages, and she skipped out last summer owing months of back rent and an $8,000 repair bill. We filed the paperwork to recover that money in small claims court, and three days later she declared bankruptcy… for the FOURTH TIME. We cannot do anything to her, and we now have a $10,000 loan to pay back for the repair and cleaning of our house, on top of the fact that we aren’t selling it next month like we’d planned.

And where is God in all this? He’s sitting back, watching us struggle, waiting for us to come to him.

I know, I just painted a picture of a really vindictive God, and that’s the farthest thing from the truth. He didn’t DO all of this to us, but I know in my heart that he isn’t lifting a finger to get us out of our troubles so long as we have been neglecting going to church. And yes, for a variety of reasons, it’s been several weeks since we’ve gone. (I know, you’re probably wondering why you’re reading a post by a Christian blogger who hasn’t been to church since early March!)

Yesterday, when our realtor texted me to tell us the deal had fallen through, I didn’t panic. I didn’t get upset or get angry. I’ve already spent the last week and a half creaming internally and plotting revenge about the horrible woman who left us with a nasty debt. I’ve wasted more than a week of my life in totally pointless anger, and I don’t want to do that again. Instead, I felt a really firm sense of peace and conviction and I knew the answer just as surely as if God had actually spoken it: I can’t help you until you come back to me. I can’t do anything about your troubles until you bring them and lay them at my feet.

Make no mistake, we haven’t “left” God, and there’s no way in the world he’s “left” us. But we are learning for ourselves what it feels like to try to do it on your own, and let me be the first to tell you that it’s not possible. You will hit every obstacle head-on, even a few that you made for yourself, if you don’t place your trust where it belongs.

Wrapping up this post now… I have to go wake my family for church.

Faith Like A Goldfish

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No, not “faith like the kind a goldfish has,” I mean, “faith in God like I have faith in my goldfish.” Well, now that you think about it, that’s hardly any better. Let me explain.

I am an EARLY riser, and by early, I mean 4am. It’s a long story, but it works for me. I get up without waking the rest of my family, let the dog out of my daughter’s room, head downstairs to take the dog for a quick walk, make the coffee, etc. Somewhere between getting downstairs and taking the dog out, I feed my other daughter’s fish. It’s one of those cute little wispy black fish with the bulging eyes, and in the dark house it’s hard to see him.

But I know he’s there, and I feed him.

I used to cringe while turning on the lights, expecting to see he’d betrayed my by floating belly up during the night. But no, every time, he’d swim to the top and wait for his food. Now, I don’t need to turn on the lights, I just drop in a pinch of fish flakes before heading out with the dog.

And that’s how my faith works, too.

I don’t need the proof of turning on the lights or demanding a sign of some kind. I know God’s there. I can’t see him, but he’s never let me down by floating dead in the tank (that was a metaphor). I don’t have to wait to see if he’s still swimming (and deserving) before feeding him my morning prayers. I know he’s there, swimming around happily looking back at me.

That’s how faith works. Faith is just believing, even when you have absolutely no reason to believe. It’s trusting, when all you have to go on is your gut feeling that you’re being loved and watched over. And really, when it comes down to it, it’s also deciding. You decide to put your life and your trust and your faith in God, even when you can’t turn the lights on.

 

Separation of Church and Hate

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Get ready…we have our first official announcement of an intent to run for President in 2016. We’re still in the first quarter of 2015, but so what? Let the games begin.

There is so much wrong with the election process in America, starting with the fact that you have to be rich and have rich friends to even run for office. If you don’t meet those two criteria right there, you might as well not even bother running. You can’t become the proverbial dog catcher in your town without the funds to make all those yard signs, if nothing else.

But once we move into the upper echelon of elites who have the power and wealth to run for higher offices, the real problems begin, mostly in the fact that eager campaigners who haven’t darkened the doorsteps of any church in this country since their own wedding days are now going to claim to speak for Jesus in an effort to win voters. What am I rambling about?

All the “good Christians” who are going to make promises to hopeful voters about returning this country to God.

In God we trust, one nation under God, prayer in schools, Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve… you’re going to hear it all over the next year and a half of your life. Abortion is murder, homosexuality is an abomination, women don’t need equal pay because the Bible says they should be submissive unto their husbands… it’s all about to come pouring out, and God is going to get blamed for all of it.

The sad thing is, the “good Christians” who are both running and voting are going to blame God for what changes they think he wants in this country, and the atheists are going to blame God for every dumb-assed remark these campaigners say. As I sit here writing this, Phil Robertson’s most recent rant about raping and murdering atheists is making headlines all around the internet, as is video of the interview in which Senator Ted Cruz’s father supposedly said we should round up the atheists and put them in camps.

When did being a “good Christian” mean you had to act like a pompous moron and slander the name of God? Do you ever wonder if God is sitting there face-palming himself and thinking, “Senator, you just caused 4,000 people to turn their backs on ever knowing me?” When did knowing God stop being about love and start being about one-upmanship and campaign victories?

Folks, it’s so easy. It’s so incredibly easy to know and love God. Not only that, it’s so easy to PROVE you’re a good Christian. Just love people! That’s all it takes to prove it. Let every decision you make demonstrate and be based on this one fact: every single person you bump into is a child of God, made by God, loved and adored by God. If you act at all times as though you genuinely believe that, you won’t have to prove anything. The world will see it plain as day.

What Exactly Is A “Safe” Sin?

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I wish I could give credit where credit is due, but I swear I’ve completely forgotten which dynamic speaker presented this concept in a speech. God knows who he is, and I’m grateful to him for coming up with this idea.

This speaker was outlining a serious problem within the Christian church, one that spans across all denominations, and that’s an idea he called “safe sins.” It helps explain why Christians get absolutely up in arms about certain social issues while absolutely ignoring our own sins. Here’s what he meant:

1. Abortion – it’s 99% safe to safe that I’m never, ever going to have an abortion. At this point in my life, if I ended up pregnant it would actually be kind of funny. My husband and I have teenaged kids, and while I would have loved to have had a bigger family, we decided not to have more after our youngest was diagnosed with severe autism. But if I were to find out tomorrow that I was pregnant, it would be strange but it would also make for a good story about a “late in life” baby to keep us young.

And that’s why it’s completely safe for me to condemn abortion. I’m never going to do it, so it doesn’t feel wrong to speak out against this kind of evil. I will never be guilty of speaking out, then sneaking off and committing this sin myself.

2. Homosexuality – this is the one that everybody rails against, and even though it’s funny to say, “Methinks he doth protest too much,” I’m sorry, but–come on, people–Michele Bachmann’s husband is absolutely 100% gay, despite their pray-the-gay-away therapy business. But if you’re certain you’re a heterosexual, again, you’re never going to find yourself accidentally giving in to temptation and accidentally having gay sex. It’s “safe” to speak out against homosexuality and gay marriage since you’re never going to be a hypocrite here.

3. Internet Pornography – Again, this is somehow a big topic for Christians who want to point to the depravity of our society. Most adults I know don’t even know how to find online porn, but they know it’s out there. Again, if you don’t own an internet-connected computer and you don’t know which websites supply pornography, it’s pretty safe to scream from the rooftops about it.

But you know which sins people don’t like to talk about? Running red lights. Cheating on your taxes. Lying. Raising your voice at your kids when you lose your temper. Watching ungodly television shows. NOT tithing. NOT spending as much time in prayer and study as you should. NOT fasting. Gluttony.

Where are the Christians speaking out against gluttony? Interestingly, many of the individuals who point fingers about other sins are guilty of gluttony themselves, and even more interesting is the fact that gluttony is one of those few sins that you wear on the outside, everywhere you go. Your weight is right there for us all to see, but where are the preachers and politicians fighting the sin of gluttony? Even funnier is the fact that if a politician was to introduce a bill that limits your calorie intake, he’d be called a control freak libtard who’s trying to take away Americans’ rights.

You have the right to eat yourself into a heart attack, but a woman you don’t know who lives in a state you’ve never been to isn’t allowed to have an abortion? Why is that?

We have to stop allowing this concept of “safe” sins and instead pray for guidance in overcoming all sins. There is no such thing as a sin that none of us will ever commit, because all sins are the same in the eyes of God. Whether it’s abortion, adultery, pornography, homosexuality, or just driving over the speed limit, it’s sinful to God. We’re all the same, and no single person is “safe” without the love and acceptance of Christ.

Gonna Bake Me a Cake

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There is so much talk on the news and social media right now about Christian’s rights. I’m sorry, the term is 100% laughable, a walking joke. It’s the punchline to 200+ years of US history.

We don’t have the “right” to be Christians, we have the right to choose whatever religion we want and to believe whatever we want. We don’t have the “right” to inflict our beliefs on anyone else, and in fact, when our beliefs actively block someone else’s right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we’ve created a Constitutional issue. We’ve also said, “My religion is more important than your status as a human being and a citizen.”

That’s wrong.

The real issue at hand? These stupid wedding cakes!

I’m married. I even had a cake. I had two cakes, in fact, one wedding cake and one groom’s cake. Guess what? My husband never saw either cake until I shoved a piece in his mouth for a picture at our reception.

So why are bakers suddenly so concerned about the genders of the people who will eventually be honored with a cake? WHO CARES if the cake is going to be eaten by straight people, gay people, Christian people, atheist people, illegal immigrants, Walmart employees…WHO CARES?

By the way, wedding cakes can run the gamut from a couple hundred dollars to THOUSANDS of dollars…are you really going to forfeit thousands of dollars just to prove that you’re legally entitled to? You’re not only hateful, you’re a dumbass! Suze Orman needs to have you on her show and tell the entire country what a moron you are for refusing to take money that would pay your bills, all because YOU don’t agree with how the cake will get eaten?

But there’s a bigger problem here: the same people who wouldn’t bake a wedding cake for a gay couple will happily turn around and charge a lot of money for a Bar Mitzvah cake, a celebration that conflicts with Christian teaching. They’ll make a cake for a fraternity celebration, which is an organization that excludes people based on gender, and in many cases based on religion and race. Do these same people make the increasingly popular “losing my virginity” cake? A bachelorette party cake that celebrates a weekend of drunkenness and promiscuity?

But not the gay cake? That’s strange, and it’s wrong. And it’s not representing Christ in a positive way. Instead of demonstrating God’s love to the world, you shined a light on the fact that Satan’s hatred is at work within the Christian faith. And we’re all going to suffer for it.

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner

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I just had an interesting conversation with a fellow Christian, although I hesitate to say “fellow” here because we don’t see eye to eye at all. As with nearly every conversation I have with another Christian, it wasn’t long before this one ended up circling around to homosexuality. Why that is, I couldn’t tell you. It’s like we have this hangup about gay people that is so overpowering that it blocks out every single issue we could be talking about.

Anyway, as many Christians tend to do, this individual summed up his stance on the existence of gay people by saying (rather magnanimously), “It’s like God said: hate the sin but love the sinner.”

WHOA. Stop right there. You’re wrong.

I don’t remember God telling me to hate the sin. What verse is that, exactly? And is that King James edition, or NIV? I do remember God saying a lot about not judging, though, about planks and specks in people’s eyes, about prodigal sons and sinful kings and loving my neighbor as myself and a host of other things that I’m supposed to worry about long before I ever get around to hating what activities people engage in when I’m not looking.

God never told me personally to hate anything. More important, he did tell me not to hate. And therefore, I refuse to.

Is not hating someone’s sin the same thing as condoning it? Of course not. It is entirely the same thing, though, as saying, “God didn’t put me in charge of you. He’s got this. He does not need my input on this situation. Amen.”

When Christians finally understand that the rest of the world thinks we’re assholes for that very statement about hating sin, then we can finally start to move in the right direction towards being good ambassadors for the Lord. Until then, it’s just another pretty way of saying, “I hate something about you, and God said I could.” We’re wrong, of course, but that’s what we’re saying.