Choosing to Lose

The Tree of Life had polarised reviews. I liked it when I watched it last week because it was about something that I’d been thinking a lot about.

Towards the start of the film, the mother of the family says this:

“The nuns taught us there were two ways through life – the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things”

In the story, the mother tries to teach her sons the way of grace, which in this story is kind of nice but weak. It’s the right thing to do but you kind of allow yourself to get walked all over too. The father in the story tries to teach his sons the way of nature. He learned the hard way that life doesn’t make winners out of nice people. If you want to succeed, you have to play the game by selfish rules or you’ll never get anywhere. He wants his sons to succeed – he doesn’t want them to fail like he did.

The dichotomy between these two views of life resonated with me as I’ve been caught between them the last few weeks. I was working with an organisation that I discovered to be working dishonestly, unethically and possibly illegally. I did what I felt was the right thing and I blew the whistle on them. I wanted to be rewarded for doing the right thing by seeing justice done. Instead, the organisation manipulated and lied even more, so that I looked like the one who had done wrong. I am furious about this. I am livid. It’s not fair but there is nothing I can do about it. Doing right got me nowhere and cost me a great deal financially and emotionally. I am forced to watch while those that do wrong prosper and retain an ill-gained good reputation.

The father in the Tree of Life has a compelling view of the world because it fits with reality. The stories we are told as children lead us to believe that the goodies win and the baddies lose. T’aint true. It’s tempting to follow the way of nature. I would like to succeed. I would like to play according to rules that lead me to win, whatever those rules are.

But I won’t.

I remember these words from Mother Theresa:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

And I remember these words from the Bible:

“Be still before the LORD & wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” Psalm 37:7

And these:

“The chief priests accused him of many things. So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”  But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.” Mark 15:3-5

I am not comparing myself to Jesus! But I am making the point that injustice is to be expected. Sometimes doing right won’t be rewarded with good. Often, doing wrong is rewarded richly, and waved under our very noses.

But doing right is still right. I needed to write this post because I needed to preach it to myself. I want to throw bricks through windows and shout at people and post them my poo in a parcel. But I do believe that the way of grace is a better way than the way of nature, even if it means I don’t win. God got himself killed for thinking that way, the loser. I want to be on his team because in the final analysis, it’s between me and him anyway.

OddBabble: Always got picked last for PE.

Why I Might Punch the Next Christian Who Sends Me An Invitation to Sign a Petition Against Gay Marriage

I have received 8 emails to date inviting me to sign this petition, many from people I have not heard from in years. I cannot remember a time when so many Christians I know have been so united and so active about something. This makes me want to weep.

Is this really the most gospel-furthering, Christ-honouring, lost-loving thing we can think of to do with our energy? It’s not that I need educating about the reasons why people feel the way that they do about it – I’m fully aware of that, and this post is not about the rightness or wrongness of it. It’s about the proportion of energy that is going into it. It’s the fact that it is so very high on the agenda, it’s almost as if two gay people getting married would cause all the Bibles in the world to spontaneously combust and the entire church to dissolve.

I am saddened that it wasn’t Christians who forwarded the petition to try to prevent the passing of a law in Uganda which would lead to the death penalty for practicing homosexual people there. Is it really more important that gay people should be prevented from being married, than preventing them from being killed?

I am saddened that I have not received 8 emails from Christians about any other matter of injustice or opportunity to show love, compassion or mercy. I recently saw results of a survey conducted to find out gay people’s perception of Christians. Part of the survey involved giving them various words which they could tick if they associated them with various Christian categories. 5.8% of the respondents ticked the word ‘loving’ in response to the Evangelical box, compared to 84.6% ticking the word ‘homophobic’. There is something seriously wrong if less than 6% of a certain demographic sees Christians (who are supposed to be ambassadors for the personification of love), as demonstrating that.

I wonder what these Christians who sent me these emails think will be achieved if they prevent this law from being passed. Do they think it will stop gay people being gay? Do they think that gay people in partnerships will stop being in partnerships? Do they think that it’s possible to legislate for morality? That people who do not believe in Jesus make decisions based on whether or not things are lawful as opposed to whether or not they submit to the teachings of a God they do not believe in? Do they think that gay people are more likely to become Christians if they are discriminated against by law?

I wish that the media caricature of evangelicals was not so accurate. I wish that the caricature was of a group of people who are famous for doing radical counter-cultural things to help the marginalised, the poor, the struggling, the addicted and the weak in society. I wish evangelicals were famous as people who give second chances to people who have been given up on by everyone else. I wish the word evangelical was synonymous with words like peace, justice and love.

I started to imagine what it would be like if the latter was the norm and it was multiplied into every Christian community everywhere. There would be an evangelical stereotype: they are those people who meet needs; they are those people who love without judging; they are those people who make a positive difference in communities; they are those people who, when someone starts to say that they met a person who changed their life, the listener already knows it’s going to be a Christian they’re talking about.

This is not reality though. The real evangelical stereotype? They are the people who shout about abortion and homosexuality; they are the people who fight over things and split further and further into more and more pedantic factions. They spend all their energy pointing fingers, building barriers and painting pictures of themselves as right and everyone else as wrong. They are the people who protest about books they have never read or musicals they have never seen because they are offended by their content, while campaigning for freedom of speech so that they can continue to share the most offensive message there is: that people need a saviour.

OddBabble: Is aware that punching people is not very Christlike, but is also aware that her fist is smaller than that of her 6 year old niece, so is not too bothered.

In Defence of Lament

I have come to accept that I am one of life’s lamenters.

I have been thinking that maybe one of the outworkings of us being a body of Christ with many and varied parts and functions is that some of us are broadly called and inclined to rejoice and some are called and inclined to lament.

I used to spend a  lot of energy berating myself for being a lamenter, and this was in large part because it was seen by some others as being not very godly and not very Christian. Christians are joyful you see. Smile. Jesus loves you.

But my joy has often looked like this song. In fact when I first heard it, it made me go all funny because it was one of those rare and wonderful moments where you see yourself reflected in someone or something else, and you realise you are not the only one.

I was told once by someone that it was OK to be a lamenter for a while, but at some point you need to get past that and get to the joy bit. But that doesn’t make any sense to me because I feel I am one of those called to lament, and so the ‘joy bit’ just looks a little different. It’s not a cause to feel sorry for me – it’s not a lesser joy, it’s a different one.

I conclude that I am a lamenter partly because I have had things in my life which have given me cause to lament, but mostly because I have always been drawn to other lamenters. I love morbid films, sad books, miserable music and cynical people. I have chosen a career which leads me to spend my waking hours listening to people cry and I consider myself privileged to hear personal tragedies which are otherwise hidden and secret. I do this not out of a misplaced sense of martyrdom or duty, but because doing it makes me feel really alive and as if I am being who I was designed to be, which actually at times feels close to euphoric. I’ve never felt like that doing anything else. I often come home from work thinking how perverse this is – that I should get such life-giving satisfaction, essentially out of other people’s misery. But it’s not the fact that my clients are unhappy that gives me that feeling, it’s the knowledge that I have been a balm for them. That I’ve given comfort, relief, a deep, human connection, a containment. The knowledge that those things are really rare and precious gifts, and that I’m really good at giving them. It’s like being a kind of macabre Father Christmas every day of the year.

At the moment I am lamenting with a few friends. Even though they are not my own griefs (it’s not my friend, my babies, my husband, my illness) that have caused me to cry – I still grieve, and I mean genuinely grieve, with actual real, salty tears. It strikes me that there is something about this that is really wonderful. Not the things that have caused the grief – they are unfathomably awful and I wish with all of my heart that they had not happened and were not happening. But there is something wonderful in the fact that these griefs can be shared in a very real way. I don’t understand how it works, but something amazing happens when sorrow is shared because it somehow really is taken on by the hearer. In a very real way, burdens actually are shared. We feel better. What kind of weird alchemy makes that happen? I don’t understand it but I love the fact that it’s a reality. I love the fact that I can be a friend who doesn’t just watch pain happen to people who I love – I can be a friend who can square my own shoulder beneath the burden, even if it’s just one little corner of it, and carry it too.

And it strikes me too that just like the happy, infectious, joyful Christians, I too am made in the image of God.God is a lamenter. A great deal more of the Bible is about lament than it is about the smiley kind of joy. And if God was grinning all the time and not lamenting some of the time when he looked at this messed up world of ours, I would find it hard to worship him.

So I am embracing my role in the body of Christ and in the wider world. It’s an important and needed role, and I love it.

Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart. Proverbs 25:20

 

OddBabble: Is grateful that being a lamenter does not stop her from being frickin’ hilarious most of the damn time.

I’m Sorry I’m a Christian

For those one or two readers who are not friends with me on Facebook, or who missed this first time around:

I’m not clever enough to work out how to add the actual video here, but please follow this link for the rest of this post to make sense.

A friend, responded with this:

“That’s powerful stuff. Challenging but quite negative. Does it describe how you feel about Christians you know?”

This was my response:

I posted it because a lot of people I’ve spoken to see Christians in this way, so I think it’s healthy for Christians and non-Christians to hear something like this. This is the reality of the context that we’re witnessing into – when I say “I am a Christian” these are the assumptions that people may make about me. Though this is more about the people with the loudest voices or the biggest placards than individual Christians I might know personally, I do think it’s important to acknowledge that these are things that sincere and often genuine Christians have done, and I think there’s a place for saying sorry for being part of the same body that has done these things. Not for the sake of being negative, but to have some authenticity about our failures and hypocrisy and to point out, as the poet does, that this was not how Jesus conducted himself. I long for people to associate the word Christian with Jesus’ radical indiscriminate love and compassionately spoken truth but the tragic reality is that many people don’t. I am a part of the reason for this too.

Another Post On Suffering

At the risk of repeating myself (I’ve gone over similar lines here) allow me to bang a drum I like to reprise every now and again. And allow me to do it again in a couple of posts’ time. Thanks.

Unfortunately for any small group or Bible study I may grace with my presence, I am that irritating token person who always points out the unresolvable, willfully invisible elephant in the passage, just when we all thought we were agreeing pleasantly and coming to the same comfortable conclusions as usual.

On one such occasion the study was on Matthew 7 and I pointed out 2 uncomfortable realities, one of which I will now unpack.

I pointed out that when our Father gives out his gifts, he doesn’t do so equally. He gives much blessing to some, and little blessing to others. To some he gives much suffering, to others much less.

One person’s response was this; “This is true, but when I’ve spoken to people who have suffered, their experience of Jesus has been all the sweeter.”

I gave a silent reply because of my hideous combination of a wildly emotional histrionic drama queen trapped inside the body of a painfully self-conscious, cringingly English woman. One who knew she had already rocked the boat too many times that evening to add an embarrassing, tearful rebuke (plus, well, my period was due, so the whole thing would have been monstrously amplified and very un-Bible-study-ish).

What I wanted to say was this:

How many suffering people have you actually spoken to in real life? Because what you’re saying actually sounds like what you imagine suffering people to say while you are trying to square this difficult circle in your head. Yes, there are wonderful Christian examples like Brother Yun, who are able to count their suffering as a blessing but dare I say it, he is an exceptional man – a true hero of the faith. How many ordinary people with everyday ordinary unequal sufferings have you actually had an authentic conversation with?

Let me give you an example. My own sufferings are very, very small compared to a lot of people. Nevertheless as many readers know, my testimony is mostly not exactly jolly. I was asked for it by someone on the board of a well-known evangelical conference, only to have it returned to me with this feedback – “Thanks for your story. Do you think you could add a sentence or two just mentioning how God made up for what you’ve sacrificed in other ways?”.

My answer was that no, I was not going to bolt on a contrived happy ending. My story is my story and actually, God has not ‘made up for it’. There isn’t an automatic equilibrium in my life – or anyone else’s – which means that bad stuff is always weighed up somewhere with good so it all comes out equal and fair in the end.

Life is not fair people!

Life is not equal!

Even, *gasp* for Christians!

It may well be that my friend had spoken to a lot of suffering Christians and that they gave in to the pressure to give a happy ending and added an experience that was not really felt. Going back to the previous example of Habakkuk in my last rant about this (see the link at the start), sometimes, there really are NO FIGS! Sometimes we don’t get peaches to make up for the lack of figs! The right Christian response, as in this passage, is to trust God anyway. To trust that there will be figs and peaches overflowing when we die, yes, but that in this life, some get crops of figs, some get none.

Sometimes that lack of figs creates a ‘Heavenly Man’ type of Christian. Sometimes it creates an OddBabble type of Christian who is far less heroic in response to her far, far, far lesser sufferings, who actually has a pretty impoverished faith in response, which actually a lot of the time is holding on by a thread, and a lot of the time, the One holding on to the thread is not her.

I am not wishing for fewer Heavenly Men, or for less joy in suffering or for less discipline in blessing-counting. God knows these are all things I desperately need to learn from in my life. I know that part of my response here comes from a gross lack of godliness and I’m not boasting in that.

All I wish for is a bit of honesty and authenticity. Sometimes (often, in my experience) the best response to someone’ssuffering is not to look for the silver lining, or to make one up when there isn’t one, but actually just to weep and grieve with them while they are in their cloud and give them the balm of acknowledging that being in a black cloud just feels shit right now.

Amen, Elaine

“Deeply satisfying human intimacy, whether in marraige or outside, is in the end not dependent on copulation but on a faithful sharing of our hearts and lives with those whom we love, and a longing for their well being and peace. For it is then that God can be God and love be a gift.”

Elaine Storkey in The Search For Intimacy

The Importance of Stories

Read this (if you like)

This is a link to a post on a blog I discovered recently that seeks to bridge the gap (hence the name) between Christians and gay people, and also does a very good job at showing grace to the spectrum of gay christians, christians with a view on gay people and gay people with a view on christians. It sums up the point I have reached recently on not just this issue, but many others.

I like the fact that it acknowledges that we don’t all have to agree with each other, but that we should listen to one another if we claim to love people. It’s been a journey for me to get to this point and I’m still on that journey, having started from a postion of being quite defensively scared to hear different views. I hope I’m learning, like the writer of this post, to show more grace to those whose views are different to mine.

I think it’s a viewpoint that would serve a lot of us well to keep in mind whoever we are, and whatever issue we are thinking through. It’s a messy and not clear-cut route, but it seems to me that’s what life is like anyway, so we might as well live in the reality of that.

Just For Today…

I am in the middle of Massive Faith Crisis #234534. It’s one of the deeper, more long lasting ones of its kind. It has been triggered off partly by some current painful events, partly by the same old unresolved things which crouch and wait to bite me on the arse again purely to compound new things, and partly by the inexplicable crap I observe in the lives of people I love.

It is largely fuelled along by that 3 letter word which is ubiquitous inside the walls of my skull, and behaves a bit like an itch deep inside the unreacheable depths of a plaster cast, which no ruler or other long slim tool can ever seem to reach: Why.

Last night I read this in an otherwise toecurlingly annoying book which I am too embarrassed to admit the title of. It is noteworthy that the following is a quotation from someone else:
“If you belive God is obligated to explain Himself to us, you ought to examine the Scripture…[It] tells us we lack the capacity to grasp God’s infinite mind or the way He intervenes in our lives. How arrogant of us to think otherwise! Trying to anyalyze His omnipotence is like an amoeba attempting to comprehend the behaviour* of man.”
To illustrate his point he directs us to Sciptures such as these:
“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.”
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God.”
“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understnad the work of God, the Maker of all things.”
“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.’”
…What this means…is that many of our questions – especially those that begin wht the word why – will have to remain unanswered for the time being.”

I find this utterly unsatisfactory. I hate not getting what I want, especially when what I want is answers. So in the shower this morning I said Angry Ranting Prayer #1089610596810652, expressing this.

If I was a charismatic Christian I would say: And God answered by saying ‘Just for today, trust Me’.
If I was not a charismatic Christian** I would say: And after I had finished praying I rememberd the film I had watched last night, “Things We Lost in the Fire”. It was quite an unremarkable film, but it featured Narcotics Anonnymous meetings. One of the things that members of NA, AA or GA famously say is “Just for today: I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle all my problems at once.” followed by lots of other ‘Just for todays’.

I have no idea what it’s like to be driven by the physical desire for a chemical fix, but I do know that part of what makes these times so torturous for me, is the constant pressing and fingering in my head of the whys and whatifs. I feel as if I’ll never get any peace unless I get a resolution for them. In the past I have always felt I have found answers and was surrounded by people who had enough certainty to keep me going. Now that this is no longer true, that lack of resolution threatens to drive me in directions I never thought I would or could go, just to get some peace. The guy in the film said he had a recurring dream of having a bag of junk in one hand and money for his next fix in the other, which gave him a feeling of perfect peace. But he was saying this at the NA meeting, because he had chosen not to go down that route, but instead, ‘Just for today…’

So just for today, instead of choosing my own kind of bag of junk, I will say that Jesus is real, Jesus is Lord, and Jesus is right.

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6:67-69.

*American spellings corrected.
**Come on, you don’t expect me to know what kind of Christian I am at this point do you?

Black, white and grey

Read [this] , then my comment in response, then the MSN conversation below (if you like. You can always navigate away from this page and read something else if you want, I’m not your mother.)

OddBabble says:
I’ve just left you another blog comment that doesn’t make any sense
hoveactually says:
your comment made perfect sense! I think it’s hard to explain though, I might draw a diagram explaining the large space between the question and the answer
hoveactually says:
cos it’s something that’s pretty fundamental but few people seem to understand
OddBabble says:
It only recently occured to me
OddBabble says:
I’ve only just started to realise that everything is not in fact black and white
OddBabble says:
it is a complete revelation to me!
OddBabble says:
I’ve noticed that human beings don’t fit very well into that
hoveactually says:
not really…
hoveactually says:
being complex and messy and not at all black and white…
hoveactually says:
there are a few things that are pretty concrete but the living out practise of them is very messy and grey
hoveactually says:
I think that’s the problem, people see the concrete realities and assume they fit neatly into black and white lives.. they don’t cos we’re not like that…
OddBabble says:
Yes! That’s exactly it!!
hoveactually says:
Yes!
hoveactually says:
why doesn’t everyone know this though..?
OddBabble says:
I don’t know! I certainly didn’t until about 2 weeks ago!
OddBabble says:
I think actually it’s because that is really uncomfortable
OddBabble says:
and you touched on it when you said that it’s really comfortable for the person giving the answers out, to have an answer.
OddBabble says:
I know that cos I’ve been that person for a long time
OddBabble says:
I do think, actually, that I’ve treated other people as if they don’t fit into the black and white stuff (I hope)
OddBabble says:
but I’m not very good at applying it to myself.
OddBabble says:
Actually, the statement about other people above is possibly bollocks.
hoveactually says:
I don’t think so… I always think you are someone who knows about the mess
OddBabble says:
Well that’s good if so…
OddBabble says:
may I give you an example?
hoveactually says:
go ahead!
OddBabble says:
so like, i can believe that something is WRONG
OddBabble says:
but
OddBabble says:
it’s confusing when I oops, go and do it anyway, and find that oh, it actually seems quite life-enhancing, positive and beautiful.
OddBabble says:
Going by a philosophy that everything is black and white means that I must have been wrong about the WRONG bit.
OddBabble says:
but actually, the WRONG bit is black and white, it’s just that it doesn’t deny that there are experiencially grey bits.
hoveactually says:
yes!
OddBabble says:
oh phew, I’m glad that makes sense!
hoveactually says:
which we don’t really factor in in our discipleship talks/seminars/onetoones/hanging out with people
hoveactually says:
because it takes longer to talk about the realities rather than the simple packaged answer
hoveactually says:
and the realities are only learnt over many years of struggle
hoveactually says:
we’ve kind of lost the long term nature of life and God along the way i think…
OddBabble says:
Yes, and actually I think the result of that can be potentially spiritually dangerous for the hearers. Because experiencing the experiencially grey bits does make you doubt the black and white stuff you heard, and some people conclude that the world must all therefore be grey, so let us go forth and enjoy the freedom of its many shades!
hoveactually says:
yeah!
hoveactually says:
and lots of people throw out the black and white on the grounds that we can’t be certain about anything, cos they’ve been burnt by the people who are way way to certain about EVERYTHING.
OddBabble says:
YES
hoveactually says:
sigh. the reality lives somewhere inbetween
hoveactually says:
dammit YES
OddBabble says:
haha
OddBabble says:
I think I’m going to blog this whole convo, after linking to your post. Do I have your permission?
hoveactually says:
yes please!
hoveactually says:
haha
hoveactually says:
I’m such a narcissitic one
OddBabble says:
Me too, but that’s because I am wonderful.
hoveactually says:
lol
hoveactually says:
i think we should rule the world though
OddBabble says:
yes!
OddBabble says:
You, me and Witsy
hoveactually says:
brilliant!
hoveactually says:
it’s such a good plan
hoveactually says:
nothing could go wrong
OddBabble says:
Nothing. That is a black and white fact.

Christianity is Not a Panacea

For the last few months, for one reason or another, I have been going through a Difficult Time. Friends have been great in varying measures and without them, I don’t know where I’d be.

However, I have been amazed at some of the beliefs that have been unearthed through friends trying to give me words of comfort.

Let me give you an example. One of the exhausting motifs of the last 12 months has been my relentless failure to find full-time employment following UCCF. The rollercoaster of hope built by getting to the interview stage (17 times now) followed by the plummet of disappointment when again I am thanked for applying and told that my performance at interview was exemplary, but that one other candidate was better qualified and had more experienced than me, has been wearing to say the least and has gently eroded my confidence and my bank balance.

More than one friend has said to me in response, ‘God has just the right job for you, you just haven’t found it yet’. This was said lovingly, and with a real desire to restore hope, and a genuine belief in its truth. But I am incredulous.

Where has the idea come from that for Christians, if we wait long enough, everything will turn out just fine? That a little while longer, or just that smidge more faith, will give us just the perfect little happy ending? When did we decide that Romans 8:28 was authored by Walt Disney?

Look around you at your Christian community – how many Hollywood endings do you see? How many people in perfect situations that are just right for them?

I’m not saying that life is a crock of crap for everyone, that’s clearly not true either, but neither is this idea that because we believe in God, we will either be free from the big pains of life, or the little irritating shitty little things that seem to happen for no reason, and that deny the description of ‘just right’ whatever sphere they happen to be in.

Perhaps the most eye-opening thing about hearing all this from some of my friends is that I have bought into it too. Even though I am one of the most cynical Christians I know, I’ve become aware that the reason my response to suffering (whether it’s small-scale but slowly draining like the job situation, or large-scale and heart-wrecking like my perpetual relationship situation) is rage. I am just so angry with God that all of this isn’t easier than it is. That now that I have given everything to him, I still have hot water that cuts out, or bills that I didn’t expect but can’t pay, or loneliness, or unemployment, or friends that cut themselves up literally and metaphorically, or that people die, or miscarry or get Alzheimer’s and there just isn’t anything I can do to help. Those things just don’t seem to fit.

Surely we should be able to say to those who are not Christians, ‘Look! Follow Jesus and you will have a life like mine!’ without feeling the need to shove all the pain and disappointment and unanswered prayer into some big cupboard that gets opened up when they’ve been a Christian a little while, and everything comes crashing down off the top shelf onto their heads.

We know that this should never be what we sell, that’s why we bang on about the evils of the prosperity gospel. We know that becoming a Christian is not about converting to a rosy life of ease and laughter, because we are happy to quote things about ‘taking up your cross’. We would all, and perhaps me especially, readily tell you that often in this life following Jesus means suffering.

So why am I so surprised and angry?

I have felt pressure from friends recently (and sometimes from my own internal promptings) to stop being so angry and disappointed and be thankful for what I’ve got. And it’s true that I have a great deal to be thankful for. The 365 project was very helpful for someone of my personality, and I’ve recently started it again over text with a friend, because it’s good for me to remember to be thankful everyday.

But I’ve also been told repeatedly that ‘Christians should be joyful’. My response to this has been further rage; at other Christians for not understanding my pain, and at God again, for not giving me something that is a clear expectation from scripture.

I have felt that the pressure to be thankful and to experience joy, comes from an expectation that I ought to shrink my disappointments, my pain and my genuine authentic responses.

I don’t think this is the answer.

God knows my true heart reaction to these situations, so pretending that my reactions are different is a waste of time. All through the Bible Christians have responded to suffering by spilling out their anger and tiny human understanding at him;

“How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
There is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralysed, and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.”

Habakkuk 1:1-4 for example.

That is not slapping on a smile over the crap and saying that it’s all OK really because Jesus loves me. Habakkuk is a person with faith who just cannot see the mind of God in his mess and is authentically yelling out his fear and confusion to him. I am relieved that God puts passages like this in the Bible. It helps me not to be afraid that I will scare him off with my honesty.

So trying to pretend my problems are smaller than they are is not the answer here. Trying to pretend my response to them (to the pain and problems themselves as opposed to the bigger picture) is joy and gratitude is inauthentic. So what can I do?

I had a conversation with Priss last night about a comparatively small issue. She told me something she had recently learned and articulated;

“I was challenged to remember to make Jesus lord over everything. Wanting him first, even if that meant never having a well paid job or remaining single, not getting my own house, having no friends… etc.”

She shocked me with that. She shocked me by showing me how many millions of miles I am away from making a statement like that. That in fact I have managed to turn that attitude upside down. I realised that my misguided belief that God ought to give me everything I want because I’m his, had made me into this big greedy monster making demands, while God was my little servant, expected to feed me with things and if he didn’t, he incurred my rightful rage. What an ugly image.

Importantly, that does not mean that my needs and desires are not legitimate. It does not mean that my lack of them is not a real deficit. It does not mean that I ‘ought to be glad’ that things are hard.

It does not mean I should pretend that all of this is small.

It does mean I should remember that God is BIG.

Priss (and the Holy Spirit!) stretched my tiny butler God and showed me a glimpse of his greatness and his rightful place as Lord over everything. This is not then, a begrudging acquiescence that I have to submit to him, but a wonderful realisation that his bigness means that I can trust him to be big enough to carry me through the pain, the disappointment, all the rest.

Lately I’ve been trying to hold on to truths of him guiding me by his right hand, but I’ve been hating the places he’s taken me and wanted to shake myself free. I’ve now caught a glimpse of how powerful that right hand is. I hate to say it, but one of my most hated Christian kids songs has helped me here (I mostly hate it because English Christians seem to always insist on singing it inexplicably in an American accent. Since when did we worship Gad?):

Our God is a great big God
Our God is a great big God
Our God is a great big God
And he holds us in his hands.

This is TRUE and unbelievably for someone who hates kids songs, is a truth that helps me in the depths of my adult pain.

If Jesus is Lord of my life, I won’t demand from him. If he’s really Lord of all of it, I will trust him with it. I will not try to wriggle out of that great big hand, but I will rest in it. I might cry, I might shout, I might fall apart in the middle of it. But I will trust that it carries me, instead of assuming that it just pushes me where I don’t want to go, and takes away the things I want.

I have a long way to go still before I can say that this is how I am actually living my life, but at least I am on my way there. I feel I have a little way to go before I can say with authenticity that my response is joy, but at least I know that joy in suffering is possible (Romans 5 and countless others, promise me that) and so I can hope for that promise. Habakkuk begins with rage and confusion, but it ends like this:

“Though the fig-tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
He enables me to go on to the heights.”

I think I am somewhere between chapter 1 and chapter 3 of Habakkuk at the moment. I am feeling the loss of the olives, the sheep and the grapes. I am trying to learn not to expect them, while acknowledging the pain of their absence, and I am trying to learn and hold onto the hope, that the bigness of God will lead to joy in the heights, even if it takes me a little while to get there.