Offensive Love

Love.  For not understanding it humans tend to use the word a great deal.  We like to think of our fluttering fancies and our craving desires as something fitting of the it.  We tend to dream of the knight saving his lady from danger and give great sighs of "how romantic" in our petty ideas of what love might be.  As Christians, in particular, we have endless ideas of what love is and how we feel it and relish in it.  However, the closer one looks into the God that inspires love, the more they will realize how little they know of it all.

Love is beyond human comprehension. 

Of course, we can all picture a man in armor rushing to the aid of a woman he fancies with the assurance that she fancies him and, at that moment, needs him.  That is simple enough.  But what of a knight going to save a whore, inclined by all past evidence not to return his love, from the pit her own destructive passions?  The very sentence makes the mind recoil from all its warm feelings.  We innocents will whisper to ourselves "don't use that sort of language" and pass over the notion with disgust.  As much as we might want to think otherwise, we all would have that reaction if we were honest.  To put our fairytale into such a context is scandalous.  Who would dare?

God would.

The Creator of love cries out that scandalous tale in His own Holy Book.  Over and over He speaks through kings and prophets of the Love that makes us uncomfortable.  Through Ezekiel He told us, "...I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, [and] I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare. 
^"When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine" (16:6-8, ESV).

We see these words of filth and bareness and shift in our seats, disgruntled. Is so much talk of nakedness and blood truly necessary? God thinks so. He paints clearly the state we were found in, when He came to us with the chance to live and be loved. The Love that takes a filthy, broken thing and raises it to an age and state "for love"... that is the Love He offers. But it doesn't stop their either. God's Love continues even when, as Ezekiel describes, "you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore" (16:15-16a, ESV).  His Love is the kind that will continue even in such atrocities.  Without qualm or hesitation, He will save His bride from the very bed of her adultery.  We might feel embarrassed at such pages and the Love they imply, but it is those pages of Love, that make us blush or feel uncomfortable, which we need to study and comprehend most if we ever want to understand the love our Creator made.  To hear our hero Rahab was a prostitute and our model David an adulterer offends us, but God still put it in front of us clearly, daring us to be offended.

That is Love.  Intruding, offensive, and unashamed.

The Doubting Christian

In the world today, unspoken implications accompany every statement.  Insinuation lies under everything, especially in the realm of teaching.  The Christian Church is heavily guilty of such unstated teachings, and more than one sorely needs addressing.  One that stands above others, however, is the unspoken belief on doubt.  Pastors and speakers preach on God’s omnipotent and omniscient nature, which are both long words that young Christians often interpret as, “God has control of everything, so He is never to be doubted.”  While Christian teachers instruct the message unintentionally, it still does its work.  In the church-going person’s mind, a “doubting Christian” becomes interchangeable with “a Christian whose salvation is doubtful.”  That interchangeableness may seem true and harmless, but it leads to Christians that refuse to doubt anything that comes from God, which is unbiblical and damaging.  When Christians refuse to accept doubt, they do not rid themselves of it; instead, they give it opportunity to injure more and pass over a chance for deepened faith in God.

When Christians suppress doubt in God, they do not rid themselves of it.  Christianity is not simple, because God never intended it to be.  Eventually, life will turn a corner that gives qualm.  That change may present itself in a person, situation, or even a page in the Bible itself, but inevitably something about God, whether His teachings or His deeds, will run in opposition to a Christian.  The challenge may vary, but it comes to all, because all are humans, lacking God’s divine mindset.  The mortal shells in which Christians are contained cannot avoid some deviation with the immortal God.  Doubt will inevitably come.  When that voice of questioning whispers inside, a church-goer’s natural reaction stifles it, due to the implied teachings of his or her life.  Christians correlate doubt with sin and, therefore, force it down.  Without outlet, a seed of doubt will sprout roots of fear and bitterness.  Denying doubt will not erase its existence.  Once conceived, question cannot be unasked.  Stifling doubt only keeps it inside, where it does the most damage. 

By containing doubt, Christians often ravage their faith.  Refusing to question God directly makes doubt fester in false secrecy—a place where Christians convince themselves an all-knowing God does not know what they are thinking.  In that location the doubt will frighten Christians and embitter them toward the God who “refuses” to answer a question he or she never dared to ask.  Believers will keep doubt unvoiced to God and other believers in order to avoid appearing ungodly to the church that ever insinuates the “sin of doubting.”  In such a fashion doubt takes on the façade of invincibility.  Christians fear to speak of their doubt not only because God is omnipotent, but because failing to ask the questions stirred by doubt makes them certain everyone will fail to answer.  They fear voicing it will only spread their uncertainty to others.  Doubt becomes a plague, which seems able to contaminate others by mere utterance.  Thus, Christians fail not only to share their doubts with God, but with other Christians as well.  In such a way the stifled, inward doubt roots itself deeply and ravages a Christian’s faith.

If Christians honestly release doubt into God’s care, He will use it to motivate Christians to faith based upon more than emotion.  Once believers admit their doubt to themselves and God, it gains a much different power.  In God’s care, doubt gains the ability to strengthen rather than injure.  In the end, God is omniscient, which does not mean Christians should refuse to doubt, but rather, that He can answer every doubt Christians have to offer.  Rather than condemning doubt as a tool of the devil, which molds it into just that, Christians should consider that doubt is first a tool of God.  Learning occurs fastest when the learners ask questions.  Is it not probable, then, that God should allow doubts in Christians so they might ask and therefore learn about Himself?  If His followers will but have the faith to offer Him their doubts in confidence, He will doubtless put all uncertainties to rest.  As an all-knowing God, He holds all the answers.  Granted, not all divine solutions will suit just what the imperfect nature of humanity desires, but the answers are there.  More doubts, questions, and time of honesty in God’s presence will eventually lead Christians to a place of submission to His will.  Only then, after doubts have served their purpose, can God’s followers sit in trust at His feet.

By stifling doubt, Christians often damage their faith rather than accepting the uncertainty and the deeper faith it can develop.  God will answer all His followers’ questions, in time, if they will but ask them.  If Christians force themselves to remain unquestioning of the omniscient God, they will never experience the wisdom He has to offer.  God has never turned aside a doubtful mind.  From Moses to Paul, He has, in His timing, answered the questions offered about Himself.  Without the use of doubt, His tools for maturity grow limited.  With that truth in mind, the Church’s implied teaching turns on its head.  A “doubting Christian” is not “a Christian whose salvation is doubtful.”  Rather, a doubting Christian in the hands of a God known for His ability and desire to put doubt to rest is a Christian set on the assured path of salvation.