Holding Things Loosely
by
John Allen
Having written earlier about how attending the funerals of those
who have died unexpectedly or prematurely can often increase our
awareness of wanting to live a more meaningful and deliberate
life, that only happens for those not intimately connected. For
others, like immediate family who are closely affected, the
death of a loved one in the "prime of life" can raise more
serious questions, such as "why did this have to happen?".
There are no easy answers, and for people of faith, it is
sometimes even more perplexing, not just when a death occurs,
but during other times of adversity. The lack of satisfactory
answers to "how could God let this happen?", "where is He in all
this?", or "why does God seem so distant, silent and
indifferent?" is troubling to say the least.
We really have only two choices. Either we don't believe there
is a God at all or else we do believe. In the first scenario,
life has no real meaning, so it's absurd to even ask the
question "why" because "why" is irrelevant. We're just stuck
with accepting that "stuff happens, and though we can try and
manipulate outcomes, it's largely outside our control". On the
other hand if we do believe, then the questions are legitimate.
One might suggest there are more choices such as "well yes
there's a God, but He's not involved", however, that makes less
sense than going with the first choice, simply because it's
contrary to everything He's revealed about Himself.
Since it's not the point of this post to get into apologetics
and debate the existence of God, I'll move on, but for those who
haven't really done an honest investigation of their own to
decide for themselves, I would recommend reading some of C. S.
Lewis's books, starting with "Mere Christianity". Lewis, a
British scholar and professor at Oxford and Cambridge, has
written more than 30 books including "The Chronicles of Narnia".
He was early on, an atheist who set out to disprove
Christianity, and ended up a devout Christian. But even so, he
ended up struggling to understand and accept adversity in his
own life. He married in his later years, and his wife died after
being with him a relatively short time. In fact he only lived a
couple years after her death. Though he did accept her dying, he
was so close to her, and felt such an incredible sense of loss,
that he may have lost the will to embrace life without her.
I said earlier, there are no easy answers, and there simply
aren't. What I've observed is that we have enough information to
support a belief in both God and His revelation through Christ,
that He is a loving God that cares about His creation, and is
certainly concerned and involved in this world. We also know
this world isn't operating according to original design and will
eventually pass away. In the meantime, we all have a choice to
make - namely do we trust Him. It's a purely binary decision,
either believe or don't - there is no grey area. However, we
absolutely don't have all the answers and never will in this
life. The parts we don't understand are what faith is all about.
It's like when Christ asked his disciples if they were going to
bail out on Him too, and Peter responded with "where else would
we go". That's the crux of it - there is no better alternative.
God seems to be much more concerned with our individual
relationship with Himself than with anything else, including
just about everything we hold onto in life. It's easy to get
focused on a lot of other pursuits, such as money, power,
health, possessions, relationships, making ourselves happy, and
so on. Most things are neither good nor bad in and of
themselves, but any of them can be a problem if we hold them too
tightly. If we were to do an honest self-assessment of
everything we have or spend our time on, asking the questions,
"could I do without this?" or "what would happen if this was
taken away?", it would probably be most revealing.
The ability to hold things loosely, with hands unclenched,
allowing them to come and go as they please will get us further
along the road to understanding and accepting adversities in
life than just about anything else. It means we consider
ourselves simply stewards of everything as opposed to owners of
anything, counting on nothing save our sure relationship with
the Almighty.
Accepting all this is fairly easy when we aren't the one going
through the tough times. But when we are the one whose prayers
seem useless, can't hear God anymore, maybe even doubt He's
there, and are beat down with no light visible at the end of the
tunnel, it can be nearly impossible to accept anything that
doesn't just fix whatever is broken. Any words intended as
encouragement will more often sound like platitudes from someone
who doesn't understand. About the only useful thing one can do
to help is just be there and listen. In his book "The North Face
of God", Ken Gire talks about this coming along side people who
are suffering, not to provide any answers, but just to walk with
them and help wherever possible.
At the end of the day, we are never going to get answers to all
our questions. We can choose to stay in limbo, or move on. Even
Job didn't get an answer to his undeserved suffering. Instead,
God asked him, in so many words, "where were you when I created
this world, and who are you to question it?". Harsh sounding,
until one stops to consider what God was getting at. We have
that marvelous thing called "free will" and He apparently goes
out of His way not to interfere with our choices. We have enough
data to make a choice and no more. Again, that's why it's called
faith. Pushing everything else aside, sometimes it just comes
down to answering His question: "Will you accept Me as your God,
even if I don't answer your question or fix your problem?".
Maybe our challenge is really to take God out of the box we keep
Him in and let Him be God, realizing that if the created
understood everything about the creator, He wouldn't be much of
a God. When one stops to think, it is rather absurd to think
that the finite can comprehend everything about the infinite. We
have enough to choose and that's what He leaves us with - at
least in this world.
About the Author
John Allen writes on a wide variety of topics. He can be reached through his website http://www.j2trading.com which focuses on finding unique gifts.
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