I was thinking the other night about my daughter, and how I could reflect that God is relevant today in everyday life. When I was growing up, hell, into my 20s, I didn’t read the bible and most of the described events in there, that I have heard from various sources surrounding me, were very hard to relate to today, to the struggles we deal with just trying to survive in this society, bent on rich people getting richer on the backs of the poor most of all, and then the middle class. Today I can see some major similarities, some relevancy that I have never seen before, but that was only due to the insightful people I have been exposed to, and the research I have done. I will do my best not to get off on a rant about legal tender, and the hording of it, using government as a tool so that those with it get to keep more of it than those without. Regardless of what I see today that I didn’t when I was younger, how can I relate to my daughter how God fits into:
- Being different than everyone around you.
- How to make friends.
- Where to find the right people to surround yourself with.
- How to get a job in a tough market with an inadequate skill set and education.
- How to find the right person to spend your life with.
- Then, how to actually spend your life with a person you live with for the rest of your life.
- How to tell when it is time to leave, a job, an abusive situation, a community.
- How to find a way to stay when things are tough, and why.
- What kind of car to buy and why.
- A reason to live.
- How to deal with debt, and what it really is.
- How people work, their motivations, and how it makes everything in society predictable and sad.
- How to keep on going when you know how broken society is.
- How to deal with difficult people.
- How to actually forgive someone.
- Why to forgive someone.
- What is love.
LOL, as if I could list all the things. But the list goes on and on, and every human needs to learn how to live, and every one of these elements fits in, and God fits into every one of these elements. I have heard from people this sad misunderstanding where they say “God doesn’t really fit in to taking care of my family, making ends meet” extremely paraphrased of course, but the idea is clear, they could not fathom how God fit into everything it takes to live today. Like finances, you can bible thump a lot of verses out about that, and not that they are worthless, but the societal gap, the lack of understanding of how things were then and how things are now, and how they were very similar, really kills the application of the bible to today. Subject after subject, you will fail to relate, so much lost in translation, and not just in translation of language, but translation of the situations that were in play then, and the same damn thing happening in one form or another today. David was right, there is truly nothing new under the sun, but starting out in your understanding and if you are lucky, study, none of it hits home.
As a father, I can’t help but revisit how it was when I was young. I still don’t know how I can help a young person see and believe that it is real. As a young boy, I was a hard case, one even today I would not know how to crack. Sometimes I wonder if the best thing we can do is raise them as close to how you want them to be, and pray. However, I worry about being just another “Christian” family that makes a little atheist because we paint and live such a hypocritical life, oh Lord, let us not live a hypocritical life. I believe that all atheists are in one form or another the fault of God believing people being terrible in the name of God, or while living under His name as “Christians”, okay I am getting off topic.
So, to summarize, I have come to the conclusion that the bible is good, but only after seeking God with all your heart and having Him guide you through it, otherwise it can be used as a tool of evil, just remember, even Satan used it for evil, and still does. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. I think something that may help relate to a young person who God is, and what He wants for us, is to write down the statistically anomalous events in our lives where God clearly pulled some strings. Not to discourage described events from the bible, but without described events from a little more recent time, it will be very hard to relate. One day I want my little girl to recall a story of where we had no food and no money, and the very day we prayed, out of nowhere people were cleaning out their pantries, and started to show up with boxes of food, and I want her to pray, and see what happens. I know my Friend, He will not disappoint a humble prayer, from a pure honest heart, who seeks Him, with all of their strength. Or I want her to look back, when she finds herself in a hard place with work, to recall daddy telling about how he just could not make it, there was no way to get out of debt, and prayed, and within a month was being paid nearly 3 times as much in a new job.
Heh, “doesn’t really fit into life”, that is really missing the mark. The wife I have, the home I have, the car I have, the child I have, the health I have, the fact that I am alive here today, only because of God. I have experienced how He really does fit into life, in every way. Its not simple, its not easy, it takes work in prayer, study, choice, belief, and action. You can’t con God, He is a *person, and I wouldn’t expect Him to respond to someone being a shit saying “prove you exist” (I did that once, didn’t work), but He will respond to someone who humbly believes in Him and calls on Him, asking some of the simplest of life’s questions. Many would say to that “how convenient”, and I would say “yup, deal with it, it is His choice, what would you do if for thousands of years you have interacted with your creation, and then a generation decides to discount a portion of written history for all kinds of reasons, and someone who still believes asked for help, and one who doesn’t believe asks for you to prove yourself again, who would you rather respond to?”. I can’t presume to speak for God, but I can say it seems fair at this point in history to let people believe what they want to believe, and respond to those who believe and call on Him. From my perspective, God has nothing to prove, at least not to me or mankind, He has done so quite enough in history.
I am so glad God is in charge of all that. I am not equipped for His job. The story is never quite as simple as I put it, I classically, at least part of me, wishes it were. Frankly I took the long way around, as I put it, I had to hit some walls before I even thought to ask God about any of those line items. Terrible relationships, before I finally asked Him to take care of that, but I was fine being single, ether way was ok at that point. I ended up going to bars to find friends and such, and I found that doesn’t always end well, and dare I say, from my experience, it has a high statistical probability that it is not going to end well. So I asked where I can find a good woman.
My next blogs will tell those stories, and how God responded.