You can't tell me there is no God when we are sitting inside an ocean of it. You can't tell me that God does not answer prayers when everything I have ever asked for has been given to me. You can't make God into a "half there, half not there" presence, who structures the universe but does not involve itself in the drama of man. God is nature. God is man. God is life. God is our source, and God is love.
When believing in God, people focus too much on prayer. They think answered prayers are evidence of God. When someone prays for something very specific and then receives it, that means God is "real." When someone prays and does not receive it, that means God is "not real." People see God in terms of what they can get.
But to know God, one must only be focused on serving and giving; when one serves and gives generously, their prayers are answered by default. It is just as easy to forget our answered prayers as it is to have never received them. Faith should not be based on answered or unanswered prayers, because in the long run, that is a very small part of our relationship with God. Belief must be based on the internal state of one's heart.
I've struggled with this a lot lately, because I had a difficult time with military service. The armed forces are very Christian nowadays, so I felt at home around a lot of other Christians. But the institution asks so much of you, it expects you to be Christ-like, with an infinite capacity to suffer without complaining. I wish I could be less selfish, I guess.
ReplyDeleteHi Dr. Lopez,
ReplyDeleteThanks for checking out my blog. :)
I don't think it's selfish to ask for things in prayer or to complain when we're forced to suffer. I'm sure Christ complained a lot to God, we just never hear about that part.
When one is going through any period of suffering, there is always an ebb and flow of faith. In the aftermath of suffering, we are forced to realign our concept of God and ourselves. It's rough because when going through a period of transition, we're never sure how we're going to come out the other side, or how God's influence might change in our lives.
"It is not a question of God allowing or not allowing things to happen. It is part of living. Some things we do to ourselves, other things we do to each other. Our Father knows about every bird which falls to the ground, but He does not always prevent it from falling. What are we to learn from this? That our response to what happens is more important than what happens. Here is a mystery: one man’s experience drives him to curse God, while another man’s identical experience drives him to bless God. Your response to what happens is more important than what happens." –Chip Brogden
"I say that trials and tests locate a person. In other words they determine where you are spiritually. They reveal the true condition of your heart." -John Bevere