Some days faith is easy; days when everything seems to make sense, when what you believe feels natural and beautiful and life-giving.
Then there are other days. On those days the whole system feels suspect and dangerous, and the corruption seems to go all the way to the very top.
Today I guess I’m sitting in one of those “other” days.
I’ve been a Christian for most of my life and a pastor for nearly the last two decades, living in and telling the Christian story. It’s story that has often given me great comfort and hope. It’s a story that I’ve loved for as long as I can remember and one I’ve felt at home in.
At times though, if I’m honest, there are things within that story that give me great pause; questions that I don’t want to ask but ones that come anyway. Sometimes they’re about details in the Scripture accounts, sometimes they deal with theological concepts, and sometimes like today; they’re about the very character of the God of our story.
My Christian faith’s general historical narrative based on the Bible, has been this (greatly simplified here for time):
God creates everything and it is very good. There is no suffering or death. Creation is whole. Gen. 1:31
God creates human beings who are also very good, and imparts them with free will. Gen. 2:4-25
Human beings almost immediately use said free will to disobey God. (This is called “Sin” or “The Fall”). Gen. Chapter 3
Now that Sin has entered the world, there is a huge distance between God and His people, as God finds Sin detestable. (He can no longer see His creations with the unobstructed love He once had. He cannot, as a Holy God, be in the presence of Sin). Romans 5:6-11
This “Original Sin” is now transferred to all people at birth (You don’t do anything to deserve it. You are simply born contaminated and receive it, along with the associated penalties). Psalm 51:5
In the Old Testament, the way the people get back to God is through faithfully following the totality of The Law (the Scriptures). Deut. Chapter 5
This perfection proves to be impossible, and so the only way that sin is forgiven now, is through animal sacrifice, with one’s sin symbolically transferred to that animal, as sin’s forgiveness requires something to die. (More on this later). Leviticus Chapter 4
Since Human beings are unable at keep the Law perfectly, God sends his son, Jesus as the “Lamb of God”, a sacrifice sentenced to die as atonement (or payment) for all sins (because again, sin has to be paid for with the death of something/someone). 1 John 2:22, Hebrews 9:22
This Sin can now be permanently wiped away, but only if one “turns away from their sin”, acknowledges Jesus as God, accepts the free gift of “Grace”, (and to varying degrees based on who you talk to and their strand of Christianity, live in ways that adequately reflect these things). Acts 3:19, Romans 10:5-13
Jesus is now the only thing standing between God’s creations, and Hell; (an eternity of separation or suffering, again, depending on who you ask). Acts 4:12
Again, this is a greatly simplified version of what the Christian story has been, but I believe I’ve hit the essentials as it is described in the vast majority of churches and as it pertains to the terrifying questions that seem to always linger out there, hovering in the background noise of my faith journey:
Do we Christians worship an easily angered, grudge-holding God?
Does God ask His imperfect people to do what He in His perfection, seems unwilling or unable to do?
Is God less unconditionally loving than He commands His children to be?
As Jesus lived and breathed and walked the earth, he taught that we who follow him, are to forgive others relentlessly; as many times as we are asked, regardless of the wrong and without qualifiers.
He commands us to love our enemies, and to bless those who curse us.
He tells us that when mistreatment comes, we are to turn the other cheek and simply receive it.
We are told explicitly and repeatedly in the Gospels, that we need to forgive and love and show mercy, in a way that displays that we are God’s children; reflecting His character.
Yet is this His character in Scripture?
Is God as loving as He commands us to be, or is this a “Do as I say, not as I do” parental directive?
Is that really the story we’ve been living in?
This same God, who warns against requiring eye for eye, the God who tells us that to “be perfect as our Father is perfect” we must love those who persecute us; has seemingly used the single misstep of two people, (exercising the free will that He gave them, remember), as grounds to condemn all people, forever. (In Genesis 3, God got really ticked off at humanity really quickly, and didn’t get over it).
The Divinity of our Christian story has always been framed as holy and perfect “Father”, yet He seems to be permanently resenting His own children, solely for their now sin-tainted family bloodline—one that is only tainted because He’s made it so. He’s the rule-setter, after all. He could choose to forget Adam and Eve’s momentary failure and simply accept His children, just because He is love.
Theologians and many Christians will argue that God is choosing to forget sin through Jesus’ death and resurrection, but the very fact that our faith tradition tells us that Jesus is even necessary, sometimes seems to point to a God who is not really all that forgiving.
And worse than that, He’s making it very, very difficult for us to be forgiven.
In our faith narrative, for doing nothing other than simply being born we are already set up as “enemies of God”, each needing to somehow weed through our place of birth, our religious upbringing, our family history, and our life experience, and to find that supernatural needle-in-a-haystack called Jesus.
We then need to decode all that we’ve been taught and heard and read about him (and experienced about him through his people—even the really, really terrible stuff), and figure out what’s required to get us into Heaven and help us avoid eternal torment.
Some days that just feels like a really sad proposition. It doesn’t feel like it’s the work of a God who is Love, but one who is Love With Caveats.
If my wife and I willingly conceived a child knowing in advance that something about that child would be detestable to us (something that we would hold against them) and then expected them with very little interaction to uncover some difficult-to-find solution to earn our forgiveness, we’d be considered pretty suspect parents. Our goodness would certainly be questioned.
I’m not saying that God isn’t real and good and perfect, (because to be God, that’s sort of necessary). I’m just saying that sometimes the very core of the Christian story we’ve been living in makes that a difficult truth to always hold securely.
I want to believe that God is Holy and Just and Merciful, and that doesn’t just mean “His ways are not our ways“.
It doesn’t just mean He is beyond us, but it means His character is greater than ours.
It means that He doesn’t respond to wrongdoing with pettiness and revenge and grudges the way we do.
It means that all the smallness and ego and pride that people often encounter when dealing with me, aren’t part of the equation.
Some days though as I try to faithfully follow the unflinching commands of Jesus about lavish, extravagant forgiveness, love, and mercy; I confess that it feels like I’m being asked to do more than God is even willing to do, and it frustrates me.
Christian, do you ever struggle to reconcile God’s goodness, with the story we’ve been told about God?
Does the idea of Original Sin, (one that is so central to the Christian faith), seem to paint the picture of a God who has less patience and compassion for His children than Jesus asks us to have for our enemies?
Is it right for human beings not only to be born sinful, but to be born carrying the guilt of Jesus’ death too?
How do you perceive God as purely good and loving, given our faith tradition?
Maybe these are questions Christians can’t ask; but I’m a Christian and I’m asking.
