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The Passion Well
Chapter 2:
Nagging Accusations
***
Hebrews 11:6 (NLT)
"And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him."
***
I had a business friend years ago who was rather aggressively atheist. I met him when I was in my thirties and eventually found myself in his employ before I discovered his aversion to faith in God. But it didn't take long before I discovered it all too clearly. He didn't miss taking advantage of an opportunity to mock belief in God with great disdain to my face or to credit all of Christianity with hypocrisy based on the public errors and failings of some when the opportunity presented itself. He also seemed to hold a view that's unfortunately held by a number of people that I've crossed paths with in life. It's the idea that anyone claiming to be a Christian or follower of Christ should be completely without failings - in other words, perfect.
Some of his other most comfortable arguments were built around questions dealing with how a god, any god could allow so many innocent people to suffer and/or die along with all of the other injustices in the world. He was certain that if there were indeed a god, especially a good god, that he would never allow these things to happen - but they do happen, thus, there could be no god. For him, God was a fantasy and anyone that claimed to believe in Him was a fool. What I found ironic was the fact that all of the character qualities that I was firmly working to uphold increasingly in my life at this point, were the very things that drew him to me ... and I subscribed to them because they were important to the God that he so willingly ridiculed. What he so willingly reviled was the very souce of what he also highly valued and complimented in me simultaneously.
These were heavy topics for a young man in his thirties who at that point hadn't invested much in the maturity of his faith. Nor had he been able to reconcile those same questions in his own mind. They were at the time some pretty sharp and uncomfortable points directed toward me and ones that this friend didn't hesitate to use when the opportunity presented itself. It became a spontaneous periodic battle in which I refused to give up my faith and he refused to budge in his own views or even concede that I had a right to mine - however laughable and foolish he thought they were.
My relationship with him made me somewhat captive to his periodic rants since he was also my employer at the time. And while I enjoyed working for him generally and had worked with him in varying capacities for a few years, the environment eventually felt increasingly oppressive to a point that I became motivated to move on. I never told him the real reason that I left, but that parting brought both immediate sweet relief ... along with some simultaneous guilt.
In response to his declarations, I could have pointed out that the hypocrisy of many professed Christians stems from the fact that there's a difference between having scriptural head knowledge and actually coming to know God personally - That truly coming to know God in an actual relationship is what has the true and profound, life changing effect on a person's heart, actions and life. Without that, all other knowledge is merely just that and that it's powerless because it denies God's purpose for us to to exist in the first place.
I could have tried to make him understand that believing God didn't automatically make me or anyone else suddenly perfect, without the temptations and failings our flesh is vulnerable to. It simply opens the door for us to begin to become growing examples of His selfless and amazing, transforming grace. I could have explained that those attempting to follow Christ are still an imperfect and unfinished work and that those following Christ are seeking daily to better emulate our Savior while living in a world that provides a host of negative influence intended to prey heavily on any weakness we bear.
But I didn't. I couldn't. My own simple faith, as stubborn as it was, lacked true knowledge and understanding of even those things back then and I was afraid of the possible repercussions of attempting to make my stand more bold. It was as if over the course of all of the years that I held onto it, my faith had never grown or matured much beyond the childlike stage. It was persistent and ever present much like a computer program left running in the background, but it wasn't really my primary focus in life, so I didn't invest in it as much. It was just there ... waiting for something to bring it all together and give it real life.
I was still fairly immature in my own faith during the time that I worked for him and while I didn't always have the answers to respond to his aggressive attacks, I clung to that faith with a grip that reflected the truth of a spiritual life and death struggle inside me. I held adamantly to both the fact that I knew that God did have the answers and also that He is righteous and just in everything that He does and allows even if I didn't possess the answers to explain His movements or His seeming failure to act in some situations. At times I felt rather valiant in my resolve to hold onto my faith in an environment that believed and promoted some things that were offensive to it ... and at the same time so flawed because of my failure to successfully defend that faith and overwhelmingly overcome his scoffing and questioning attacks.
The very qualities that he valued in me so highly were born of the very same faith that he was seemingly so interested in quashing and I didn't neglect to point that out to him. Doing so would usually bring the particular conversation at that moment to an end. But it never answered his allegations or ended his intentional jabs at my faith in my God. I sensed that his scornful opposition might be based on some personal tragedy in his own life or some unanswered questions of his own, but I never dared to ask. He was forcefully unrelenting in his views.
There came a point once when the continual turmoil that that environment created in me finally brought me to confront my friend regarding the aggressive nature of his views and his overt desire to express them. I sought a truce or at least a cease fire to which, after weighing my value to him, he agreed. He held up his end of the bargain for the most part, limiting his comments to occasional short quips, but the spiritual environment continued to feel dark and oppressive. It had felt as though it had literal weight and as though there was a heavy spiritual darkness around me in the office. It began to feel like I was in some form of forced captivity in a desolate and dry spiritual desert with a continually growing ache and desire for water.
I finally made the decision to seek other opportunities and my freedom from that environment was spiritually refreshing, but it also brought about a sense of guilt at the same time. I felt guilty that I didn't have the answers and because I'd failed to properly defend my God - I hadn't won the argument. I somehow knew that I was right, at least in principal, but I was trying to fight a battle for which I was seriously under armed and my shiny looking spiritual armor was well dented and had some glaring, vulnerable gaps.
The gaps in my knowledge and understanding had remained wide and unaddressed because of my own lack of diligence to invest in closing them. While I didn't recognize it at the time, this season of my life was just another paragraph in a divine plan that I didn't see myself unwittingly participating in. While I was just wandering through life with a focus on its daily challenges, my God was ever present, patient and attentive - just waiting for my eventual response to the knowing wisdom of His plan.
This was all some years ago. As a result of that plan, I've found my purpose in life and through His grace I've grown some spiritually since. I've come to understand from a living experience and with a greater, knowing certainty that our Lord has a plan for our growth as His children and a purpose for everything that He allows in our lives. We might be unable to see it at the time, but He, in His all knowing parenting of us sees it all with perfect clarity. Through the experience of walking in growing relationship with Him over time, I began to see it too.
I'd questioned why I found myself in this man's employ even while I was still there. Even in the midst of my childish faith I recognized that I'd felt led to him divinely. So what was God's purpose in this? Did He have a mission for me to accomplish here or was it something else? If it was a mission, I was sure in my own heart that I'd failed it famously.
While I continued to wonder about God's possible motives, the plan's intended effect took hold in a way that I didn't look back to recognize until much later. After my departure from his employ, the questions that this friend had raised against my Heavenly Father left me with an unrelenting and driving need to answer them ... if not for my friend, so much more for myself. They continued to bother me with a fearful nagging that threatened to erode the very faith and trust that formed the foundation of my belief. Those questions coupled with certain unexplained events that I'd experienced in my own life eventually grew to become a mountain that was critical to my own faith to climb and conquer in order to survive spiritually. It seemed like a mountain, but were really just a few deep questions surrounding the reasons for my faith and my trust ... and perhaps that was just what my Heavenly Father had planned in order to move me out of my stagnant, lazy procrastination and further along the path that He intended. It was a challenge to my core faith and a challenge that I had to face in order to resolve the fearful inner tension they created.
“God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.” C.S. Lewis
If the page appears blank and you don't see the post that you're looking for, please scroll up.
The Passion Well
Chapter 2:
Nagging Accusations
***
Hebrews 11:6 (NLT)
"And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him."
***
I had a business friend years ago who was rather aggressively atheist. I met him when I was in my thirties and eventually found myself in his employ before I discovered his aversion to faith in God. But it didn't take long before I discovered it all too clearly. He didn't miss taking advantage of an opportunity to mock belief in God with great disdain to my face or to credit all of Christianity with hypocrisy based on the public errors and failings of some when the opportunity presented itself. He also seemed to hold a view that's unfortunately held by a number of people that I've crossed paths with in life. It's the idea that anyone claiming to be a Christian or follower of Christ should be completely without failings - in other words, perfect.
Some of his other most comfortable arguments were built around questions dealing with how a god, any god could allow so many innocent people to suffer and/or die along with all of the other injustices in the world. He was certain that if there were indeed a god, especially a good god, that he would never allow these things to happen - but they do happen, thus, there could be no god. For him, God was a fantasy and anyone that claimed to believe in Him was a fool. What I found ironic was the fact that all of the character qualities that I was firmly working to uphold increasingly in my life at this point, were the very things that drew him to me ... and I subscribed to them because they were important to the God that he so willingly ridiculed. What he so willingly reviled was the very souce of what he also highly valued and complimented in me simultaneously.
These were heavy topics for a young man in his thirties who at that point hadn't invested much in the maturity of his faith. Nor had he been able to reconcile those same questions in his own mind. They were at the time some pretty sharp and uncomfortable points directed toward me and ones that this friend didn't hesitate to use when the opportunity presented itself. It became a spontaneous periodic battle in which I refused to give up my faith and he refused to budge in his own views or even concede that I had a right to mine - however laughable and foolish he thought they were.
My relationship with him made me somewhat captive to his periodic rants since he was also my employer at the time. And while I enjoyed working for him generally and had worked with him in varying capacities for a few years, the environment eventually felt increasingly oppressive to a point that I became motivated to move on. I never told him the real reason that I left, but that parting brought both immediate sweet relief ... along with some simultaneous guilt.
In response to his declarations, I could have pointed out that the hypocrisy of many professed Christians stems from the fact that there's a difference between having scriptural head knowledge and actually coming to know God personally - That truly coming to know God in an actual relationship is what has the true and profound, life changing effect on a person's heart, actions and life. Without that, all other knowledge is merely just that and that it's powerless because it denies God's purpose for us to to exist in the first place.
I could have tried to make him understand that believing God didn't automatically make me or anyone else suddenly perfect, without the temptations and failings our flesh is vulnerable to. It simply opens the door for us to begin to become growing examples of His selfless and amazing, transforming grace. I could have explained that those attempting to follow Christ are still an imperfect and unfinished work and that those following Christ are seeking daily to better emulate our Savior while living in a world that provides a host of negative influence intended to prey heavily on any weakness we bear.
But I didn't. I couldn't. My own simple faith, as stubborn as it was, lacked true knowledge and understanding of even those things back then and I was afraid of the possible repercussions of attempting to make my stand more bold. It was as if over the course of all of the years that I held onto it, my faith had never grown or matured much beyond the childlike stage. It was persistent and ever present much like a computer program left running in the background, but it wasn't really my primary focus in life, so I didn't invest in it as much. It was just there ... waiting for something to bring it all together and give it real life.
I was still fairly immature in my own faith during the time that I worked for him and while I didn't always have the answers to respond to his aggressive attacks, I clung to that faith with a grip that reflected the truth of a spiritual life and death struggle inside me. I held adamantly to both the fact that I knew that God did have the answers and also that He is righteous and just in everything that He does and allows even if I didn't possess the answers to explain His movements or His seeming failure to act in some situations. At times I felt rather valiant in my resolve to hold onto my faith in an environment that believed and promoted some things that were offensive to it ... and at the same time so flawed because of my failure to successfully defend that faith and overwhelmingly overcome his scoffing and questioning attacks.
The very qualities that he valued in me so highly were born of the very same faith that he was seemingly so interested in quashing and I didn't neglect to point that out to him. Doing so would usually bring the particular conversation at that moment to an end. But it never answered his allegations or ended his intentional jabs at my faith in my God. I sensed that his scornful opposition might be based on some personal tragedy in his own life or some unanswered questions of his own, but I never dared to ask. He was forcefully unrelenting in his views.
There came a point once when the continual turmoil that that environment created in me finally brought me to confront my friend regarding the aggressive nature of his views and his overt desire to express them. I sought a truce or at least a cease fire to which, after weighing my value to him, he agreed. He held up his end of the bargain for the most part, limiting his comments to occasional short quips, but the spiritual environment continued to feel dark and oppressive. It had felt as though it had literal weight and as though there was a heavy spiritual darkness around me in the office. It began to feel like I was in some form of forced captivity in a desolate and dry spiritual desert with a continually growing ache and desire for water.
I finally made the decision to seek other opportunities and my freedom from that environment was spiritually refreshing, but it also brought about a sense of guilt at the same time. I felt guilty that I didn't have the answers and because I'd failed to properly defend my God - I hadn't won the argument. I somehow knew that I was right, at least in principal, but I was trying to fight a battle for which I was seriously under armed and my shiny looking spiritual armor was well dented and had some glaring, vulnerable gaps.
The gaps in my knowledge and understanding had remained wide and unaddressed because of my own lack of diligence to invest in closing them. While I didn't recognize it at the time, this season of my life was just another paragraph in a divine plan that I didn't see myself unwittingly participating in. While I was just wandering through life with a focus on its daily challenges, my God was ever present, patient and attentive - just waiting for my eventual response to the knowing wisdom of His plan.
This was all some years ago. As a result of that plan, I've found my purpose in life and through His grace I've grown some spiritually since. I've come to understand from a living experience and with a greater, knowing certainty that our Lord has a plan for our growth as His children and a purpose for everything that He allows in our lives. We might be unable to see it at the time, but He, in His all knowing parenting of us sees it all with perfect clarity. Through the experience of walking in growing relationship with Him over time, I began to see it too.
I'd questioned why I found myself in this man's employ even while I was still there. Even in the midst of my childish faith I recognized that I'd felt led to him divinely. So what was God's purpose in this? Did He have a mission for me to accomplish here or was it something else? If it was a mission, I was sure in my own heart that I'd failed it famously.
While I continued to wonder about God's possible motives, the plan's intended effect took hold in a way that I didn't look back to recognize until much later. After my departure from his employ, the questions that this friend had raised against my Heavenly Father left me with an unrelenting and driving need to answer them ... if not for my friend, so much more for myself. They continued to bother me with a fearful nagging that threatened to erode the very faith and trust that formed the foundation of my belief. Those questions coupled with certain unexplained events that I'd experienced in my own life eventually grew to become a mountain that was critical to my own faith to climb and conquer in order to survive spiritually. It seemed like a mountain, but were really just a few deep questions surrounding the reasons for my faith and my trust ... and perhaps that was just what my Heavenly Father had planned in order to move me out of my stagnant, lazy procrastination and further along the path that He intended. It was a challenge to my core faith and a challenge that I had to face in order to resolve the fearful inner tension they created.
“God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.” C.S. Lewis
If the page appears blank and you don't see the post that you're looking for, please scroll up.
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