Blaming God

There's a Peanuts cartoon somewhere (I haven't been able to find it online) where Linus fills Lucy in on his latest theological discovery: If you hold your hands upside-down, you get the opposite of what you pray for. That's what jumped into my head when I first read this post from Nina. (Go read it; I'll wait. Sorry about the language. Finished? All right, let's continue.)

Nina didn't have to hold her hands upside-down; she got the opposite of what she was praying for anyway. Repeatedly. With no explanation and for no identifiable reason. And not in little things like finding a parking space: she was praying for things like her dad's recovery from leukemia. All that praying apparently just made things worse.

Now at this point, I can hear Christians saying things like, "Well, we can't know God's will. His ways are higher than ours. It is not for us to question the wisdom of the Almighty. Trust and obey... for there's no other way..."

To which I answer, "Horsecookies."

I'm going to indulge in a flashback here. 1997 was a year of sheer hell in my life. My printshop failed, after having never paid enough to live on in the first place. I had a miserable roller-coaster-like relationship with my ex, who had packed up our 2-month-old son and left me and my 9-year-old daughter the year before. We stocked our shelves at the food bank. I took dirt jobs to make enough to buy groceries, and my landlady (God bless her) actually let me slide on the rent for about six months while I looked for a job. By the time I got hired part-time at the Greatest Newspaper in the Northwest™ in May, I had no phone, no vehicle (the ex had taken it), and a little girl with some pretty heavy-duty emotional issues. I spent the rest of that year catching up bills while my meager check was being garnished by the state for back taxes, and trying to make up for everything my daughter had lost.

Now, I knew that some of the route I had taken to this point involved sin and plenty of it. I knew I wasn't innocent in all this. Because I was a Protestant at the time, a trip to a confessional wasn't really an option. When Protestants repent, they do it directly. And boy howdy, did I repent. A lot. I was sorry for all the things I had done wrong (no need to list them all), I desperately wanted to be on good terms with God, and I would do whatever He wanted me to do to show it.

Like it mattered. God apparently didn't give a rat's patoot if I repented or not. Things got worse in both my spiritual and my temporal life. The more I begged Him for any sign of His love, the more He piled on misery. It became a vicious cycle: God let me down; I ignored Him; He didn't come through; I ignored Him some more; things got worse and worse.

Things weren't quite so bad the next year. I spent New Year's 1999 with my new girlfriend's Christian family, and we went around the room talking about "what the Lord had done in our lives." When I said that I was grateful He had finally let up on me, I was answered with gentle chiding.

"Now, Joel, you mean He's blessed you richly this year. Tsk, tsk. That's what you meant to say, isn't it?"

No I didn't. I meant that God had taken a breather from bitch-slapping me. As hard as I tried to believe in an omnibenevolent God, all the available data indicated that He was in fact a callous bastard. He showered blessings on everyone else; I was the unwanted stepchild.

Now, in retrospect, I can see that I was being a petulant child, and that He had a plan for my life, and blah blah blah. I know He was right and I was wrong. But that's not the point. What I want to know is, why do we thank Him when things are good, but when they're not, we blame ourselves, or the world, or anything but Him? If He is sovereign and all-powerful (as I believe He is), then He is responsible for all of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. Whether He pats us on the head or kicks us in the teeth, it's His doing.

St. Teresa of Avila had it spot on: "Lord, if this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You haven't got very many."

That's why I don't think Nina's post is all that blasphemous. Sometimes, Jesus actually does smear peas in our faces. Sometimes, I'm certain He's laughing at me. Doesn't matter in the long run. I understand that He's perfect. I'll still follow and obey the best I can. I love Him and I'm grateful for the blessings He's given me. He saved me from hell, and anything else is beside the point on an eternal scale. It's up to Him to decide what treatment to give me, and I certainly haven't earned anything from Him. If He wants to make a shambles of my life tomorrow, that's His prerogative. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. But I don't have to like it while it's happening. And I don't blame Nina for not liking it, either.