Giving up on God

I gave a ride the other morning to a young woman who was caught out in the freezing cold, lost, with a blanket wrapped around her for a coat. I don't know if she was an "angel unaware" or just "feeble minded" but she was miles away from where she told me her destination was. Anyway, as we made the trip across town, she told me she had "given up on God." And my response to her was that "God is not responsible for all the crap in the world - we are" or something to that effect. That morning I had just been working through "honesty" and was faced with the fact that I needed to tell her the truth and not "equivocate" (be double tongued). I think she was pretty thankful to be "let out" of my vehicle at her stop. She probably thought I was "feeble minded."

Anyway, I tell you all that to say that out of her comments about giving up on God, I was thinking about why people say they give up on God. I think they may do this because they have an innate sense of what God should be like. They have basic beliefs about what He should do and be. In their heart they believe that God is all powerful and that He is merciful and should do something about suffering.

I suppose a person who turns his back on God doesn't even realize that he has drawn the benchmark of what is right and good from God Himself. C.S. Lewis wrote about this knowledge of what is right being drawn from the ONE who is RIGHT.

To break through to a person who blames God for not acting to intervene, I must somehow to be able to show that the things that break the heart of man also break the heart of God. He did not leave us without eternal hope and help. THE INNOCENT (Jesus Christ) did suffer and the wicked (us) have gone free. But breaking through with that truth to someone else? That is only done by prayer because it is God Himself who "turns the lights on" in the life of the unbeliever.

Still, when I hear about the old man who froze to death in Michigan because his electric meter was turned off - or see the news about the children dead in Los Angeles, my heart aches because the innocent and helpless have suffered at the hand of adults who should know better. I don't want to think about things like this or feel the outrage at my own inability to stop such things.

Coupled with this reluctance to own up that these things happen in my world is the temptation to put it off on God by wondering why He did not step in. In the end, if I put my proverbial spiritual "money where my mouth is" I have to stand on the ground of faith built on the fact that He does care and He did become THE INNOCENT VICTIM, paying the price for all man's selfishness, despondency, sin, greed and treachery.

Where is the sanity then? Where is the comfort? It is this. The children dead at the hand of their parent are released from their suffering, as is the old gentleman. This life and its troubles will be remembered no more for them.

But what of those left with these images? Part of the reason I hate to see things like this happen is because it fills my own heart with pain. But I can respond in faith believing that God's heart created my own heart and so understands this pain to a degree I have not yet begun to tap.

And what am I to do with the knowledge that there is ongoing death and hunger and thirst? I guess I can grow up and face the truth. These horrible things are mortal rehearsals of an eternity spent without God.
But that is not all. Today I pray that I will respond courageously and with faith to the things that break my heart over which I have no control. But surely there are things over which I do have some control? God has not benched me yet.

So I walk in faith, believing He has prepared "good works for me to walk in." If it is to relieve suffering of the cold or the hungry or abandoned, then I will do so. And if not, at the very least let my mouth always speak honestly about the ONE who understands suffering and injustice as no other can and who did something about it that cost him his very life.