Should We Fire God? (Part 2b)

The beginning of questioning and doubting
At the end of 2007, I began my first real questioning of God, my faith, and what I could trust as real. This questioning was moreso in regards to factual truth and whether what I knew was reality and not something just in my head or thought up by humans thousands of years ago. It never really reached a questioning of the character of God, his goodness. Those six months or so were a painful time for me as I wrestled through questioning the basic tenets and assumptions in my faith. Is God the way I know him? Does he even exist? Can I trust the Bible? Is it all in my head? What is real? How do you determine truth? Have I been somehow deceived?  Can I ever know?

This gradually brought up in me a tendency to question and doubt. Most of these questions and doubts slowly faded away throughout the summer of 2008 as I went to Leadership Training with our on campus church “The Revolution”. It was a summer of close fellowship with other believers, and through personal time in the Gospel books as well as the main sessions we had biweekly, I began to see God as living and powerful in my life again through the compassion I found in Jesus through scripture.

I came back from that summer at North Carolina to Ball State University where graduate school hit me a lot harder than I thought it would. I barely had enough time just for school. I became out of touch with God and would forget who he was to me. I was aware of the doubts creeping back in though I never really spent any significant time exploring those as I was so focused and busy with school. I graduated on July 25th, 2009 and moved down to Indianapolis, IN to start my new job on the 27th.

The next stage: character
Starting somewhere around 5 or 6 months ago, I began to look at the Old Testament in a different way. I had never really read much of the Old Testament and to be honest, it seemed mostly boring and not that useful. Jesus was where it was at. New Testament was my Visa. It was everywhere I wanted to be.

When reading the Old Testament before, I would sorta make everything okay because now we are in a new era. The era of Jesus and God’s infinite love. Nothing really bothered me in the Old Testament. The wars, the killings, the decisions made. That just didn’t happen anymore and didn’t really apply. I didn’t know why there was so much bloodshed back then, perhaps it was just the culture and was expected. It didn’t bother me because the emphasis and highlight is Jesus and I don’t have to think about God the way he was in the Old Testament right?

A new idea emerged in me, perhaps directly or indirectly from friends, that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I had already believed this, but what that meant to me now was that I couldn’t just fit my idea and view of God into my mind solely from the New Testament, but I needed to also use the Old Testament to shape my view of God. After all, they are one in the same God (or at least should be), right? However he was then, he should be the same today and tomorrow character-wise. Maybe his actions change between different cultures and how they respond, but the essence of God should be the same. I believe this was the beginning of the next level of questioning and doubt, only this time it wasn’t whether God WAS, but HOW he was. His character.  I began to cast God into more and more negative light as I read the Old Testament. 

Stream of questions
To avoid running the risk of making this post way too long, I will try to condense this section to just a few recent examples.  Most of the below examples read like streaming thoughts, rather than complete ones.

Example A: Why would God let what went down in “The Garden” happen? Why setup a trap that he knew they would fall into eventually? He certainly knew they would do it. He must have been okay to let it happen. He gave the ability for them to choose it, and he told them not to with his foreknowledge that they would choose it.

Some may state that God did it because they needed to have free will. Without the choice to disobey God, they would have been robots with no free will. Is that true? Could they have only disobeyed God by God explicitly stating not to do something (i.e., eat from a specific tree in plain sight)? Weren’t Adam and Eve sinless? Made in God’s image and at that point perfect, complete? Will people be sinning ‘in heaven’ and if not, then does God not give them the choice to choose good or evil? Why go through this whole process when it all could have been avoided? I don’t know…

Example B: Why all the bloodshed as seen in the Old Testament? Not only did they fight to protect themselves, but God actually commanded the complete slaughter of everything for certain peoples including all adults, children, babies, animals, and property. If a human ordered this, we would call it genocide. The complete wipe out of a particular people. This is morally reprehensible.  Did God have a good reason?  Should he be held to the same moral standards?  Is he a part of or apart from morals?  Why make humans do it? Why not cause some sort of natural disaster or the likes?  Either way, I find myself asking why.  There are way to many questions and concepts packed in here to barely begin.

Example C: I began to see the Gospel as generally not good news, because it meant the condemnation for most people. It may be good news to those that are given the faith to respond, but what about the majority that won’t? To them, this would be the worst news ever. Far from good. If God is sovereign, he could save all people, which honestly I wish he would do. But scripture doesn’t seem to teach this.

I hate the concept of a state of eternal separation from God in what is referred to as hell.  I can't fathom eternal punishment for finite disobedience because one either wasn't chosen by God or didn't choose him.  I can't fathom God letting this happen if he loves every single person.  And if he doesn't love every single person and only loves those that he calls to 'heaven', then his love seems limited and why would that be?  Yet, if he did love all, then he seems cruel for loving someone but not saving them (unless he's not able, and thus not all-powerful) from eternal separation and punishment. 

I can see why God might let some things happen, but what about the big things? Natural disasters, mass murderers, etc. If God did step in and take care of these things, how far should he go to protect the creation? At what point should he allow things to happen, and should he just go ahead and try to take care of everything and prevent as much suffering as possible?

You really need to read the book to journey through all of Jim’s questions, personal and general examples, and responses that continually occur throughout the book. He doesn’t present questions and doubts in the beginning and then proceed to definitively answer them. He continues the questions and responses throughout the book, gradually shifting and building upon his previous ones. It reads as honest and raw, which I found accessible and easier to relate and understand.

“I distinctly remember, time after time, going to God in my frustration. Maybe, somehow, he hadn’t realized what was happening. This was my career! Tracy and I had left behind jobs and a plan for PhD so we could come here and do this [working on staff at the church he now copastors]! I didn’t know what made me more nervous: the idea that God had in fact not been paying attention to my life and this massive failure seemed to be coming, or the idea that he had – that God knew what was going on and wasn’t doing everything at his disposal to stop it. It was as if he just suddenly left the table, dropped the phone, whatever – he just stopped talking to me.” Should We Fire God? [page 79-80]

“If you have extraordinary power, then you use it to help those who don’t. In the real world, we even have Good Samaritan laws in some states that require us to step in and help if we can. Watching preventable pain unfold without taking action is not considered a mark of restraint, or wisdom, or concern for the larger good. We don’t classify it as ‘seeing the bigger picture’. We see it as selfish and wrong.

Many people look at God that way. He is up ‘there’ in heaven, with a courtside view of the devastation. Maybe he’s just sitting on his hands while it all happens, or worse, he’s causing it himself. God starts to look pretty cruel. And once again the questions return: does he not stop the damage because he isn’t strong enough or because he doesn’t care enough? Or is it that he isn’t real enough? And we even argue over which of those reasons is really true.” Should We Fire God? [page 136-137]

Jim also lists God’s track record of protecting people, all of whom died terrible deaths for their faith. God saw it all coming.

Next, I would like to dive into some major points that began steering me to an understanding that began covering and in some areas replacing my cynicism and doubts about God’s performance, ability, and character, though the doubts, frustrations, confusion, etc are still interweaved through it all.


Should We Fire God? series:
Part 1
Part 2a
Part 2b
Part 3a
Part 3b-1
Part 3b-2
Part 3b-3