The faithfulness of God is showing itself to be very different to what I was told and sold from pulpits of prosperity and protection.
If faithfulness was to be understood in terms of God being a faithful friend, who was always there to delivery us from pain and difficulty, then God is a shit friend who stands at the sidelines with handcuffs and a weapon simply watching life throw punches at you.
You can be offended by this analogy, but it’s old – and the Bible is replete with forsaken cries.
So what do we do? Do we block our ears as Love cries from bloody crosses, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
Well, it seems to me that many DO stuff the cottonwool of certainty in their ears, at great speed, and without thought. And I understand why. Who doesn’t want an ever-present rescuer, and cosmic pain-preventor on stand-by?
After all, this is far more appealing than the relentless brutality of reality. It is certainly easy to sell.
Reality, ideology, and religion often make it very hard to embrace the sobering fact that we are all powerless and vulnerable creatures.
But I digress.
Back to images of failing divine faithfulness. What are the alternatives? There are many, but perhaps you find a new God?
Good idea. Go search, seek, and knock. I sincerely mean that.
Go find another angle, another expression. Put aside (or burn) the image of God you had and peruse to the well-stocked shelves of available gods and ideologies. Take a good look. Read the instructions. Take note of where it’s made, and where it is assembled. You’ll soon notice that many are very similar.
Most offer their followers the same safety and assurance you left behind. That is; here is God – able, but not always willing, to work things in your favour. Perhaps, along with this new deal, you are sold books rules and conditions which others claim they have used to twist God’s arm into rescuing you. This might even make you feel quite powerful.
In that system of arm-twisting, you get to be the Lord, right? You get to be the magician or magistrate who calls on God to fulfill their wishes and demands. You might even be able to use an ancient text like it’s an enforceable policy or promissory of things you can claim and conjure from… once again making you feel powerful and safe.
But that’s not faithfulness either, is it?
That’s legality. That’s contractual. That’s law enforcement. And your wishes and well-being are behind them all.
Before long, however, you may be honest enough to admit (again) that God doesn’t consistently follow your orders, or the orders of the storybook you mistook as a policy document. So, what of the faithfulness of God now?
Perhaps you have felt the bright sting of disappointment, loss, and broken promises.
Perhaps you have felt the humiliating inability to persuade God, no matter how many rules you followed or times your prayed.
I don’t have an answer to how God is faithful, or how the faithfulness of God works. Among other things, we are struggling with semantics. We’re desperately trying to attach universal complex meaning (and certainty) to a 12 letter word and ascribe it to a divine entity: faithfulness.
Is it that God is full of faith?
And if so, what does that mean for us?
I’m not sure.
I can only speculate that perhaps the answer to the question of how God is faithful can be found in the fact that the ways of God are most often transrational.
The transrational ways of God defy our categories, mock our certainties, dance beyond the edges of our most sophisticated logic… all the while remaining deeply invested in the collective experience of life through each, and every creature.
Perhaps faithfulness can only be found beyond feelings of forsakenness and forgetting. Beyond disappointment and despair.
Perhaps God’s faithfulness is demonstrated in God’s ability to turn up in ways we couldn’t imagine.
Perhaps God’s faithfulness refuses to be bound to definitions of safety and provision, health and longevity, winning wars, elections, finding parking spots or life partners.
Perhaps God’s faithfulness is humanities best attempt at reminding ourselves that faith lives beyond definition and we all long for it.
This much is becoming apparent: that God’s faithfulness is not the tame blessing we imagined, not the well-behaved guardian of our comfort-seeking souls, Instead, it lives in the wild spaces between our well-being and our well-becoming, in the storm-deep knowing that new dawns are already rustling in time’s womb, and the Holy One wanders the muddy borderlands of our waking.
Love and blessings
David Tensen
Pic: I folded 50 paper cranes for guests that came to memorial service at the age care facility that I work as a chaplain part-time. We grieved and celebrated the lives of more than 30 residents who pass away over the last 12 months.