God's Goodness, part 1
Last night I reached a breaking point in my heart. We do this occasionally—only so long can we carry a burden of pain and sorrow before it spills out everywhere, one direction or another. Mine spilled out into prayer, and it took the form of unusually direct prayer: I asked for what I wanted, without apology. Generally speaking, when I do not know a desire is God's will, I try to add as many conditionals as possible to my prayers. "If it's your will... I might be wrong, so if this is good... This is my perspective, but if it's not yours..."
But last night I simply asked for what seemed good to me. No conditionals. Not that I was demanding; but it seemed right to lay out what seemed good to me as clearly as possible.
Now, here was the striking thing: I realized that I was asking with fear, not with faith. My deepest emotion, if you pulled it up and stated it as a proposition, was: "I want this very deeply, therefore God will take it away (for my good)." In fact, this belief has been operating quietly in my heart for as long as I can remember. I think a good many of the conditionals in my prayers have come from this place of fear—ask for what you want, but don't let God know just how badly you want something, because then he will surely deny it. After all, it has become an IDOL—and what better for you than to take away your idols?
There is a sort of logic here. We need to love God most of all; check. Things we want deeply can often become idols; check. We have a hard time letting go of idols; check. God loves us and wants us to love him; check. ERGO, God will seize and destroy all the things we want most deeply so that we can love him alone. QED.
But there is a hidden premise in this argument, and a hidden belief in many of our hearts: God prefers to teach us to love him by withholding things from us.
Really? Is this Biblical? Or is it more of the same lie that we heard so long ago in the Garden: "Did God really say you can't eat of any tree in the Garden?"
Part of what led me, last night, to question this, is the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1-2. This is a familiar story to anyone who grew up in Sunday School:
There's a man with two wives (never mind that, children, moving along): Hannah and Peninah. Peninah (who in my mind was always ugly, warped with bitterness) has many children, and mocks Hannah (young and pretty—I think I got these images from Disney, or flannelgraph) who has none. One year, as they go up to the Tabernacle to offer sacrifices, Hannah reaches her breaking point. She slips away to the presence of the LORD, and pours her heart out, asking for what she deeply desires: a son. After mistaking her for a drunken woman, Eli the priest prays that her desire be fulfilled. God hears and, sure enough, she has a son—Samuel.
There is an interesting detail in this story which I missed as a child. Elkanah, Hannah's husband, says to her in her grief, "Am I not more to you than ten sons?" Interesting. There is a way in which Hannah's desperate grief is all out of tune with her situation. She is deeply loved, regardless of her barrenness (very unusual in that culture). All she can see is her shame, even though the one whose love really counts treasures her. In her somewhat inappropriate grief, she cries out to God to take her inappropriate shame away through an unnecessary child.
And God says yes.
How does that fit in with our paradigm? Is this the act of a God who really prefers to teach us by withholding? It seems like God has concern for how Hannah actually feels and the language in which she will be able to receive love. She is broken; she can no longer hear her husband's love; she can only understand her value if she bears a child. And rather than make her suffer long into a realization that she doesn't need a child, God gives her one. And then many more.
This seems like the action of a God who is concerned for Hannah's joy, to the extent that he will give to her the deepest need of her heart. It seems like God is more interested in blessing Hannah tangibly than running her through the grinder. Now, yes, of course, Hannah had to wait and experience much pain before she received her son. But for goodness' sake, her son was Samuel. Her name is in the Bible, as an example of faith. Her name is known everywhere and she is remembered with honor. That's a bit better than getting your first child right when you wanted it.
We are taught that God is working everything for our good. But somehow our assumption is that he will do so by repeatedly beating us over the head. In our inner hearts, we believe that God prefers to grow us through pain. For example, how many times have you heard someone say, "We really only grow in the hard times!" Really? God has nothing to teach us in times of blessing and abundance? He only uses suffering? His entire sanctifying toolkit is torture devices?
I want to explore a different idea—one I think is more Biblical, and therefore more true. What if God prefers to teach us through kindness, abundance, generosity and mercy? What if using pain is something he does only when it is really necessary, but not by default? How would that change the way we see Him? How would that change the way we pray? How would it change our faith and hope in the midst of hardships?
My conviction—which I hope to demonstrate—is that we are better able to accept discipline from a God we believe would prefer not to have to administer it. We are more ready to believe He is doing good in our hardship, when we assume that His normal way is blessing and abundance.
