Jo Hilder has written a piece called Protecting God’s Reputation When Shit Happens. It’s about the Christian preoccupation with finding heavenly meaning in our mundane suffering, and about expecting every Christian to suffer their torments with the otherworldly aplomb of a bible character.
Jack was in the bed opposite me when I was about to have chemotherapy for the first time. One morning, the nurses came to give Jack his medicine, and he said no. He didn’t want to be kept alive any longer. The doctors came and counselled him, but his mind was made up. Jack was ready to die.
I was horrified. Because Jack was going to die? No – I was horrified because I thought God wanted me to get up out of bed, go over there and tell Jack about Jesus, and I’d better hurry up about it – I might never have another chance like this, and clearly Jack was not going to be around much longer. And I couldn’t do it.
I made myself literally sick worrying about this. I went and hid in the shower and tried to think of some other way I could make sense of my having cancer. Was this His purpose for it all? In the end, I simply crawled back into my own hospital bed, curled up into a ball and desperately hoped God would find someone else to save Jack’s mortal soul because I was just too preoccupied with being a very sick person. What kind of a Christian was I? Surely the most selfish Christian ever; the biggest waste-of-time that ever walked the face of the earth.
When we believe that God has a plan for absolutely everything that happens, and especially for our own misfortunes, we might start to see ourselves as simply a chess piece in a larger game that God is playing, rather than primarily as one of His children. Our focus then becomes figuring out what God wants us to do in this situation. Our illness isn’t the problem, but rather a stage on which God wants us to speak our next Salvation Soliloquy.
We think God puts us in these situations merely to have us prove His existence and demonstrate His great power to the world. But at what point do we actually allow ourselves just to be a passive recipient of His wonderful attributes, like His goodness, His kindness and His mercy? Why does cancer have to be like a Bible college exam we have to attain a high distinction in – or else?
I’m not saying every Christian who gets cancer thinks they have something to prove, but I just don’t understand why we put ourselves under this kind of pressure. I mean, what the hell was I thinking about with Jack? Sure, I was right to be concerned with Jack’s eternal soul, but would God really place complete responsibility for his eternal destiny onto me at a time like that – when I was dying of cancer myself? What kind of an insecure, sadistic monster is this God?
The line of reasoning Ms. Hilder is following — ending with the question about God as a sadistic monster — is reasoning that I’m prone to myself. Instead of taking stock of my bad situation and solving it, I try to find God’s hidden meaning in my suffering, and it’s a short walk from there to wondering why one being would willfully cause another being to suffer anyway? Is He a big meanie?
Ms. Hilder ends well though, by dialing the purpose and meaning back a notch. Our sufferings are sometimes just that: our sufferings. They’re not meant to end up as glossy photos in God’s travel brochure. We can lean on God to get us through the hard times and then testify to His goodness later. We don’t have to compose an extemporaneous sermon in real time based on the anecdote we’re living now.
We don’t always get what we want or hope for, but we are always loved as only God can love us. And it’s okay to be simply incapable of putting out good publicity for God sometimes. It’s a blessing to spend time merely languishing in receipt of His qualities, not always slaving away in marketing, particularly when things aren’t so good.
When shit happens, there’s really only two things that count: 1) God. 2) Is Good – and in that order. And when it does happen, and it will regardless of the fact you or I may be a Christian, I just hope God isn’t counting on my ability to keep up His reputation as much as I am counting on Him to live up to it.