Is God as Broken as I am?

If I am made in God’s image, do my limitations and fragmented thinking mirror who God is as well?  This summer has been enjoyable for me as I have been reading books and understanding some things that happen in my life.  I am beyond asking God, “why” but really “when.”  I no longer ask God why things happen in this world.  The evidence is apparent that the corruption of man and their thoughts have brought us into a place where “good” has left most of humanities ways.  The best of our leaders are liars, cheats, adulterous, murders and these atrocities are horrendous, but—because they are the best we have as our leaders—we must watch the corruption and victimization occur.  We are in a time when those that are called to serve and protect are preying on the lives of the unsuspected.  Parents who are expected to raise their children to be a positive member of society are built to survive instead of thrive.  Parents too, are victimizing their children by their lack of attention, their inability to care for the emotional and mental needs.  Unfortunately, this leaves adolescence to enter this world with an identity that has been abused, raped and stripped.  

If we live in a stewing pot of disgust, filth, evil, wicked imagination and greed…how can we clearly see God for who he really is?  Love is life.  To be truly loved is to truly live, as we spoke about last week.  In 2018, we are living in a loveless generation.  We don’t get love, and when we do experience some form of love, we don’t understand it. Let’s get real, most of us don’t know how real love works so when we experience the power of love we run from it; true love has power that is too much to endure if we are in a fragmented place.  There are also times we take this love to retrieve our selfish desire.  We, as a society, are entirely embarking on an era that will be void of the actual knowledge of pure uncorrupt love.  Debate me all you want but the truth is before us every day.  

I Thought God Was Love? 

Yes, God is love, but because we are struggling with so much grief and trauma, we will not be able to identify it; we will always see God’s acts towards us through the lenses of pain.  We will think that pure love extinct.  What we will go after is a counterfeit version of such affections that it will mask itself, but will not have any power.  I never comprehended the understanding that GOD is love.  

These last few months I have come across authors that have done an exemplary job in showing the power of sin versus the power of love.  What would happen if we just let God love us as he genuinely desired?  It would be like the Hulk loving a smurf but never truly being able to embrace it because of its frailty.  But what if in the Hulk’s deepest desire to love this smurf he grabbed it and hugged it with all his strength?  What would be the result?  That little guy would look like a splatter of blueberry jam on the Hulk’s green chest.  God’s love is 10x more powerful than the Hulk’s embrace, and we are 100x smaller than that blue creature in comparison to God.  

Now there are those that may read this and think things like, “But I don’t feel his love,” “How could he love me and allow these things to happen?”  “If God is loving then…”, “If God is powerful then…”  The book, “The Shack,” has helped change my perspective of God in such a way that I had to pack my spiritual bags and get ready for a spiritual journey to understand God for who he really is.  Let me share some things they said that made me go AHH!!

Question 1.  Why can’t we understand God?

In the book, The Shack, this statement on page 100,“The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much and then call that God.”

What does this mean?  It means that I look at my inner goodness to understand God.  Let me explain; I had a best friend who meant everything to me as a child.  We talked about living life together and growing old together.  We talked about getting married and having children and raising them together.  In our sappiest moments, we would promise never to leave each other.  We promised always to be friends but as we grew up so did our issues.  She walked away from the friendship and in response to her abandoning me, I abandoned her.  Well, she deserved it right?  She didn’t hold up to her end of the bargain so why should I?  My declaration to be her friend “forever” and “never leave her,” had a small clause… “In the event, you leave me…then everything spoken of is null and void.” 

 The best friendship—that I showed my most profound love to and dedication to—was conditional and fickle.  Sadly, we think God is the same.  We are a conditional people.  Our version of love never takes us to the ends of the earth, causes us to swim the deepest ocean or climb the highest mountains for someone who wants nothing to do with us.  Our love is greedy and self-seeking, and we project that kind of love on God, and when he claims to love us we think his love is our love.  

Question 2.  Why can’t we trust God at his word?

Limited people only expect to serve a limited God.  Last week, I talked about how the absence of love in our lives is like clipping the wings of a bird who was designed to fly.  So because we think we are limited then God has to have those same attributes.  Tell the truth, doesn’t the world look different walking on it as opposed to flying in a plane thousands of feet in the air?  We think that God has the same ground view but he is so much bigger and we relate to God as if he is a bird with clip wings.  Our God is free and who we are, does not change his character.

Now think about it, walking isn’t so bad because we are a species that walks but we have found a way to defy our design and fly.  How frustrating is life for a species meant to fly?  You and I are created to be loved and again, “Love is not the limitation…”  God’s love is not leaving us grounded, “love is the flying.  God is love” pg 103. The same world you walk on looks different when you’re soaring over it. 

Question 3.  What is the biggest lie keeping us from understanding God?

When people are constantly betraying you, one adapts their expectation to be something more reasonable.  Betrayal is a violation that can’t be put into word without raw, unadulterated emotion.  Your world is turned upside down because someone you trusted took the most vulnerable part of you and used it to hurt you.  To experience that once is one thing but to experience that again leaves a person begging for ammo to ward off anyone who wants to come into their lives again.  With reason we make a declaration to live life apart from others, but independence has never been God’s idea.  

Two are better than one,
    because they have a good return for their labor:
¹⁰ If either of them falls down,
    one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
    and has no one to help them up.
¹¹ Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
    But how can one keep warm alone?
¹² Though one may be overpowered,
    two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.  Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

I Can Do Better On My Own

But what is the harm in independence, doesn’t independence make it easier for me to live life without chains?  When I am apart from others, I won’t be hurting anyone when I fail, and no one can hurt me.  But look at one of the statements made in the book, “When you chose independence over relationship, you become a danger to one another.  Others become objects to be manipulated or managed for your own happiness.  Authority, as you usually think of it, is merely the excuse the strong ones use to make others conform to what they want” pg 125.  

So what the author is saying is that the idea of independence is a dangerous system because you are only thinking about yourself.  What would a world look like if parents were only parenting with themselves in mind?  What would a government look like that only enforce laws that have their own interest in mind?  What would it look like to be in relationships with someone who is only thinking of themselves?  Hmmm, I guess it would look like the world we are in now.  Independence is the mantra of this generation, and it is destroying us.  

Look at this statement made later on, “Humans are so lost and damaged that to you it is almost incomprehensible that relationship could exist apart from hierarchy.  So you think that God must relate inside a hierarchy as you do” pg124.  We think that God runs a pecking order kind of world.  We think God classes us, puts the stronger over the weaker.  But He is a relational God who is all about using everyone’s weakness and strength to accomplish unity.  It is far beyond us to think God would want us to saddle ourselves with someone weaker or give away our meaningless possessions to help someone else.  We are wrong to think that God must relate to us the way we relate to people.

Now, when we look at God with those kinds of ideologies we create a God, we think, treats us with the same rules we conjured up.  See just because we are a broken, damaged people doesn’t mean we are serving a damaged and broken God.  Our lenses may be smudged, cracked, or even blackened but how we see God does not change who he truly is and how he relates to us.  

As we finish wrapping up this months topic, we would like to remind you that we are hear for you and if there is ever anything that you need help with, please feel free to contact us through email at thruthewinters@gmail.com.  Follow us on facebook and instagram @throughthewinters.