Fathers and other Strangers

My life keeps providing new opportunities to vent over here. Probably a better environment to do so than on facebook, no? I think so.

Anyhow, today is father's day. I should be writing some big tribute to my dad. However, I did not have a father, not really in the sense that people who write odes to someone who exerted a great influence on their life did, anyway. Oh, sure, he lived in our home until he died when I was ten. But I don't remember interacting with him much and some of the stories I have heard floating around from other family members (which may or may not be true) indicate that it is in the realm of possibility that that might be a very good thing.  It's not like I have some horribly abusive memory to erase in the same way that mother's day leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of a lot of the very unloving things that my mother did in the name of "love". It's more like I draw a blank. I have no idea what it might be like to have had some male figure be there for me. Really, truthfully, I have no idea of what having an adult of either gender be there for me might have been like either.

I am not complaining in a way, because God has, indeed, provided some very unique ways of imparting the knowledge that a parent would have, once I opened myself up to that possibility. Of course that was after making a supreme mess of my life first.

So this brings me to one of my biggest frustrations with a message that I get from the church. That being the idea that mostly, God works through other people. Really? That brings some really unpleasant conclusions if taken to an extreme. I am not denying that God CAN work through others or that at times he DOES. So don't start emailing me stories about how God used this one and that one in your life, because I know it does indeed happen!!! It's just that I've had it presented to me on more than one occasion that this is the primary vehicle that God uses. Where does that leave the person who finds themselves isolated for a season of their life?

I remember when my daughter was a toddler reading her a book by Max Lucado (sorry Max. I really like you. But you missed the boat on this one. Big time.) designed to talk about God and families with young kids. In a nutshell, the sentiment was that "God loves you so much and that's why he provided us as your parents." Wow. Consider what that sounds like to a kid who has been repeatedly molested by his/her parents.  Consider what that sounds like to a child languishing in the foster system who keeps getting sent from home to home. Clearly it would not be too very difficult by extension to assume that God does NOT love those children anywhere near as much as the child of Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Christian Family. Obviously, this is not true. The Bible says this is not true. Therefore, God's love is obviously distinct from whether or not we have other people pouring out their love on us.

Indeed, look at Joseph. Did God not love Joseph? Yeah, his dad loved him, but it was with such a dysfunctional love that it set  his siblings up to ambush him and do horrible things to him. One of my favorite verses in the entire Bible is Genesis 50:20 which talks about what Satan intended to harm Joseph was actually used for good by God. I am not even going to pretend to know how this works. This is such a departure from our formulaic, linear solution oriented line of modern thinking.  We want to know how to do X so that Y will happen and sometimes it just doesn't quite work that way.

If I am sounding frustrated, I am. The father's day issue isn't what is so much bugging me, as I long ago came to peace with that. What is bothering me, and I'm gonna come right out and say it, is the teaching that is practically a worship of the "small group".  These are groups that are sold as providing instant intimacy and acting as a surrogate family.  I've been in several and I'm gonna be honest: they have not worked out quite that way. I've heard other people say the same thing. It's like the dirty little secret that no one wants to admit. The truth of the matter is, the people I have really connected with are folks that I have met outside of these forced little settings. Or sometimes one does meet someone in one of these groups that becomes a lifelong friend, but the group is just a meeting point for a friendship that goes on long after the group has died a natural death. At best, I have heard of people who have a truly remarkable group for a season. But it's not that nonstop circle of support and trust that it is made out to be. I've sat through a presentation encouraging people to join a small group and I couldn't quite believe my ears at the testimony that I heard. There was very little mention of God. There was, however, much mention of how this girl had been loved on and supported by her group. Truthfully, she could have gotten the same thing in many other settings. Who needs God? You just go to church to meet people who will help you. This may not be what was intended, but this was what came across. I really really wanted to believe that I was imagining this, but no, I checked it out with a few other people and sadly, I wasn't.  If she ever finds herself in a place in her Christian life where God does not put people in front of her to hold her hand, she'll either be forced to readjust her theology or, more sadly (and probably more likely) she will walk away from the faith because it never really was faith in the first place. It was just good psychology.

Some of the times of greatest growth in my life have been triggered by forced isolation. Ouch. Now how does that fit in with the particular theology discussed above?  It does not.

Dare I even say it, but what I have seen is not just bordering on outright idolatry, it IS idolatry. Both of families and of relationships within the church. Whenever one begins to rely on something besides God, one is beginning to walk on very treacherous grounds.

I'm not saying that relationships are bad. I am saying they need to be kept in their proper place and that recognition needs to be given that being in relationship with people be used by God just as much as other variations on the theme.

This gives the same vaguely uncomfortable feeling that people approach having been born in the US as some special mark of God's love without pondering whether that they are implicitly saying that Christians in third world countries (who are often waaaaay  more on fire for Jesus than those of us in the US) must not be loved quite as much. Really, health, children, a good family, friends just about any "blessing" is the frosting on the cake of God's love. Because even if you don't have those items, God still loves you. God is still working in your life even if you are in a season where those things seem in short supply. Sometimes those things are not provided so that you can grow. The near obsession in some circles with relationships can obliterate that to where church merely becomes just an exercise in good group psychology and nothing more.

I am not even going to pretend to know exactly how God uses all kinds of situations in our lives.  Perhaps in the beginning, before Eve at the fruit, God did intend to use all to prove His love for us. Circumstances that would prevent those tangible things from showing their face had not yet come on the scene. But the church gravely does people a disservice when it points them towards ANYTHING except total reliance on God as necessary.