There is a big difference between magic and faith.
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This is such a good and difficult question. Where can I draw the line that know that God would protect me?. If, for example, he doesn’t protect children from molestation, would he protect us from Covid in church?
Greg Boyd wrote in “Benefit of the Doubt” that a young missionary woman came to him, struggling with insecurity. She had met a young man in college and planned on getting married. However, she had been abused by another missionary on the field, and found it hard imagining bringing up children and trusting God to take care of them, when He hadn’t taken care of her.
In our YEC and very loving, fundamentalist church, we talked about worry as part of the Sunday School recently. The syllabus came close to saying it was a sin not to trust in God. However, a counselor who attended acknowledged that some of us have some pretty awful experiences that would lead us to be unable to trust God. What do we trust him for?
This is the sort of thing that the Jews in Wiesel’s book about a concentratoin camp brought God to trial for, as I understand. After condemning him, one said, “And now it is the time for evening prayer.”
(someone can correct me on that story, as I’m not sure I have that right).
At any rate, I find myself asking for help and wisdom in every case. Lately, I’ve been praying that what I ask be subject to what God desires.
My mom mounted on her wall a quote from Hudson Taylor that runs like this: “I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help Him to do His work through me.”
I am not sure what to do about worry–except to turn some of that energy in positive directions.
Thanks for bringing that up. If you have other thoughts, please let me know.
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Miracles are not magic. Magic is basically deception. Miracles do not even have to be supernatural, they can sometimes just be timing and circumstance.
As for protection. The church decided not to “risk” God not doing so. They / we did not ask so it is academic as to whether it would have happened.
Richard
I cannot live without God. He is my confidant, my strength and my comforter. With God I can face the world, without Him I am vulnerable and alone. I do not expect privileges or immunities from life’s knocks, I can die like anyone else, but I have no fear of it.
In short, and it may be corny, but what matters is the Peace of God that passeth all understanding.
Richard
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Don’t associate Richard’s view with “the Christian” view. He is out in left field. He doesn’t have much common ground with anyone.
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No worries there. I know there are kindred spirits here, probably as many or more than I have in any atheist or agnostic circle. If you scratch beneath the surface you’ll find difference among people who identify with the same group. But you’ll almost always find some similarities too between people who identify with different groups. But thanks.
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Magic in a religious context is forcing the hand of the gods. If your spells and charms are strong enough, the gods will comply with your wishes. However, that’s not what the faith is all about.
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I freely admit that my impetus for faith is a mixup of sometimes illogical reasoning. From the Bible, “If I regard sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me”–and so is that a sort of bargaining, when we keep our hearts clean to get God to listen? I remember a story of Anne of Green Gables when she was grown, and Rilla, her daughter, tried to please God to heal her mom by walking through the graveyard by night. I could find the same primitive urge in my heart to buy safety. Is that looking for a miracle? My grandfather promised God that if his infant daughter survived a pioneering heart surgery, he would join World Vision full time. She lived and did well, and he left his family’s greenhouse business to work overseas full time with World Vision and then with International Aid. As a result of his service in Asia and Africa with them, our family has changed drastically–we are multiethnic through adoption, and some of us grew up overseas; Did God honor that bargain? I don’t think that my grandfather’s offer changed what happened one bit, but it changed him. Sometimes, sacrifice on our part-whether time in prayer or sacrificial giving–seems to change us.
I think he would rather influence us with love, as Coriakin remarked in C S Lewis’ “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” remarked,“Sometimes… I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic." Thus, he would rather rule by relationship than fear, which is a mark of the old gods rather than the one who introduced himself to us through Jesus Christ.
I remain puzzled by the idea of miracles. Part of the NT seems to imply that if we don’t leap out in faith, God won’t work. I just finished reading Brother Andrew’s book, "God’s Smuggler,’ in which he and other students at a faith school were given a pound and told to minister and serve, giving away all they could, and come back at the end of a trip with the pound. He refused to ask for money. Amazingly, he made and gave away lots of money, and served many of the poor, bringing back the pound and more. In some ways, such a lifestyle contradicts the proverb to “look to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways and be wise.”
Surely God is “not a tame Lion,” and I agree fully with Richard that it’s not His acting, but His peace, which is essential.
That is very much the opposite of a health and wealth mindset. May we all grow in that type.
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I always think back to the original story in the Bible. God selects a man and sets him up showing humanity that part of our role is to manage this world and care for it. So with most major issues, and even smaller ones, I often have to ask myself where was humanity? Is this virus jumping to mankind a byproduct of civilization not caring for earth.
Take the city it seemed to be stemming from. Wuhan is bordering the Yangtze River. The wilderness there is severely fractured due to urbanization. In America we see diseases being kicked up within species in locations because there is less area for them to wander off to. God also gave us plenty of examples of cleanliness in the Torah. Though not law for us as Christians it does show us the basics to know we need to be clean. Was this disease initially spread due to people being unclean.
Lastly God promises humanity that tribulations , both by nature and by man, would occur. It’s a time that can make us develop faith and care for those in need or lose hope and shun everyone without caring for the needs.
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The Christian view s not to believe in the power of God then.
I wasn’t going to post this here but I may as well. It would appear that there is no respect for me anyway.
23rd Psalm for 2020
The Lord is not my Shepherd, I do not trust him
He makes me lie down in green pastures and I am safe
He leads me beside still waters and I follow
I offer Him my soul because I will not need it
He leads me in the paths of righteousness but only in theory
Yea though I walk in the valley of the Corona virus I will fear
For God does not care about me in this life
Your rod and staff punish the wicked,
You prepare a table but I do not need it
You anoint my head with oil but I also need a sanitizing cream
My cup runneth over with everything I have panic bought
Surely fear and isolation will remain with me until the crisis passes
But I will dwell in Heaven because that is what my faith is for.
Richard
Richard, I associate your Christian view with my Christian view as it accords nakedly honestly with reality, not empty rhetoric. You, like me, are trying to make God work given that He does not materially intervene outside incarnation and its immediate ripples, and ineffably by the Spirit, deep calling to deep. Mystically. Which is where emergent leaders like Richard Rohr are coming from. Any claim to the contrary is liturgical and never to be taken literally. All our worship, our adoration, our telling Him He’s beautiful, our iconography, our sung and ancient literary imagery is to keep our spirits up collectively and alone as we go out in the face of the entirely natural world where none of it is true, where meaningless, pointless suffering is true. Where He is as helplessly privileged as we. Courage mon brave!
I am sorry, but it appears that you are correct. And this is what I have been claiming, though people seem to have misunderstood. But it should not be, if God is actually there. The only, rational conclusion is… that people only believe in God in theory. And they justify it by claiming that God Himself holds back, and lets us get on with it. Like I said earlier: I wonder why people pray at all if God is so distant and self isolating.
Richard
Considerations concerning the mindset that God will protect us are these two things in my opinion.
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God says he will care for the birds and we are worth more to him than the birds. Many jump to that as proof that everything will be ok always but that’s not the case. Again, look at birds. They die from starvation and predators. Winds knock over trees destroying eggs. Look at the lives of chickens… God still allows terrible things to happen. It’s a byproduct of creation and free will.
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Even in the Torah where a god said he was their god and so on. Same places where the proverbs and psalms come from. When people got sick God did still send them away from camp. He would remove the sick often. Does not mean they were forgotten and neglected. But God would still isolate some outside of the main camp.
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Many of the prophets and apostles were murdered. In wars young men would die. All in scripture. God himself as a man was crucified. We can expect pain and suffering. Part of our hope is that we will be resurrected and the earth and heavens restored.
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Because He’s immanent Richard. He’s here. Present. All feeling. The ultimate Oasis Wonderwall for expressing oneself. If He is, then He is. I try and thank Him every day and invite Him in every day. The latter less frequently than the former. And the latter is more affective. It just was. To tears. That’s why, what we pray, minimally. Looking for signs and wonders now is utterly futile, even more so when you think you’ve found one. We all do and we all have. He does not, can not operate like that. Folk religion proclaims otherwise. On this site. Minds greater than ours get caught up in it, blind geniuses seeing a shadow of doubt. They, we get caught up in grammatico-historical epistemology and see the present through ancient text made true by it. I have not yet encountered anyone outside people like Rob Bell, Steve Chalke, Pete Rollins, Richard Rohr, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Phyllis Tickle (RIP), Rachel Held-Evans (RIP), Brené Brown; the emergent who can do this. [Which is a lie, I drove 30 miles to talk to a lovely guy, a priest, at a retreat. I’d drive 300 to do it again.]
The trouble with me and thee Richard, is that we have no alternative but to submit to rationality and seek God despite that cognitive bias : ) that filter, that lens over one eye. Most others here who do that do it with the other eye too and cannot look for God with it; the brilliant non-theists we’re graced with here. We’re closer to them than our brilliant theist siblings. How do we integrate our vision and walk with those who have a different prescription? We have no right to expect them to see our way.
That’s where He is.
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I have no need to seek God. He has never left me in over 60 years. However, the manifestation of that is much harder to demonstrate, although IMHO I do not need to . It is between me and Him. No one else.
Perhaps I have an idealistic view f faith. One that is unreal. Especially for the public church. I know all the whys and wherefores but that does not change what I believe. I was very disappointed when the churches closed before being told to. Nothing will change that either.
Richard
A view that is pure and therefore… painful Richard. It is for me. And for Him : )
Martin
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