When faced with
hard times in life, would you prefer someone coming along to help you get back
up and on your own two feet or someone coming to take over and rescue you? Letting you sit this one out.
Some of us have consciously considered this. Others have more likely kept this question
and its answer at an unconscious level.
But, either way, I wonder if it isn’t what partly if not mostly informs
our ideas about God, about people in authority or leadership in our lives, and
about ourselves in relation to others under our own leadership. Not only are we either supporters or rescuers
in our own right, but we seek out either supporters or rescuers for ourselves.
Or here’s another one.
Do you think love involves helping people out, ourselves
included, or rather rescuing them? Rescuing as in taking over for people who are overwhelmed by circumstances of any
sort. And now to get really personal
here: do you feel more loved when someone enters your life to take over, or
someone enters to encourage you to take over yourself? And to support you in doing so?
The God of my own faith is a God whose love always helps but
never rescues.
You may believe in this same God. Or not.
If you believe in a different God, whose love is controlling
and does things “His” way or else just forget it, then you and I will arrive at
very different answers and conclusions about how to solve a great variety of
human problems. We will espouse
different ideas when it comes to marriage, parenting, politics, economics, of
course religion, and just community life in general.
And for us to resolve our differences, we will probably have
to back up to square one and open up to each other about our answer to that
original question: would I prefer being supported or rescued when faced with hard times in life? Notice I say when faced, not if faced. You see, life is hard and there are two
different ways to go in life: we can either make it harder still, or we can
make it easier. To me, being rescued
makes it easier in the short run but harder in the long run. Being helped?
The opposite. Easier in the long
run.
The God of my faith, and of the Bible I read, is the God of
the long run. The God whose love is
always aimed at making life easier in the long run.
Not the short run.
That may involve “like” but it doesn’t involve “love.”
At least not in my book.
I believe God supports but doesn't rescue us even when this means our life is harder in the
short run, because such support, indeed such love, is precisely what will make
life easier in the long run.
I believe God loves the world so much that God refuses to
take control for us. Over us. Or to rescue us from our own hard times. Rather, God loves us enough to help us help
ourselves and take control of ourselves and get back up on our own two feet
and, well, to then support instead of taking over for others. That is, to love one another as God has loved
us.
So what do you believe? Supporter? Rescuer? Which is
God? And which are you?
