Dear Theophilus,
I was glad that you hung around on Thursday until I was
able to talk with you. So much of ministry is taking care of business that, in
the end, doesn’t matter to the believer. Spending the time with you helped me
to remember that ministry is being available even when there isn’t an
appointment. Ministry is listening and being present with those who have
important things to say and ministry is walking a road together – not always
having easy answers, but being there in times of darkness, times loneliness,
and times of despair. Please know that our time together was important and I am
glad I could be present with you for a time.
Dearest Theophilus, you need to know that you are not the only person
in this world going through the struggles that you have shared. You are twenty-one years old struggling with family issues, faith issues, personal issues about
what it is to be independent and to be your own person. It is not uncommon for young men, especially the oldest male child to struggle and reconcile with a father
who has not always acted out of the Christian convictions that we try to model in
our churches. I am remembering such stories as Isaac and Jacob, David and
Absalom, or Abraham and Ishmael. Each of these sons had legitimate grievances
with their fathers and struggled mightily with their role and place in the
family.
As I listened to you, I heard you identify a God that seems
to ignore your cries, your prayers, and your pleas. You talked about a God who
seems to thrive on testing God’s followers and never seems to be there when you
need God. Although you did not expressly state it, I did hear your conflict
with God as one who protects and loves and takes care of his family and you are
unconsciously comparing God to your own father and this is a conflict for
you. It is very likely that your father,
like you, has also been wounded. Regardless, you have found him to be demanding
and not always in good, loving, and positive ways. You wanted a different kind
of attention than you received from your father. You wanted him to tell you how
well you had done and how proud he was of you. But your efforts never seemed good enough.
Dearest Theophilus, I also heard your struggle to find joy in this life.
You work hard all week, and so on weekends (if you are not working on Saturday
or getting up for church on Sunday) spend time with friends where you can
escape the work-a-day world for a little while, chill out, and experience
relationships that lift your spirits and
helps you to laugh and know the joy you long to experience. I heard you saying that an integral part of a night out included alcohol and in the past, drugs. I also heard you saying
that this would all go away if you had a significant relationship with a woman.
You expressed how you just want to keep working, get married, and have a
family. I heard you saying that you are really tired of the party life. You expressed that the things that once gave you joy are no longer true. I also heard you saying
that you don’t know how to get out of this despair and are hoping against hope
that the faith of your childhood will somehow clear this all up for you. It may Theophilus , and that would be wonderful, but faith isn’t about doing things the right
way so that you’ll get your ‘get out of jail free’ card. Faith is more than this.
Faith is a walk with
God that does not abandon God when the road becomes rocky or the hills, rugged.
It is not about putting everything you ever learned in Sunday School and
Confirmation into a single cry to God and that if not answered, will be the
very proof you needed to convince yourself that religion is a farce – it
doesn’t help anyone. Just as you don’t like to hear the phrase, “don’t ask why, Theophilus, God is testing you”, God doesn’t like to be tested either. The God I know
does not wile away the hours of a day deciding who to test next and what test
shall be used. God is too busy walking with us in our darkness and encouraging
us to believe in ourselves, to love ourselves, and to help us discern and
realize our hopes and dreams. God doesn’t have time to test us because God is
walking with us in the same darkness that causes us to shout out, “God, why are
you doing this to me? What have I done so wrong that I should deserve this?”
The God I love, Theophilus, isn’t testing us, rather God is walking with us.
The God that I know, through the cross, invites us to find
the courage to forgive our own wrong doings and the wrong doings of others.
Forgiving the way that Christ taught us is more courageous than all the guns of
the world’s finest military and more powerful than drugs, either legal or
illegal, that are used to heal body, mind and spirit. Forgiving, as Jesus taught
us, takes a deep and abiding faith and moral convictions that confounds the
powerful and the mighty. As Gandhi is known to have said, “An eye for an eye
makes the whole world blind”. Forgiveness
is a non-violent and subversive way that levels the playing field, humiliates
the powerful, and brings justice to an unjust world. Sometime, somewhere, dear Theophilus,
you will need to confront the demons of bitterness, anger, and fear and find the
courage to speak the truth in love to your father and probably to yourself.
Please do not hear me saying that this has to happen right now, because it
isn’t possible. Your feelings are too raw right now, and by your own admission,
you are angry. You must first attend to the rawness of your feelings and
wrestle with the anger you are feeling if the forgiveness is going to be real
and sincere. Let me explain this further. Amid his own guilt, anger, and
incompleteness, Jacob had to wrestle with God before he could forgive himself
and give and receive the forgiveness that was offered. The important lesson we
can learn from Jacob and his wrestling match is that even in the fight, he
didn’t give up on God; he kept fighting until he received God’s peace and
ultimate forgiveness. He didn’t walk away from God, convinced that the only
God, if there even is one, is a God who thrives on judgment and tests,
forgetting the baby steps of goodness that we are making every day.
I think, Theophilus, I’ve probably said enough. You have been on my
heart since the day you came to me, and I am grateful that you did. I am grateful that I was able to be present with you in a dark place – a place that feels
like a day to day struggle with no foreseeable end. You are in a hard place
right now, but I hope that you know that I am here for you and willing to do
what I can to walk with you through this darkness into a new light that I
believe is waiting for you. The great pastor and theologian, John Robinson,
once said to the pilgrims as they left Europe to travel to the New Land, “I am
persuaded that the Lord has more truth and light to be revealed…” and I pray
that this will be true for you too, Theophilus.
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