Sunday School Answers 8/15/07

Have you ever received a Sunday school answer? You know, one of those answers that is most likely meant to comfort and encourage, but really is mis-delivered, at the wrong time, and most certainly by the wrong person?
"It's God's will" I mean, I know what that means...but what does that mean? When someone is going though a devastating time, someone they love has died, to young, to tragically, is that what they need to hear? Is it even true?
Does God cause these things to happen?
It's easy for believers to talk about the loving God, the buddy Jesus. Is that the sum of His parts? Is God always kind, and loving? Does that translate into complacent and permissive?
The God in the bible is a jealous God, a passionate God, a God that convicts and corrects His sinful flock. What is sin? Is it adultery, or murder? Is it anger and bitterness, lying and stealing? Of course it is, it's easily all those things.
But is sin also, withholding yourself from those that love you? Is sin gossip and rumors, idolatry of celebrity?
But we can't talk about sin can we? It's not pretty, it's not popular, and it doesn't "convert" the masses.
Does that mean it doesn't exist? Does it make it any less sinful?
Does God love murderers less then people that have never killed, adulterers less then those that have always been faithful?
Does God love me less then he loved Mother Theresa?
No more then you that have children love one less then the other.
God loves as a parent loves. Now, I know that some of you had shitty parents, have them still. I can only imagine that people with parent that have failed them, can often only think that God will fail them too. But he won't.
Sunday school answers, platitudes, without time, compassion, and deeper searching do no good. God's will isn't that someone close to you die tragically and young. God's will is that what happens in your life, what consequences come from your choices, be used as opportunities for growth, for growing closer to Him, closer to a relationship with His Son, or a deeper one.
God's will isn't that there is sin, but there is sin, there is deceit and hatred. But God's will is to drown those things with His light, love, and compassion.
So before you give a Sunday school answer, take the time to think about who exactly you are trying to make feel better. Because the truth is, the platitudes are easy. Sitting in the silent grief with someone is hard. Forgiving someone for the wounds they inflicted with out reason on you is hard. Moving out of the darkness of sin is hard, often impossible.
But in the deep of the night, alone in your bed, in the corner of your heart you're nursing that hatred, on the tip of your tongue where the gossip spills from, God is there too.