After yesterday’s blog entry it appears that the Farce has undergone a mystical transformation for 2013.
If I write about a problem, the problem is immediately solved! Yesterday saw Gus turning a corner. Or maybe it was me who turned the corner. Either way, corners were turned and bonding is happening and I no longer look at him and feel the same emotional connection I feel to the stop sign at the corner of Hallcrest Ct. and Hampton Hall Way.
So if this is true and my blog has become a sort of prayer wheel/prayer wall/magic thing, I should start just demanding magical things.
Kind of the way some people do with the Christian God. “I have faith that you’ll heal me!” becomes not really a statement of faith but a sort of bullying black magic dare. Either God heals you and validates your faith but becomes something you consider subject to your will and incantations or God doesn’t heal you and you either lose your faith or lower your opinion of God.
It’s a no-win situation.
This came up again on Facebook when a friend said she had the flu and one of her friends said “I call you Healed in Jesus’ Name! Go and Be well!”* Well, gee, thanks, friend! I had not thought of that in all these years. I wish that I was as down with the Holy Spirit as you are!
Here’s the thing. God hasn’t cured me and I won’t be surprised if God won’t “cure” me until the perfect cure of death. It’s not a problem. God has given me things that make my illnesses bearable; God walks with me through the Valley of the Shadow and I fear no death or illness. Some people are relieved of physical ailments. But that’s not because they are stronger in their faith or better human beings or super-gifted. It just means that’s their path. Just as not everyone has blond hair and blue eyes, in that same way the variety of the world sends people down different journeys.
Besides all that I’ve already said, I’m also not best pleased by what this sort of “Christ will heal us because we know Christ” says to people who are not currently in a relationship with Christianity. Are we telling them they deserve to suffer? Are we telling them that God’s gift of free will is a joke? “You can choose to not follow me, person. Hope you enjoy a life of misery!” Are we telling them that God is so petty as to inflict misery upon anyone not in a relationship with God? Because that’s how it looks to me.
And yes, I do know and believe that God sends trials to teach people lessons. But I also firmly believe that God only sends those trials to those people who have already entered into a relationship with God as adopted children. Those trials are between God and the tested party. It is not for any outsider to determine whether or not the trial is corrective or instructive. So all this tommyrot about “God gave you cancer for committing adultery” or “God let some crazy child shoot your child to death because there is no prayer in school” is just that. A ridiculous lie designed to make God look like a monster.
*( I went into detail over there about how that pomposity bothers me, but I still want it said here too. I know it’s a common refrain for this blog but if there is one thing I want my illness to speak to it’s that God has other paths besides what we automatically assume to be the ideal and those paths are fantastic journeys. )
You have the Shaa’daa pawns book. You still need to review that one.
I know. I’m trying to be fair and read it when I’m in the mood for it. That’s one reason I couldn’t write professional reviews for a magazine where the publishers pay you to review a specific book on a specific day/week. I can’t be fair to a book if I don’t read it when I enjoy it. I’m already a bitchily tough grader. Since contributors on that are your friends I feel like I owe them at least that much. :-p
I see.
I’m with you on the paid reviews thing. It’s bad enough to read one when the person gives me the book. “Well, they gave me this so…. ” and then my inner whatever shouts back “… so say it’s crap if it is….” Alas, a lot of my reviews are for mediocre books.
You *should* be tough. As the consumer (okay, generally), you should be happy with what you pay for.
Also, the rest of your post reminds me of a Disney movie. Bear with me. There was this movie called Miracle in Lane 2 where the one kid (Frankie Muniz) was a parapalegic. He got involved in the soap box derby, and realized that his neighbor had been very involved in it in the past. Anyway, the derby was his chance to be like everyone else, because it didn’t matter that his legs didn’t work. There were several issues, like his older brother suffered from a stress headache migrane thing because of all this, and so he had to deal, right? He had a lot of dreams in the movie, and they involved his favorite NASCAR driver ever (although they didn’t call it NASCAR). Well, at the end of the movie after he won the derby, he had one last dream and the racer guy opened the gates of heaven and everyone floated around in wheelchairs. Cheezy as only Disney can manage, but I liked that the point was that we don’t know what perfect is.
This movie….I have to see it. Because it sounds like one of those movies that might have been written while high…and those are always goofy fun.
But yeah, that’s a good point. I always wonder what people will think if they get to heaven and we are all just telekinetic heads.
It actually wasn’t badly written. It was just… Disney cheezy. You know, wheelchair kid accidentally discovers derby, wins big trophy. Also, based on a true story, which makes it cheezy by default.
Wiki says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_in_Lane_2
Glad to Gus’s personality is starting to demonstrate itself in a way that you can bond with. The only animal I think I bonded with right away was Hobbes, and I think that was because (a) I lived alone (technically) at that time, and (b) he was feral so alot of that beginning time was devoted to getting him to even be in the same room, which somehow instantly built the bond from me to him (if not yet in reverse) by virtue of putting so much effort into him (including one panicked call to TheBoyfriend™ who didn’t live with me at the time that went “He ran behind the fridge and won’t come out!!!” “He’ll come out eventually” “But I don’t want him chewing on wires, you need to come over now and help me pull the fridge out!”). Happy to report that that feral kitten turned into the most affectionate house cat I had ever met before or have ever met since, btw.
But to the point of the post, while I agree with your point, I don’t think it’s pomposity, but rather fear that motivates those postings. Something like an illness is often out of the person’s control, but thinking “if I pray hard enough, I can make this go away” puts it back in the person’s control (at least in their head).
“Are we telling them that God is so petty as to inflict misery upon anyone not in a relationship with God?”
Which is exactly what I hear every time I read one of those “Dear God, Why do you allow violence in our schools?” “I’m not allowed in your schools.” memes. Again, I get it. It’s the same defense mechanism. Trying to establish control over the scary and uncontrollable, but it just paints Christianity in a REALY bad light.
When the kids were little, we used to go to camps for families with disabilities. They were run by The Joni Erickson Tada organization. Back then they were small enough that she went to all of the camps so we spent a fair amount of time with her. She spoke of her petitions to be healed and I will never forget her answer when someone asked her about her disappointment at not being healed. She said, “I believe I was.” She spoke about her spiritually healing and how that is really the crux of healing. We are so bound by the physical, and by time, that I think we often forget that we are primarily souls–with bodies.
I don’t mean to minimize our physical challenges because they are huge–Especially the chronic pain and ongoing difficulties. But our world is ruined by sin at the moment. We WILL experience difficulties of many kinds. It’s not neccessarily anyone’s “fault” and yet all of our faults because we belong to fallen humanity.