“One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ “Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?” (Romans 9:19-21)

If you would, please allow me some pastoral license that I might rip this passage of Romans out of its intended context for a moment or two in order to illustrate a point. I realize it probably has very little to do with what I am about to write and share with you, but I think at this point in time I can rightfully  be accused and found guilty of worse.

The short and long of it is that I have no excuse. “Who are you, O Man, to talk back to God?”

I went to my doctor yesterday. I usually go to my doctor not because I have any particular ailment but because I want to talk, blow off some steam; make sure I’m not crazy. He listens. He offers me some pills if I ask for them. He gives me advice, like he did yesterday, that resembles anything but modern medicine: Go out for a twenty minute walk each night, take note of the position of the moon, and keep a journal of your moods in relation to the moon. OK. I’m not having menstrual irregularity, but I’ll try.

Or, he’ll say, without a hint of irony, “Well, the Chinese say…” and then, “maybe we could do some acupuncture.” If my insurance company knew this is what me and my doctor were talking about I suspect the bill would be entirely my responsibility. I think he knows me well enough to know that when I come in to see him I am not there to talk about my kidney stones or hemorrhoids or my nightmares. Strangely enough, I think he knows I am there to talk shop which, in our case, is theology; or Zen; blades of grass; grace.

So he asks how I have been and it spills out of me like the Niagara River over the edge. I tell him that since August of 2008 my life has been a train wreck. I sit there on the paper covered bench-thingy, hunched over, and my sadness pours out of me as if he were Jesus or my pastor. I sit there in the cold, barren dung-heap of an office, scratching myself with a pen cap confessing to him my pain. “124/76,” says the nurse. “Is that good?” I ask. “Yes, excellent,” she replies. “Well, that’s because I don’t carry stress in my chest, but in my abdomen.”

Kidney stones. Diarrhea. Constipation. Hemorrhoids. Cramps. Gas. I’m a walking advertisement for Pepto Bismol and Milk of Magnesia. Aleve is really nice. I can’t tell the twenty-four year old shapely brunette nurse any of this. No, I am a fine specimen of man. I stand tall and crack some jokes. She barely laughs, but is courteous nonetheless; she humors my wit. Later she will come in and clean a couple of spots on my skin that will be operated on by the doctor. So much for my bearded, manly presence: There I lay in a ripped gown, half naked, raising my boxer shorts and covering myself while this nurse preps me for surgery.

I know you don’t want to hear it, but there it is.

“Well, since August of 2008 here’s the story. My brother in law, who was thirty, died from a brain tumor…”—‘he didn’t die from it, but with it; so say the Chinese’ he interrupts—“and that set off a string of events that I haven’t been able to figure out yet.”

“My wife and I were buying our first house; after 17 years of marriage we finally could. Then Bobby died. Then the shit hit the fan at the church. In July 2009 I was fired. That quick. They called me on my last day of church camp and told me to be at meeting the next day (they had been having meetings behind my back for some time). I knew it was coming.” By now it is pouring out of me even faster. “But there was nothing I could do. They had lost confidence and blamed me for twenty some years of no growth. I shouldn’t be talking to you about this. We had just bought a house. My brother in law—what’s up with all the brain tumors going around anyhow?”—‘It depends upon who you talk to,’—“I’m sick of it!”

Silence.

But I was talking to him and he was listening. I was spilling my guts to a practitioner of Chinese medicine, who is more in tune with the Ohio State Buckeyes than with Jesus, and who was furiously typing away our conversation on his laptop even as I am now reporting my version of it on my laptop. I visit my doctor maybe once every two years. I noticed that the lobby was empty when I arrived; he knows.

He knows I won’t listen to his advice about cholesterol and that I won’t take pills. He knows that I don’t really care too much about having my prostate examined even though I am nearly 40 and should. He knows that even if I take pills it will be for a week and then I’ll throw them away.

“Maybe it was about pride,” I say. ‘It’s always about pride,’ he responds. Dammit. I was hoping it wasn’t. “Seriously, I’m working at Blockbuster Video. I spent four long years learning how to do something I am not now doing. Death. Major life changes. Career changes. Age. Am I going nuts? I studied hard to be a preacher and now I’m not. I’m working at Blockbuster, not contributing anything to the world. And let’s not even talk about how this has upset my sons. My eldest questions church, is uncertain of God. Behavior issues. All three have struggled in school since we lost our church of nearly ten years. And my wife? Am I losing it?”

‘No.’

He then goes into this long, thoughtful monologue about the Chinese and how there are no accidents and how God is in the blade of grass and acupuncture and the moon and menstrual cycles and half a dozen other things. I nod thoughtfully. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.” I always say that because I don’t want the doctor to think that the things I believe faith is supposed to do are not being done—you know, like giving me courage, making me holy, giving me peace—“I am not happy; I have no peace; I’m all out of balance; can’t find an even keel…”—I don’t want him to think that Jesus is a failure just because I am.

I don’t want him to think that faith doesn’t, uh, work, even though I’m not so certain faith has such a utilitarian value; leastways not as much as some television preachers would have us believe.

“I mean, I don’t know if it’s in my heart or my head,” I say while tapping one, then the other.

“I have no reason to be unhappy. I found a job when other guys didn’t. I have a house where others do not. My wife and sons are healthy. My bills are paid. I’m finally working on my graduate degree….and yet, I don’t feel like I’m contributing anything to the world right now. All day long schlepping videos…listening to the DM ask about how much of this we sold and how much money we took in for the day. How many patients did you see today? How many insurance claims did you file? How many Michael Jackson DVD’s did you pre-sell? How many rewards did you sell? You see? I’m contributing nothing to the world right now. No longer a pastor.  I hate living in a world that is all about money because that is not why I live. Just enough is all I need or want.”

–You mean that you would sacrifice a family and the gospel for a building? ‘We have to save that building.’ Are you serious? The building is more important than a family? ‘We cannot lose the building.’—‘Sign the paper and resign immediately and you’ll get six weeks’ severance.’–

Then he said the only thing I think I really heard him say all day. Before this statement, I might have argued with some of you that God does indeed speak through the least likely sources and in places unexpected, but I might not have actually believed it. Theories are often different than practice. But he said it, and I heard it.

‘You’re judging God.’

And with those three or four words I was, again, completely undone.

‘The Chinese do not believe there are any accidents, so you are in the place where God wants you for the time being. And you are working on this degree and someday you can contribute to world again. Maybe for now he just wants you get out and see the other side of the world and experience life from that point of view to prepare you again to serve.’ You hear that pastor Kelly? I should have been listening to Pastor Kelly all along then the trip to the doctor would have been unnecessary. The Chinese are far more Calvinistic in their Buddhism than I am in my Evangelicalism. No accidents? Really? God has all this worked out already?

Pshaw!

I have been judging God as if I happen to have keener insights into the way he runs his world and my life than I do. It’s a lot easier to hear those words, or even preach them, than it is to practice them.

I suspect my preaching will be tempered in the future with a tad more humility, my affections bathed more in tears than in Scripture, and my judgments baptized more in a broken heart than a prideful façade. If I ever preach again, and at this point I’m holding out no hope of that happening, I won’t do so from a place of defense or offense, but from a place of love. Good theology is wonderful; a broken heart weeping with and for people, a helping hand lifting broken people, and a graceful tongue comforting the afflicted are all far better than a staunch, robust theology. (Which is not to say that we only need one or the other, but that one had better inform the other in many, many ways.)

It is hard to get up on Sunday mornings to worship when it’s your only day off after a long week of work. (I now literally work seven days a week; I know the struggle.)

I have been judging God? I have cried and moaned and complained and cursed and blasphemed and shouted and bitched and griped and stamped my feet and shook my fist and uttered things in my heart that would cause Old Scratch himself to shudder. I’m not proud of it; on the contrary I am quite ashamed. I have withheld forgiveness from people and played God. I have blamed God for my suffering—and it has been real.

‘You’re judging God.’

Those words—I couldn’t argue with my doctor after that and our interview didn’t last much longer.

It seems to me that the essence of faith is trusting that God has things under control even when it seems like he doesn’t. Faith is believing that God is faithful even when we are not. The essence of faith is not so much in knowing something about ourselves, but in knowing something about God. Faith is being willing to accept that things make sense to God even when they do not make sense to us.

I have not suffered as much or in the same way as any of you have (not that it is a competition), but I have been living with the mistaken notion for a while now that God has been judging me for something or other; maybe he has, but that’s beside the point for now. What I realized, from the mouth of a semi-pagan practitioner of medicine, is that I have actually been judging God. I have been telling God what to do, where to take me, what to give me, and why he should. I have been giving God instructions about the way my life should be. I have been reading off my list of reasons for why I am a far better preacher than I am salesman of DVD’s and video games (and yet I’m actually better at selling DVD’s than I am pastoring a church). That’s not the way of faith though.

And God has been far more patient with me than I have with him. Thank you, Father.

What matters is not my faithfulness, as strange as that may sound, but God’s. I judged him to be lacking, absent, estranged; He has stayed quiet so that He might prove otherwise. When I looked, I realized that it was I who have moved; not Him.

“That he ‘sticks with us’ is the reason Christians can look back over a long life crisscrossed with cruelties, unannounced tragedies, unexpected setbacks, sufferings, disappointments, depressions—look back across all that and see it as a road of blessing, and make a song out of what we see. ‘They’ve kicked me around ever since I was young, but they never could keep me down.’ God sticks to his relationship. He establishes a personal relationship with us and stays with it. The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination, it is the result of God’s faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us. Christian discipleship is paying more and more attention to God’s righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning of our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals but by believing in God’s will and purposes; making a map of our the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.” (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, 132-133)

“Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.” (Job 40:4-5, ESV)

Father, I am sorry.

Share this Post