It's not my decision!

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the notion of "God's will" and how it seems so many people use it as a reinforcement for the decisions they make.

The way I see this manifest itself most often is in my job in admissions for a private Christian college. The springtime marks the time of year where our accepted students let us know whether they'll be enrolling at our school or at another school. Often times, reasons for going elsewhere include issues with finances, our location (we're pretty rural), or they've decided to pursue a major we don't offer. But a common thread with many of the students is the idea that it's "not God's will for me to go there" or "it's God's will for me to go to this other school." In reality, I know that often the reason is that this student doesn't want to go to school in the country or that this student just liked another school better. Of course, they are often too timid to own up to the real reasons.

Once someone states that their decision is "God's will," it ends the conversation. What can one say to that? "Well, God told me that the exact opposite is true!" Of course not. Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that God does call specific people to specific places and specific things. But have we taken this too far?

I've recently been really trying to figure out what I believe to be true about my relationship with God and our respective relationships with Him. I guess, the conclusions I've been coming to are that God isn't interested in dictating our lives as if we have no control over what happens to us. So many Christians seem to live like God's will is some sort of nebulous force that directs us in major (and minor) decisions as if every decision has a RIGHT choice and a WRONG choice. You're either IN God's will or you're OUT. Really?

Can we agree that God wills for us to be obedient to his commands? Can we agree that "living in God's will" can mean that we're following how God would have us treat each other and pursuing Him with our minds and our actions?

If I make a decision because I believe it's God's will that I make that decision and then I start feeling discontent after a time, does that mean it's no longer "God's will?" Like I said, I believe God can and does call some people to specific things, but I think that more often than not, God invites us to make our own choices. And I think something for all of us to try to do is to OWN those decisions once we make them. Let's also be honest about the reasons we make decisions and let's not make "God's will" the automatic fallback response.

Futures

My generation is obsessed. With many things really, but with one thing above all else; the question of "what the heck am I supposed to do with my life?!" It's in the forefront of the mind of almost every twentysomething Christian I know. It's what keeps us up at night. We're so worried that we don't take a 'wrong' step in life and we agonize over where God wants us next. It's focused on so much that it becomes a point of frustration, anxiety...panic. The actual question of what we're to do becomes so much of an idol that we almost lust after the answer. In the process, I think, we often stop hearing God completely.

I think about the different perspectives that our parents' generation and especially our grandparents' generation had on their futures. The main issue wasn't what I'm supposed to do, but rather, how can I best provide for my family? Were they any less in tune with God's leading when they were our age? Less able to hear God's voice? Had less of a desire to do God's work? I don't think so.

Which way of thinking is better? I'm not sure one is necessarily better than the other, but there needs to be balance. I think of all of us that are struggling with what's next, I propose we recognize and acknowledge the blessings God has bestowed on us in the present and ask how we can best serve in the here and now. Instead of focusing on ourselves, what if we were to focus on how to be more like Christ? I wonder how many of the things we worry about would no longer be issues if this was our main goal.

A revelation

I just learned today that the place depicted in one of my most favorite paintings, Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night, is an actual cafe and it's in Arles, France. I need to get myself there before I die.


I think a huge part of why I love this painting is because when I was young, there was an exact replica of this painting done by my father that hung in my grandma's house. The copy was actually so close to the real one that my dad had to register it or something like that so that it wouldn't be mistaken for Van Gogh's original! I haven't seen that painting in years as my grandma has since relocated to Texas and I assume she took it with her. However, my dad knows how much I love it and he said he's willing it to me.

I do my best thinking in the shower

Some people go for walks or runs, some people call up their friends to talk things through, and some people, like me, do their best thinking in the shower. It's usually as I'm taking a shower just as part of my routine, but sometimes, if I'm feeling I need to think something over I'll just hop in when it's not necessary to my physical health but more my mental health. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's just the feeling of being enveloped that makes me introspective.

Recent thoughts while showering:

• I'm finding that I'm someone that not only likes physical contact with people, but really needs it. I'm talking about hugs mostly, but certainly not exclusively. Without really having physical contact with friends and people I love for awhile I just get surly. It's definitely subconscious, but it really affects me. I've discovered that I express affection and receive affection with my friends the best and most natural way with physical contact. This may sound minor, but I really think it's essential to my well-being.

• When I'm out somewhere with friends or even by myself, like on my admission travels, I tend to rush through things instead of taking them in for long periods of time. I believe there are two types of people in the world when it comes to this: people who enjoy the world by seeing as much of it as possible in the amount of time given to them and then people who enjoy the world by spending more time at each place. I think I'm the former. For example, I was up in Rochester with some friends a few weeks ago for the Park Ave. Art Festival and I wanted to see as much as I could in the few hours we were there. The three people I was with were much more content to do less things in that same amount of time. They wanted to just sit around! It frustrated me at first, but then I always see the benefit to drinking it all in. I just get in adventurous modes and want to stay in that as long as I can. Sometimes to my benefit and sometimes to my deficit.
  

More thoughts to follow as they come...

"...every time I remember you."

Recently I've been thinking back on how much of an impact the people around me have on my spiritual life and my understanding of God. It's been over a year since I've been surrounded by my closest friends at college. Sure, I've seen most of them since, but not all at once and not for much longer than a few days at a time (if we're lucky). There's so much to be said for that community of believers being together in the same place, holding each other up, talking about both the deep and the seemingly trivial in a single conversation. It's been awhile since I've felt that community and I miss it. We were 'church' to each other.

In one of C.S. Lewis' essays entitled "Friendship," he laments the death of one of his closest friends, Charles Williams. He talks about how it effects him and another one of their mutual friends, Ronald Knox:

"In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Charles joke. For from having more of Ronald, having him "to myself" now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald."

Being in community with my dearest friends brought out the fullness of each other. And I believe that they helped me to learn more about my faith. Christianity is designed to be communal. A phrase used in a sermon I heard recently was "intensely personal." There's something so beautiful about that. So often I think we have this image of trekking out on our own in our faith and then (maybe or occasionally) coming back into community to get 'recharged' to 'get back out there.' I just don't think that should be true. Lewis continues in his essay:

"In this, Frienship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each of us has to God."

If what Lewis is saying is true, that by community we can understand the individual more fully, how much more that the Church should be able to understand the personality and character of Jesus while in community? This has just been on my mind since I don't feel like I have that community anymore, at least in the way it had existed for four years of my life. I realize what that looks like needs to change as most parts of life have, if only slightly, changed since then. Part of me just wishes we could all still exist in what once was. Despite those desires, I know God will provide it once again, perhaps in a way that I'll be blindsided by.

Fresh

Lately I've been feeling the need to remind myself of Rwanda. To keep fresh in my mind the things I saw, the people I met, the stories I heard, the sorrow I felt, the hope I encountered. I don't know why now, but for the past few weeks it's been a driving force. I've watched documentaries recounting the details of how the genocide started and was carried out, I'm re-reading Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, and just overall reliving moments from my time there.

I don't know if it's that sub-consciously I feel that my memories are slipping away. Maybe. I believe that no matter what I do (or fail to do) in regards to my memory of Rwanda, much of it will always be with me. But I don't want it to just be a part of my past; a piece of wisdom and feeling of empathy I had for a time. I want the hope I saw invade me and bring all the horrors and the miracles to my conscious thoughts throughout my life. Not because I enjoy hearing and remembering awful things, but because I never want those raw emotions to go away. I felt so many things in Rwanda. I felt angry, I felt desparate, I felt vulnerable, I felt hopeful. I saw God's hands moving across a nation. In the Rwandan people I saw despair, endurance, guilt, forgiveness, reconciliation, loss, gain.

I feel a responsibility to renew all of this over and over in my mind. To bring it up and wrestle with it continuously. I'll never fully understand the greatness of God's healing or the extent to which man can be evil, but I got a good look at both of those in the "Land of a Thousand Hills."

The fruit of Christ's death...

"Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, 'Where are you going?' Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you...I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth...He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you." -John 16: 5-7, 12-13a, 14-15 (emphasis added)

A friend recently pointed out this verse to me and has prompted new life into how I think about Jesus' words here. It's one of those you hear a million times within the Christian faith. That's pretty much true of the entire book of John. But what is perplexing and seemingly counter intuitive about these words to the disciples is that Jesus is saying his leaving earth is the best scenario for them/us. The disciples were fearful of Jesus leaving and probably had many of the same thoughts that we tend to have today 'Wouldn't it just be easier if you were here on earth, Jesus?'

Grappling with the idea that Jesus' ascension was better than if he had stayed is where I'm at. Matthew Henry's commentary helps a bit:

"Christ's departure was necessary to the Comforter's coming. Sending the Spirit was to be the fruit of Christ's death, which was his going away. His bodily presence could be only in one place at one time, but his Spirit is every where, in all places, at all times..."

To know the Spirit is to know God just as Jesus said to know him is to know God. I think it's just easier for us to look to a physical being. It's easier for me, that's for sure. Sometimes I have thoughts like 'it would seem much more concrete of a faith if I could just see Jesus...touch Him, smell Him. But how incredible that God dwells with us, in us? To take what is God's and make it known to us? I'm just at the beginning of tackling this.