Aug 09 2009
The God Bargain – When Saints Act Like Pagans
We are all born pagan. I realize how harsh that sounds, but just think about it. Idol worship and superstition come naturally to us. We quickly develop rituals to help our favorite sports teams have “good luck”. Gamblers blow on dice, lottery players have lucky numbers, and Friday the 13th still brings out caution in many (and maybe a rabbit’s foot or two). Even those of us enlightened “mono-theists” have our own methods of bargaining with “forces out of our control” to try to get what we want.
I see a lot of mutual frustration among well meaning pastors and active laity in their efforts to inspire and motivate their bothers and sisters toward a productive faith. I have thought much on the dilemma, on what it is which holds us back, and the best term I could come up with to describe it was “The God Bargain”. The sad truth is so many people approach Christianity as a method of appeasing God as opposed to actually just obeying God. Its a bargain, “God, I will do what you want if you help me *insert favor*”.
PERSONIFYING CHAOS
Many things in life are beyond our control. It would seem humanity as a whole has developed a habit of personifying everything we can’t directly manage. All pagan cultures throughout time have created gods for fertility, harvest, weather, hunting (ample game), love, and health… all the things we can’t directly control (or couldn’t until recently). Throughout the years of human history, man has taken everything out of his control, assigned it a god, and tried to gain that god’s favor. (Notice there are no ancient gods for “get your ass out of bed”, hard work, perseverance, charity, forgiveness, or rehab.)
Now that we live in a Judeo-Christian culture, we just take all those things out of our province and blame one God for them. Which leads me to ask this question: Aren’t we just being pagan if all we have done is consolidated our gods together but still think and behave the same? How have we changed if our prayers, rituals, and sacrifices are done in the hopes of getting good fortune from an appeased God?
IS GOOD LUCK DIVINE?
“that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” Matthew 5:45
So the question is becomes, just how should we approach good luck/fortune or bad? Is good fortune a sign of God’s approval, and bad fortune a sign of God’s punishment? NO! Emphatically, I say it is not. Any kind of assumption regarding fortune and God creates a kind of insanity. Are we to question our purity when lightning strikes our home and destroys our DVD player? Are we to assume our sins have gone overlooked when we find a twenty dollar bill in our coat pocket left from last winter? Is our sports team more in favor with God the year they won, and offending Him the year they loose (in which we can only conclude that one sports team can appease God at a time)? To look for “omens of fortune” to interpret God’s Will drives us to paranoia.
Life is hard for everyone, period, and God does not show favoritism. Expecting life’s challenges to go away, or diminish just because we are on “God’s side” is foolish and arrogant. If one looks at Scripture we find just the opposite, Jesus warns us to expect life to actually get HARDER when we choose to follow Him. True Christian discipleship is not the way of safety and comfort, it is the Way of the Cross.
LIFE DOESN’T CHANGE, WE DO
So as the blog title says (look out! shameless self-promotion coming up), let’s bring this back to some practical Christian Mysticism (told ya!). We don’t follow Jesus Christ for some shallow hope in worldly blessings, we carry our Cross because we are convicted of our own need to change. Discipleship isn’t about DOING it is about BECOMING. We strive to become like Christ, but more accurately, we strive to become what Christ intended us to be.
The world around us changes; not because we have favor with God, but because when we seek the face of God we change and begin to effect the world. Life doesn’t get easier, we get stronger. Our fortunes don’t improve, they just become less relevant. If we truly believe God loves us, and we cannot earn or lose this love, then it is not God who changes His attitude toward us, we change our attitude toward God.
STOP BARGAINING
Everyone starts their spiritual and religious journeys with pagan/superstitious habits of some kind. It is just our nature, and it takes time to mature. I write this article in large part from self-reflection of my own habits. I often find myself loosing perspective and trying my own bargains. However, I see many people struggle because they bargain with God and use that as the basis for their faith. I see people live “moral” or religious lives in hopes of convincing God to give them something, just to become jaded and discouraged.
Bargaining with God cheapens faith and robs us of the true blessings God has for us. There is so much to learn, to discover, and experience in life. When we use our religion as a bargaining tool, we keep ourselves stuck in a worldly perspective. We may believe in a God, but we are keeping our hearts in material and shallow concerns. Besides, we don’t get any credit for “believing”:
“You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.” James 2:19
GOD’S GRACE
“Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.” 2 Corinthians 12:8-9
To temper this article a bit, I want to end with God’s grace. Grace is something we all have access to, but is not to be confused with luck, fortune, or even blessings. Just like God’s love, we don’t earn God’s grace, it is given. God gives His grace so we can have room to grow and mature in Christ. If God did not give His grace, we would be crushed under the weight of our own sins and foolishness.
God gives grace to us generously, and all who trust in God enough to just go out into the world and live experience it. The grace we receive is sufficient for us to learn from our mistakes and have a chance to recover from them. God’s grace is sufficient for us to grow each day, not being dragged down by what we were before.
A FATHER, NOT A DEALER
God is our Father, not a tradesman. Does a good father demand actions from a child before offering his love (I said “good” father)? Does a good father wait for his child to grow up and prove himself before he takes the child into his home? So why do we think of God this way? Everything God has for us, He has already given, which means it is up to us to seek it, accept it, and live it.
Related Article: Our Abundant Common Grace
It is in this life (the Lord told us) that we will have...
Amazing article! I really don’t have words, just know it’s an exemplary piece of writing. People need to read this.
What I mean to say is that I have caught myself trying to make deals with God all the time. This article has really brought these almost sub-conscience bargains to my attention and is helping me to eliminate them as my automatic way of trying to deal with things that I have absolutely no control over. That is why people need to read this.
WELL DONE MY MAN! This may be the best article yet
It is in this life (the Lord told us) that we will have trouble. This isn’t a joy ride, and our fortune does not determine our favor, and blessings come in many forms too. I think of the blind man that Jesus healed after the disciples asked a rather pagan question (why is he blind… who’s sin?). The mans problem was not due to God looking down with a frown on him or his parents, but it was a tool to glorify God. I loved this line you wrote “Our fortunes don’t improve, they just become less relevant.”
You hit the nail on the head. Life isn’t supposed to be health and wealth. We are supposed to become partakers of the divine will. What should we expect? Nothing less difficult than the life of Christ. People hated Him, He was poor, He grew tired and ultimately, He was killed. But through the human life, He showed us the way. The way of the cross!
I rally liked this one Chris. Christians (myself included) due well to remember these things. Far to often do we make bargains as a knee jerk reaction. God through His grace wants to rewire us. He doesn’t want us thinking about ourselves. Instead, He desires for us to lay down our lives in obedience. We die to ourselves, and that means throwing our bargains on the alter and lighting a match.
God is worthy to be praised!
-g-
Quite well written and right on the mark! The only thing that I think needs clarifying (not that it is incorrect but perhaps a bit vague) is this statement:
“Discipleship isn’t about DOING it is about BECOMING.”
There is no doubt that we should not be doing things for God in hopes of attaining selfish desires. However, God HAS called us to be “doers”. Ephesians 2:10 says,
“For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.”
The things we do should be in response to God’s love and grace, because we cannot really become like Jesus if we are not obedient to our heavenly Father. So in this way, DOING is certainly part of BECOMING. As you say, we strive to become what Christ intended us to be, which is a people who are obedient to him and willing to go out into the world and preach the good news, care for the poor, and love others the way he first loved us.
Thanks for your great post, I found it through the Christianity section of reddit.com and will keep an eye on your site in the future.
Thanks Gunner,
I agree with your clarification. I would say my statement is that BECOMING is a better word than DOING, but not contrary to it. BECOMING requires action as much as DOING, but I am trying to better define the goal.