Today I came to grips with a conflict I had not previously recognized. The more I try to live a life of faith with integrity, the more I encounter this sort of thing. The wisdom of the world is often in direct or indirect conflict with the teachings of Christ, and I don’t always see that conflict before I act. Sometimes my habits kick in before my commitment to be a blessing gets a word in. It happened yesterday, and the crucial habit was formed and honed twenty or more years ago. My reason for bringing it up is to ask how I participate in something that truly is business process improvement while maintaining my Christian commitment to speak a blessing and be a blessing in my business transactions.

 Worldly wisdom, and excellent business leaders, taught me long ago that every business is above all in the business of customer service. I learned it as an employee, and I expect it as a customer. When it doesn’t happen, I feel compelled to speak up and ask for change. That, too, was part of my business training. From the time I absorbed this truth as an employee right up to the present day, I have considered it my obligation to compliment businesses with excellent customer service and to help the others improve.

 I ran into just such a situation yesterday. I had set up my credit card account online to be paid from a checking account at my direction. Because of my lifestyle with only intermittent internet access, I need to make the most of that access when I have it. I considered that the job of setup for paying that account saved me all kinds of time when I needed to pay the bill. It worked beautifully for more than a year.

 All that changed, unbeknownst to me, when I opened a new checking account at the bank that had issued my credit card. Without asking me, or even notifying me, the bank invalidated my setup for payment and left me no option online except to take the payment from my new checking account. Unbeknownst to them, because they did not ask, I had designated the new checking account for a different purpose, and I did not expect to deposit the money for my credit card in that account. I expected, planned and purposed to use the money in the original checking account.

 I contacted customer service, expecting an apology and the immediate restoration of the plan that had already worked so well for me. My expectations were as fruitless as those of the famous Miss Haversham. The options they offered me were all tedious, time-consuming, inconvenient, and as far as I was concerned, unnecessary. My personal commitment to teaching businesses about customer service kicked in, and I expressed myself about this situation. I believe that I used the words “arrogant,” “presumptuous,” “poor customer service,” and “completely uncalled for.” It only got worse. The support representative told me that I had to call some other number in order to register my complaint, and no, I could not speak to her supervisor.

 Eventually the conversation ended, and I did thank the representative for doing what she could, which was nothing. I normally try to end all my business conversations with the words, “God bless you,” because I want to salt my conversations with faith speech. I think it is part of the work Christ has called each of us to do. However, I didn’t feel very faithful at that point. I knew that I had not been a blessing to the support representative, and I had complained bitterly about her and her employer. Still, I also felt that nothing would ever change if every customer simply accepted such things without comment. The behavior of the bank made me angry, so angry that I was actually sick at my stomach. Yet it was completely true that the person I was talking to could not change anything. I spoke and acted on the principle that if I complained long enough and assertively enough, she would surely tell the story over and over and maybe somebody who could do something about the broken processes would take action.

 Still, I worry about the fact that I did not bless the support representative by either my behavior or my words. I tried not to be rude, but I was aggressive and assertive, in the hope of actually getting to talk with someone who had power. It didn’t happen. What should I have done differently?

 At this moment, I don’t know. I do believe that there is something I need to change in myself for this kind of situation. I do believe that I should be a blessing to people I meet. Yet I found myself propelled by my profound indignation at the way the bank was treating me. I know very well that any other customer would be treated the same way, and I think it is bad business, because it will make customers hate the bank. Because I learned the responses in the world of business, I responded in a secular, completely business kind of way. I think there must be a solution that is Christlike, even as it advocates for better customer service to all customers.

 Is it because at the root, I was in it completely for me? Was I simply outraged personally to a degree that I lost touch with the Spirit within and started worshiping Self instead? What was the real problem here? I do think that customers must speak up when business processes are broken, but I feel that as a follower of Christ I must be mindful of the individual with whom I am speaking. She might have agreed with me that the bank was out of order, but she could hardly say so.

 I am making this a matter of prayer, but I would also like to hear the insights of others. There has to be a better way to advocate for good customer service while blessing the person with whom I am working. Can anybody help me?

Why did God create people? What was he thinking? People must be an endless discouragement to God. In Genesis, right before the flood, God regretted that he ever made people, yet something about Noah touched his heart. Maybe he didn’t regret making every single person. After the flood ended, God changed his mind. It is right there in the book of Genesis. I didn’t make this up. God said exactly the same thing about people after the flood as before. He said that they were completely mixed up and always doing wrong. Yet he no longer wanted to destroy them.

 Noah and his family were just as prone to disappoint God as everybody else. Yet God did not strike them with lightning. He doesn’t strike anyone with lightning. He just goes on loving us.

 What is the problem? Satan, of course, is the agent of evil, the embodiment of pure evil, but if people had not been created with freedom to choose what they do, Satan would be powerless. God didn’t hardwire people to do the right thing every time, and that is Satan’s opportunity. A cynic might say that God got what was coming to him, because he got the consequences of our freedom.

 There are many ways in which this freedom works out in our lives. We choose to take what we want from the people who have it regardless of their wish to keep it. We lie, cheat, defraud, and hurt the people around us. We hurt people on purpose, because they have hurt us, or just because we can. However, that isn’t the only way we express our freedom.

 Every human being is born with potential to do great things. Not just morally great things. We are born with talents. Michelangelo and Picasso were born to draw and paint. They could have ignored their talent or they could have done what they did – develop their talent. George Washington was born to be a leader of men. He could have sat in peace on his estate, but he chose to be a leader. The development of Picasso’s art and Washington’s leadership must have made God very happy.

 The Jews believe that God loves it when people stand up and argue with God. I can see how that might be true, because I believe that God gave us minds to see choices, evaluate them, and then decide. When he sees us using our minds and our talents, I think God is pleased.

 What confuses us about God is the fact that he is omnipotent at the same time that we are free. We think both things cannot be true at the same time. This paradox confuses us. Because humans believe that both things cannot possibly be true, humans choose to believe that God is limited in some way. We can clearly see that we have the freedom to choose, and we say things like, “You got yourself into this mess, and you can jolly well get yourself out of it.” On the other hand, after exercising our complete freedom to choose, when we find ourselves in messes, we pray “Help me, help me, help me,” and think God is a big failure when he doesn’t jump in and fix things.

 Books have been written on this subject. I can’t best any of them. I have a single concern in bringing up this issue. I believe that God had good reasons for giving us freedom. I believe that God wants us to relate to him, and a relationship requires freedom for both parties. If we were not free to choose the relationship, then we would be slaves or robots. God rejoices in our freedom. In some ways, he relates to us the way a parent relates to a child learning to play the piano. When that child sits down at the very first recital and plays a really simple piece, the parent does not confuse that with the performance of a concerto, but the parent truly and completely rejoices in the child’s development of the gift. Years later, when the child has matured with the gift, the parent rejoices to hear a mature performance, and the parent equally rejoices that the child has found the right outlet for that talent whether it turns out to be in concert or in a classroom or in composition.

 God feels that way about each of us. He gifts us with the potential. He sets us down in the world with all sorts of choices before us. He works within us and around us to nurture our talents, our personalities, and our character. The unique person each of us becomes is a mix of all those opportunities shaped by our choices over and over. I think that God is extremely pleased when we become what he created us to be, and I think he is delighted and surprised in many ways, because of the unique outcome in each person.

 Can God be surprised? I think so. To say so, of course, throws me into another paradox. If God knows everything at all times, how can anyone surprise him? How can it even be said that we choose anything if he knows everything already? This mental exercise is tedious. Relationship with God is not tedious. I think God is truly delighted like any parent when we grow and mature using the talents and personality with which he gifted us at conception. I choose to believe that because he does not micromanage our choices, he also does not limit his delight in our growth by saying, “I knew that all the time.”

 I can’t comprehend how God is God at all. The best I can do is spend time in his presence and try to live by his guidance. I know I have made some bad choices, so I know he doesn’t prevent that. I know I have made some good choices, and I know he is pleased with them. As I grow and mature in my relationship with God, I am learning to see facets of his personality and character that I never knew before. In this growing relationship, I sense that he delights in my growth as if he didn’t know with certainty what I would do. I simply don’t worry about what he foreknows when I meet and beat a big challenge, because I am so happy. I know I don’t do it alone, and I experience God’s delight in both my choices and my growth.

 I would rather relate to God as my heavenly father, the mysterious Three in One, who loves me and blesses me than try to analyze him to death. I know people who try to analyze me, too, and I don’t much like it. I do like the experience of growing in faith and developing my talents in the loving, nurturing presence and power of the Holy Spirit. I know that I was known before I was conceived, but I love being God’s kid and surprising him every once in a while as I try to become what he always wanted me to be. It isn’t all up to me, but I really do get to choose, and he really does get to rejoice when I do it right.

I know a lot of people who spend a lot of their time worrying about which of God’s laws they have broken. They fret over the wording of the laws trying to figure out how to do the right thing. They really do their best, and then they see how they failed. These people are baptized children of God, and they still worry a lot about these things.
It isn’t because they don’t know that Christ died in order that they can be forgiven for their sins. They know. They are faithful Christians, trying to be ever more faithful. They love the Lord. They actually know that they cannot live up to the demands of the Law. They know, however, that the Law is God’s standard. He gave it to teach us how to live. The real problem they experience daily is that they constantly beat on themselves to obey the Law and they know even as they are beating on themselves that they never will be able to do it. It is killing them.

 How do I know so much about this situation? I used to be the same way. I believed that I had an obligation to be the most obedient law-abider in the world, because Jesus died to save me from all my sins, and it was time for me to quit doing that. I didn’t want to pile on more sins after he saved me. I really believed that God was very disgusted with me for never getting it right. I truly thought that He was waiting somewhere far away for me to finally learn how to follow His Laws, and I was pretty sure that He didn’t want to hear from me until I figured it out.

 I can’t possibly explain why I believed this pack of lies. Or why anyone else believes it. That is, I can’t explain it except for Satan. Some people try to explain Satan away as some “force” of evil, not a real person. There is no way to explain all the evil in the world without a real person behind it. Simple “forces” have no goals and do not rejoice in the destruction that follows them. Satan has one and only one goal: to make human beings reject God just as he did long ago. Satan is a person who rejoices every time we fail to do what God wants. Furthermore, he is so perverse that when we actually do something good, Satan manages to insinuate himself into our feeling and attitudes, turning any good work into self-worship. He motivates other people to praise us until we believe we really are as good as they say. Or he motivates us to mull over our good deed and focus on it and admire ourselves for finally getting something right. We believe the lie that we must obey all God’s Laws in order to be loved, and when we fail, we believe the lie that God doesn’t love us any more. When we do anything good, we believe the lie that we have earned God’s respect and deserve God’s blessing. When we don’t feel blessed, we believe that lie that we are not blessed because God is mad at us.

 Human beings believe Satan’s lie that God won’t love us if we don’t obey the Law perfectly, because we want to believe that we can earn God’s respect. Even more than that, we want to believe that if we try hard enough we actually can be perfect, like God. And that is the biggest lie of all. It is the first lie, and the worst lie, and the one that still entraps us even if, like the rich young ruler, we have kept the Law from our youth.
In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, God had only one rule for Adam and Eve: Don’t try to be me. Each day God walked with them in the garden, and they talked with each other. They lived in a harmonious relationship. Everything Adam and Eve needed to know about life they were learning from God himself. In conversation with him, they were growing up, maturing, becoming what God had created them to be. In that conversation they fully understood that God was God and they were not.

 Satan took advantage of the innocence in which Adam and Eve lived. He appealed to their innocence and their recognition that God knew things they did not know. Satan used truth in order to create a lie. Satan succeeded in making Adam and Eve yearn to break the only rule God had given them. He encouraged them to believe that God was preventing them from being their own gods. The moment that Eve started to think she could be like God, knowing good and evil, the relationship she had with God ended; she started worshiping herself.
This is still Satan’s big lie. In a thousand, million, different ways, Satan turns our attentions toward ourselves and away from God. He tries to make us believe that the rules are what matter to God when it is actually the relationship that matters to God.
Think about a marriage. In marriage two individuals have a relationship that thrives on honesty and integrity. It doesn’t thrive on rules. The two may be very different in their behaviors and their likes and dislikes. The relationship will survive all those differences if the couple has a strong, loving relationship. However, if the couple has rules and lives in an environment of enforcement and punishment, the relationship will die. They may never divorce, but they will not have a happy marriage.

 Our relationship with God is like that. As long as we measure our relationship with God by our compliance with God’s rules, then we will not have a relationship. God doesn’t need to stop loving us for us to lose the joy of his love; we only have to start believing that he doesn’t love us any more because of our behavior. That is Satan’s big weapon; first he lies to us by telling us that if we try hard enough we can be as good as God, perfect, like God wants us to be, and when we fail, Satan says that it is really too bad, but God can’t love such disgusting sinners. It takes real faith in God to reject that lie.

 Our behavior does matter to God, and it matters to each of us, too. We are not happy and satisfied with ourselves when we do the sort of things condemned by God’s Law. The Law is intended to show us what hurts us. It isn’t intended to put up a barrier between us and God’s love. It truly is our teacher, but it isn’t the judge who can condemn us before God.
If we are not to worry about the rules, then how are we to live? The answer is that we are to live in a faithful relationship with God. We are to speak the truth to him and to ourselves. We are to drown all our failures daily in remembrance of the waters of baptism. We are to nourish our faith with the body and blood of Christ in Communion. We are to run to him with our failure and wrong-headed behavior just as we run to him with our attempt to serve and give and love. He greets us just like a father who praises what is good and rebukes with forgiveness what is bad.

 Our life with God isn’t about the rules. It is about our relationship with him through the salvation purchased at the price of the blood of Christ on the cross. We can quit counting our money and our good deeds and simply wash ourselves in the blood of the Savior. That is what it is all about.

Why did God create people? What was he thinking? People must be an endless discouragement to God. In Genesis, right before the flood, God regretted that he ever made people, yet something about Noah touched his heart. Maybe he didn’t regret making every single person. After the flood ended, God changed his mind. It is right there in the book of Genesis. I didn’t make this up. God said exactly the same thing about people after the flood as before. He said that they were completely mixed up and always doing wrong. Yet he no longer wanted to destroy them.

Noah and his family were just as prone to disappoint God as everybody else. Yet God did not strike them with lightning. He doesn’t strike anyone with lightning. He just goes on loving us.

What is the problem? Satan, of course, is the agent of evil, the embodiment of pure evil, but if people had not been created with freedom to choose what they do, Satan would be powerless. God didn’t hardwire people to do the right thing every time, and that is Satan’s opportunity. A cynic might say that God got what was coming to him, because he got the consequences of our freedom.

There are many ways in which this freedom works out in our lives. We choose to take what we want from the people who have it regardless of their wish to keep it. We lie, cheat, defraud, and hurt the people around us. We hurt people on purpose, because they have hurt us, or just because we can. However, that isn’t the only way we express our freedom.

Every human being is born with potential to do great things. Not just morally great things. We are born with talents. Michelangelo and Picasso were born to draw and paint. They could have ignored their talent or they could have done what they did – develop their talent. George Washington was born to be a leader of men. He could have sat in peace on his estate, but he chose to be a leader. The development of Picasso’s art and Washington’s leadership must have made God very happy.

The Jews believe that God loves it when people stand up and argue with God. I can see how that might be true, because I believe that God gave us minds to see choices, evaluate them, and then decide. When he sees us using our minds and our talents, I think God is pleased.

What confuses us about God is the fact that he is omnipotent at the same time that we are free. We think both things cannot be true at the same time. This paradox confuses us. Because humans believe that both things cannot possibly be true, humans choose to believe that God is limited in some way. We can clearly see that we have the freedom to choose, and we say things like, “You got yourself into this mess, and you can jolly well get yourself out of it.” On the other hand, after exercising our complete freedom to choose, when we find ourselves in messes, we pray “Help me, help me, help me,” and think God is a big failure when he doesn’t jump in and fix things.

Books have been written on this subject. I can’t best any of them. I have a single concern in bringing up this issue. I believe that God had good reasons for giving us freedom. I believe that God wants us to relate to him, and a relationship requires freedom for both parties. If we were not free to choose the relationship, then we would be slaves or robots. God rejoices in our freedom. In some ways, he relates to us the way a parent relates to a child learning to play the piano. When that child sits down at the very first recital and plays a really simple piece, the parent does not confuse that with the performance of a concerto, but the parent truly and completely rejoices in the child’s development of the gift. Years later, when the child has matured with the gift, the parent rejoices to hear a mature performance, and the parent equally rejoices that the child has found the right outlet for that talent whether it turns out to be in concert or classroom or even in composition.

God feels that way about each of us. He gifts us with the potential. He sets us down in the world with all sorts of choices before us. He works within us and around us to nurture our talents, our personalities, and our character. The unique person each of us becomes is a mix of all those opportunities shaped by our choices over and over. I think that God is extremely pleased when we become what he created us to be, and I think he is delighted and surprised in many ways, because of the unique outcome in each person.

Can God be surprised? I think so. To say so, of course, throws me into another paradox. If God knows everything at all times, how can anyone surprise him? How can it even be said that we choose anything if he knows everything already? This mental exercise is tedious. Relationship with God is not tedious. I think God is truly delighted like any parent when we grow and mature using the talents and personality with which he gifted us at conception. I choose to believe that because he does not micromanage our choices, he also does not limit his delight in our growth by saying, “I knew that all the time.”

I can’t comprehend how God is God at all. The best I can do is spend time in his presence and try to live by his guidance. I know I have made some bad choices, so I know he doesn’t prevent that. I know I have made some good choices, and I know he is pleased with them. As I grow and mature in my relationship with God, I am learning to see facets of his personality and character that I never knew before. In this growing relationship, I sense that he delights in my growth as if he didn’t know with certainty what I would do. I simply don’t worry about what he foreknows when I meet and beat a big challenge, because I am so happy. I know I don’t do it alone, and I experience God’s delight in both my choices and my growth.

I would rather relate to God as my heavenly father, the mysterious Three in One, who loves me and blesses me than try to analyze him to death. I know people who try to analyze me, too, and I don’t much like it. I do like the experience of growing in faith and developing my talents in the loving, nurturing presence and power of the Holy Spirit. I know that I was known before I was conceived, but I love being God’s kid and surprising him every once in a while as I try to become what he always wanted me to be. It isn’t all up to me, but I really do get to choose, and he really does get to rejoice when I do it right.

In the book The Shack, the author explores a question many of us ask when we realize that we are expected to forgive people. The central character, Mack, is consumed with grief over the abduction and death of his daughter, Missy. Confronted with the suggestion that he ought to forgive the person who harmed his daughter, he asks, “Is it fair to Missy if I don’t stay angry with him?” We humans think we want everything to be fair. In fact, that is not what we want at all.

Mack, for example, suffers not only from guilt due to his perception that he failed Missy, but he also suffers from guilt due to his fear that her abduction might be God’s judgment or punishment for a terrible sin from his childhood. He certainly wants to be fair to Missy, but if cosmic fairness means that Missy pays for his wrong-doing, he isn’t so sure that “fairness” is what he wants. Likewise, forgetting the past, Mack looks forward to the possibility that the perpetrator of this horrible crime might actually be caught, and then he wonders if forgiving that person means he shouldn’t want him to pay for his crime. would that be fair? 

Most of us are conflicted over the whole idea of forgiveness. We like being forgiven by others, but we are less eager to grant forgiveness, because deep inside we are pretty sure the person we resent does not deserve forgiveness. To forgive would be an affront to our sense of honor and justice. It is completely human to believe that other people deserve punishment while we ourselves deserve mercy.

There is a different way to look at the situation. When Jesus was with his disciples, he told them, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” [John 20:23]  Some people interpret this statement as if it meant the inadequacy of the death of Jesus on the cross. Some wonder if we humans can keep God from forgiving other people. We should not assume such a preposterous notion. This statement, coming from the One who told his disciples that they must forgive people, no matter how many times people sin against them, can hardly be understood to give them a license to reject forgiveness and condemn those bad people.

What really happens when one person refuses forgiveness to another? The Hatfields and the McCoys give us a comic example of a horrific reality: unforgiveness destroys the one who does not forgive. Jesus told his disciples the deep and frightening truth that if they chose not to forgive, unforgiveness would dwell within them. Shakespeare gave us a dramatic picture of the consequences of unforgiveness as he showed us how a family feud that would not die doomed a young and beautiful couple. The Balkan peninsula has become the image historians perennially call upon to show what happens when nations try to take vengeance for offenses hundreds of years in the past. The movement of some black people in the US to demand reparations for slavery, which has not existed in this country for more than a hundred years, is the expression of an unwillingness to forgive a wrong that is over and done with. Unforgiveness creates victims, and victims give birth to a communal malaise that destroys its victims for generations.

When Jesus taught us how to pray, he also was teaching us how to live. In the most important prayer we will ever learn, Jesus taught us to say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This important petition embodies a cry for the healing of all people. We ask that our guilt for wrongs we have done be washed away and that the wounds we have received at the hands of others be healed. When we both request and grant forgiveness, we are engaged in what Martin Luther described as the daily drowning of our sins in the waters of baptism. All humanity is forgiven and broken relationships are healed as we pray this prayer.

Forgiveness is not a way to let wrong-doers “get by” with evil. If someone murders my daughter, and I forgive the murderer, my forgiveness does not excuse that person from paying the price of such a crime. The murderer does not “get by” with murder when I forgive him or her. However, we are both set free of the poison of that evil act when I grant and the murderer receives forgiveness. I will not spend endless days seething in anger and grief. I won’t shut myself down and deny all God’s goodness because of this crime. When I forgive the murderer, I make myself available to the healing and redemptive power of the Holy Spirit. What’s more, my forgiveness granted to the perpetrator of a horrible crime also crashes through one more barrier to the work of the Holy Spirit in that person’s life. If I refuse to forgive, the unforgiveness in my heart may well lead to two lives in a prison of the heart, a much more secure prison than any operated by the federal government.

Forgiveness is often seen as a hard task demanded by a cruel God. If we read the Bible prayerfully, we will soon come to realize that forgiveness is a beautiful gift to everyone from a loving God. It is more than fair; it is a blessing.

 My cell phone service provider is Virgin Mobile. When I have any occasion to call customer service, I am greeted by a recording that says, “Virgin Mobile customers, you rule!” I like that greeting. It predisposes me to believe that someone will actually listen to my problem and help me solve it.

Most of us like the feeling that people defer to us. It is the cardinal principle of customer service, in fact, to make customers believe that it is all about them. The greatest challenge of any part of public relations, including customer service, is to make it appear that the only rule is, “The customer is always right,” while enforcing company policy in ways that drive profits.

God doesn’t need profits. In fact, he doesn’t need anything at all. When we understand this truth about God, we are prepared to understand his first rule for everyone: “You shall have no other gods.” [Exodus 20:3] This rule sounds pretty arrogant and exclusive, but like all the other Ten Commandments, when you understand it, it rocks!

Job was a man who had been faithful to God all his life. At one time, he was the richest man in his country. He had a wife, seven sons and three daughters. One day, thieves stole all Job’s wealth, and his children all died in a freak windstorm. All these things happened in one day! Shortly thereafter Job was struck by a disease that covered his body with boils. He was so miserable that his wife suggested he curse God and die. She thought God was vindictive because he wanted everyone to worship him and abandon all the other gods. She obviously expected that when Job cursed God, God would strike him dead. Under the circumstances she thought being dead would be better than being alive.

As if his wife were not discouraging enough, Job was visited by three men claiming to be his friends. They spent hours trying to persuade Job to confess what he had done to deserve all this tragedy. I have had friends like this. When I lost a job for no reason I could discern, a friend tried to tell me that my whole problem was a lack of faith. She assured me that if I had simply had more faith, God would not have let this happen. It was all my fault! Job’s friends preached that same sermon.

My friend and Job’s friends were really saying that money and property are gods. They preached that if you have money and property, you have your god. If money and property depart, your god has abandoned you. You should feel very hurt if money and property keep company with other people and not with you. People who use lies and fraud to take money from others and gather it to themselves demonstrate that money is their god. They give all their allegiance to money. Government can establish state gods of money and property. You see it when government takes money and property from those who have it and gives it to those who don’t. It should surprise nobody when such government leaders skim money and property off for themselves as it passes through the government’s hand, because money and property are their gods.

There are other gods. Some people cling to intellectual achievement. Others worship their own families. Some sacrifice everything to the god “popularity” or “celebrity” or “prestige.” You can tell when someone worships a god. If a person worships popularity, that person will wear clothes she hates and put up with people she despises in order to be popular.  People expect to give up something for a god, but they expect to get something, too. Most people act as if worship were half of a transaction akin to buying underwear; they pay their god worship and praise, and the god dispenses all their heart’s desires.

Job recognized that everything he possessed was God’s gift. In fact, on the day he lost his wealth and his children, his first reaction was to worship God and acknowledge that everything he ever had possessed was always God’s.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.    Job 1:21

However, when loss of health followed loss of wealth and family, even Job wondered what was going on. He cried out,

Oh, that I knew where I might find him,that I might come even to his dwelling? I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.  Job 23:3-5

God didn’t speak in support of Job’s friends. God did answer Job. God’s answer to Job is his answer to each of us who wonders why God is so selfish, wanting all the worship and praise for himself. God said,

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! 

Later God said,

Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness, that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home? Job 32:4-5, 19-20

In other words, God pointed out to Job that only the creator of all things, seen and unseen, knows the answers to these questions. Who deserves our worship and praise more than the one who was able to say the word “Light!” and light came into being? He doesn’t owe us anything. We owe him everything.

After that, God told Job’s friends that they needed to ask Job to pray for them, because they had not spoken properly about God as Job did. They had consistently suggested that Job make up for his mistake, whatever it was, in order to manipulate God into returning all his property. Instead, Job completely let go of his ownership of the property and laid himself before God. Instead of trying to manipulate God, Job asked to get to know Him.

Job honored God when he cried out, “I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.” He asked for what God wanted – relationship. He showed respect for God and promised to listen to God. Job did not scorn God for failing to do what he (Job)  wanted. Instead he humbled himself and promised to listen to what God said to him.

Paul said it another way. He was preaching in Athens two thousand years ago, explaining to Greeks who served a multitude of gods why they should worship the God who created all things. He said, “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. …In him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:24-25, 28

In other words, all that Hubble stuff? God did that. Mount Everest and Antarctica? DNA and mitochondria? Whales and orangutans? Mushrooms and amoebae? God did it all. There is nothing greater than God. All the other little gods are merely dolls. Fakes. We cannot trust them, we cannot turn to them for help, and we cannot be blessed by them. They are complete frauds.

Why does God demand complete, single-minded faith and worship? Because he is God. He made everything, he knows how it all works, and he is in charge. God rules! That’s all there is to say about that.

If I governed my life by the content of daily news, I would be in constant terror. The news gives me no hope for today, let alone the future. The economy is collapsing. Public officials are completely corrupt. Global weather is headed either for fire or ice, and it is all our fault. The air is polluted. The water is polluted. Life forms are going extinct faster than shoes are snatched up at the annual winter clearance sale.

It’s a hopeless situation, and there appears to be nothing we can do about it.

I reject all the bad news that falls on my ears daily.

I don’t reject facts, and mixed in with worldly wise prophecies and avuncular advice there actually are some facts. However, filtering through the rhetoric and finding the facts is harder than it used to be, because the kind of journalism that presented information while studiously avoiding bias and interpretation is dead. Journalists in print or on the web all seem to believe they have been called to be the caretakers of the rest of us. They write and “report” as if it were their job to tell us how to interpret data. Furthermore, the ability to interpret data in a way that portends disaster appears to be the highest journalistic achievement. It is enough to send anyone into clinical depression.

I am not depressed. To be truthful, I confess that the news is depressing. The facts I extract from the news reports are not encouraging. However, I choose to base my attitudes on something other than the daily news. I hope in God.

In the Bible, there are numerous stories of human encounters with God or his angels. In most instances, the first words from the mouth of the heavenly messenger are “Do not be afraid.” When shepherds suddenly saw a choir of angels in the night sky, they were terrified, but the angel said, “Don’t be afraid.” When the disciples saw someone walking toward them on the water of the Sea of Galilee, they were scared, too, and Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid.” If we are not to be afraid when God injects himself into history, then I believe we should not be afraid of anything human beings might be able to do.

I see alarming facts in the world around me, but I believe that when God looked at creation and said it was very good, He knew what he was talking about. The universe is an amazing place. The laws of physics are astonishing, and reliable. DNA is the backbone of every living thing, powerful enough to keep working for millennia, flexible enough to adapt to every environmental change that has happened on earth. God does good work, and we can count on him.

At the peak of his creative work, God created people. While it is popular and entertaining to focus on the weakness and quirks of human beings, the real truth is that humans are as amazing as any other part of creation, and by that gracious act of inhaling the breath of God, humans are created with abilities that put all the other elements of creation in the shade. 

We fail, and we fail spectacularly. However, we succeed spectacularly as well. God values us so much as part of his creation that he came down to live among us as a human. He showed us how to succeed, and then he died and rose again in order to cleanse us from all our failures.

No matter what I see in the world around me, no matter what journalists tell me to believe, I don’t see anything that trumps the message God gave us in Christ, “Don’t be afraid. I love you.” God doesn’t want us to be afraid of anything. He wants us to become the fulfilled and happy people he created us to be. We still have to deal with the facts, but we don’t have to be destroyed by negative interpretations. The book of Revelation shows us how to interpret the daily news: “Don’t be afraid. God wins.”

Cosmology is a fascinating field of study. We all want to know how the universe came to be, and we want to know how we humans fit into the big picture. Currently in the US, this topic has become an important issue for education. Everyone wants children to learn about the universe, but the questions about its origin and purpose have so many different answers that it has become a major problem in the content of science textbooks.

Positions on this contentious topic fall generally into three categories: 1 – those who believe that the universe was created by God, 2 – those who believe the universe must have been designed by someone greater than us, and 3 – those who believe the universe exists by chance, subject to laws we are only beginning to discover.

There is a deep gulf between a conviction that we are created by God Almighty who loves us and a contention that something greater than ourselves designed the universe. I honor people who research the universe and conclude that it did not happen by chance. They demonstrate honesty in their work that is refreshing. I actually do not expect science to discover God, only his work.

There is an even deeper gulf between a belief that the universe was created by God and a belief that the universe occurred by chance as the outcome of natural law. Many, but not all, who prefer to believe that natural law explains everything, doubt or actively reject the concept of God. It is very difficult for people who believe there is a God who created everything to talk with people who reject the existence of any god at all.

Quite naturally, people who believe in God prefer that their children not be taught that the universe exists by chance. Just as naturally, people who do not believe in God prefer that their children not be taught what they consider to be a fairytale. When this conversation is stirred into a political stew flavored with differences over the meaning of the term “separation of church and state” the resulting discourse becomes extremely heated.

I am grateful to live in a country where this conversation in all its variations can take place. In China, the state determines what is taught in the schools, and the state registers the religions that are considered legal. The state prints the school textbooks, and the state prints the religious books. In China, scientists research what the state allows and publish what the state approves. In the USA, we have a maelstrom of ideas and opinions and discussions and arguments.

I have a position on this subject. I believe that God created the universe and everything in it. I believe that he created me, as he created all other human beings. I believe that God wants to live in relationship with human beings, including me. I don’t believe that God wound up the universe and left it to run unattended; rather, I believe he is actively involved in all that happens.

I do, however, differ with many of my fellow Christians when it comes to my concerns about the science textbooks in schools. I am not as worried about the content of those textbooks as some are, because I am the product of a science education that never suggested for a minute that God acted in the universe or that people were created by God. Despite this fact, I have never doubted that God created the cosmos or me.

My Christian faith was nurtured and instructed at the direction of my parents. They believed that God created the world, and when I went to church, that is what I was taught. My faith was not shaken by the fact that the school did not teach me about God, because I learned at home that there are many people who do not believe.

Here is the important point: the public schools are not responsible for teaching our children what to believe about God; that supremely important job is the responsibility of parents. As a Christian, I feel obligated to do what I can do to participate in the redemption of society. As a citizen and a Christian I want to speak and act to assure that civic law embodies a high moral standard. Likewise, I want our schools to deliver the best possible education to our children. However, I will never abdicate the responsibility for my children’s growth in Christian faith. That is my job. The schools may teach the latest scientific discovery about the behavior of particles in the picoseconds after the Big Bang, but that teaching does not negate or invalidate faith that God created the universe.

Parents ought to care what their children learn in school, but they need not fear it. Parents who exercise their responsibility to bring up their own children in the faith will be able to address any issues that originate in the schools. We parents have a huge responsibility to our children and to our God. If we ourselves live out our faith in the God who created all things, our children are not likely to grow up believing anything else.

For more information about me, or about Christian faith, visit www.katherineharms.com.