I hate all this silly religion,but you, God, I trust

" I hate all this silly religion,

but you, God, I trust." - Psalm 31:6 (The Message)

I have been using The Message for daily readings in the Psalms and Proverbs. I find it really refreshing, and I know that God will have one single passage of scripture mean different things to each person on different days. So, I was pondering a non-Believing (by her own categorization) friend's question:

"Why would God help Tim Tebow win a football game but let genocide occur? Just wondering."

She then added "I'm not a believer, but I just wonder how those who do believe can reconcile it."

God does not justify bad happening to good people, nor does He explain why some quarterbacks’s prayers seem to be answered over other quarterbacks’s prayers. It’s the way He works, which my Bible tells me we men are not capable of understanding. There’s a well quoted, often misapplied, verse that says “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” In a different translation, this becomes “That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” Here is a subtle, but significant difference in what is immediately apparent: “is worked into something good.” It may be bad to start with, but by the time God is through with it, it will be something good.

He just didn’t tell us how, what, when, why and where for everything.

Then I read: "I hate all this silly religion, but you, God, I trust."

Since this is now the 3rd time I have quoted it, you should feel, quite correctly, that I want the words to sink in. You see, this has to do with non-JudaoChristian perceptions of God, primarily with understanding faith. Faith is what let's me, no, MAKES me accept God's modus operandi. It has to do with grace. It has to do with David the Shepherd. It has to do with free will.

C.S. Lewis pointed out that "Free will, though it makes evil possible, also makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having." Free will is one of the basic tenets of Christianity.

God made us with free will so that we would love him of our own volition, not because He made us love Him. The answer to L’s question is simple, as they usually are, to state, but difficult to comprehend. Since we are free to be good, we are free to be bad; since the world was given to Satan run around in, Satan’s free will causes good and bad both happen to bad people, bad and good both happen to good people. That is what it means to say “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”, but leave the emphasis on His purpose.

David did not go to that big church downtown. Even when he worshiped on mountaintops, he was not in a building. And, he wasn't with a group of fellow believers (although sometimes you or I may feel like we're just in a herd of sheep). But there is no denying that he had faith.

See (or choose not to), it's this way: we have nothing to do with our faith. Once the Holy Spirit is in us, it is the Spirit who forms our faith regardless of, no matter what, in spite of what we may do or think we are doing. Ritual, prayer, scripture - if they matter as far as how our faith is formed it is the Spirit working and not we ourselves.

David's faith developed strictly by his spending time with God, and in his "praying", far from the rote patterns of many churches today, he asked Him a few questions and then listened and observed. David knew that God would answer him, but that the answers were not always meant to be understood fully. But, the questions would be answered and God was always paying attention to David and his questions.

I have a son-in-law who is an ordained minister with a doctorate in post modern ecclesiology. He is maybe more liberal than I am conservative. At the core level, though, we share beliefs and wishes. He recently wrote on Twitter:

I wish that the church spoke to the younger generations...That the church was more interested in those outside the walls than inside the walls... That the church was an instrument of grace rather than rules and doctrine... That the church followed Jesus rather than parade him around... That the church could learn to love our neighbors as ourselves... That the church would truly love and worship God... That the church was less interested in buildings than people.

I heartily agree with him. We need to have churches that speak to the L’s of this world, those who sincerely question God in being and action. We need to answer her not by explaining that since she is Jewish she is underprivileged, not by saying that because we are CathoMethoPresbyLutheroEpiscopoEvangeloCharismoPentecostals we are better than anyone else, but by remembering the very simple pieces. God is love, He wants us to love Him, right is right, wrong is wrong, and, pretty much as Bill and Ted said, be excellent to each other.

This still does not give answers to the implied parts of the question of why God “allows” genocide. I can tell you why He does, but I can’t tell you what He is going to do with it that makes it good in the long run. That’s His purpose. I can tell you that part of His purpose is to love me, and to love you, and if that means He wants me to win a football game or to die without explanation at the hands of lunatics my faith says “so be it.”