http://careynieuwhof.com/2013/11/5-unusual-ways-ministry-leaders-struggle-with-god/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=5-unusual-ways-ministry-leaders-struggle-with-god
So this blog post is pretty good. And true. I have found myself in each of the places mentioned within the article.
And it raises the question… Why do I let myself get there? I would never let someone that I am counseling believe these lies about their situation. I would explain a loving God who is generous and purposeful to His core. I would offer a God who loves without condition and encourage them with words of Scripture that are profound and moving.
So why, then, as soon as something happens that is difficult in my ministry do I find myself searching my last few days trying to find the reason for why God is allowing this terrible thing to happen to me? More succinctly, why would God allow this terrible thing to happen to such a wonderful guy like me?
And maybe that is the point… The assumption that I carry is that I really am all that wonderful (just ask me), and that being wonderful deserves a certain kind of treatment from God.
Expectations suck!
I expect that if I am "doing well" with God (whatever that means) then the church will grow. I expect that when it isn't moving along at the rate it should, the reason is all about me. I expect that God is going to protect me from the pain of life. I expect that everyone around me is going to eventually see the world just the way I do. And those who see it differently are either wrong or stubborn. And I expect that if I am going to give you pieces of my heart as a friend or a family member, you must see everything just like me.
And if any of those expectations are not met, well then I am very busy right now and don't have time to be with you. And I expect you'll understand and be okay with that. I am a pastor after all. There are lots of demands on my really important job.
I sound really gross. Would I even like to hang out with me? To be honest, I don't really like hanging out with me. And maybe that is why I expect you to be or act a certain way and why I expect God to be or act certain ways and when He or you interrupt the patterns of my expectations, I don't have a frame of reference for that. Maybe some part of my relationships with others and God is about a test of whether or not I am okay based on whether or not you think I am.
Maybe I use pain to validate a skewed perspective of how the world around me is supposed to function.
What do you think? What are some of your expectations of God and others?
This reminds me of 'Fear and Trembling', by Soren Kierkegaard. It's a book that deeply examines faith by delving into the story of Abraham, specifically the sacrificing of Isaac. Toward the beginning of the book, he satirizes the modern religious situation, and it's idea of going 'beyond faith', and continues on to paint a picture of faith which requires us to paradoxically stand in absolute relationship before God, touching upon the eternal as an individual, and bringing that wholly back into our finite, circumstantial lives. It's not something we can ever get beyond, we can only get up to that point. That act of faith obliterates expectations, because it has no system, it proscribes nothing, it explains nothing, it gives our selfishness no quarter. As Abraham Joshua Heschel put it, "The truth is that faith is not a way but the breaking of a way, of the soul's passageway constantly to be dug through mountains of callousness", and also, “Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.”
ReplyDeleteI love it!
You really get me when you connect the idea of self-condemnation as a crisis in failed expectation, which is itself presupposing an assertion of personal worth that we are trying to see proven. That need to see it constantly proven, that neediness we all feel is an attempt to go beyond faith, because it is hard to both accept the task of being an individual before God AND facing the harsh reality of life.
Myself, I have found great temptation in self-discipline and self-improvement, to make THAT the thing I place before God in our absolute, eternal relationship, because all I see in the finite is something unworthy. As you note, our pain distorts our perception of what ought to be. Therefore this must be reversed; I must be vulnerable enough to bring my need to change into my daily life, and the audacity of my being into an eternally present, worshipful commune with God. This immediately challenges the conditions I have built into relationship both with God and man, and all that I have imposed of life.
It tells me I can't even begin to define how it works, or even what I ought to do with that, which leaves little room for inappropriate expectations.
Sometimes I reject that, because I don't like to think that God would keep me in the dark like that, especially when I'm just trying to do His own dang will! Which is fundamentally silly, but it shows me how easily I can literally remove who God is from the picture, and think only about what God does. I start to sow seeds in my approach to life that tell me He wants righteous deeds, rather than righteous people.
I want to thank you for opening up this dialogue thing. I couldn't have imagined how orchestrated so much of this is, how profoundly and directly it speaks to what I am struggling with, and have been in TOTAL privacy. Thank you for busting down those walls.
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