Monday 28 February 2011

struggling with and questioning God


As anyone who reads this blog knows, I do a fair amount of questioning, wondering, arguing, struggling with God.  Sometimes I feel kind of guilty about that.  But today I read a blog post that posits that having some "chutzpa" in our relationship with God is actually a sign of active faith and relationship - and, in fact, God does a fair bit of struggling with us, too.

At Leaving Salem, Ronnie McBrayer writes:

More times than we care to admit, our relationship with
God is not a Harlequin romance, wrapped in a tidy package
with a bow on top. It is more like a game of tug-o-war.
God speaks and pulls and we pull back. He yanks again and
we curse and shout across the mud pit at him. He shouts
back. It goes on like this for a long time – most of our
lives even – and sometimes God wins and sometimes we do.
Why is it this way? Because God isn’t after blind,
robotic faith, we behaving as androids receiving signals
from above transmitted to our spiritual antenna. No, God
is after a relationship with us, for us to genuinely know
him. And sometimes to know this God we must wrestle with
him.
When we give up on listening, struggling, wrestling, and
protesting – when we lose our chutzpah – we have given up
on faith, and the only thing left is atheism or cynicism;
hardness toward God or disbelief in him. The struggle
means the relationship is very much alive.
What about you?  Have you and God been struggling lately?

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