They always tell me I am an overcomer. I don't feel like an overcomer. They say that nothing can separate me from the love of God. I don't feel connected to His love. They say that there is a blessed life to be had. I can only go on so long trying to convince myself that all this stuff is true before I crack and scream. Life doesn't teach me these lines. Life doesn't give me the path of victory. In fact, life comes along and steals my hopes, crushes my dreams, leaves my prayers unanswered, and turns overcoming into abuse.
I am tired of the contradictions that my mind exploits between what I understand the Bible to say and what my life experience is telling me. I am tired of living life with this unresolved tension. I am tired of mouthing comfort that I do not feel. I am tired of saying things will be okay, when they are not. I am tired of believing in good in this life when pain socks me in the face.
Don't get me wrong, I am not depressed or having a pity party, I am just sick of living in contradiction. I am sick of trying to make the bible say something that my life is not saying. I am tired of hearing people mouth faith that has no foundation. I am so sick and tired of it.
I need answers...we need answers.
The answer for me is simple...what I have been taught about God and this life is crap. I read the bible with the glasses of preconceived theology that never answers life's toughest and most relevant questions. I live and walk ignorantly spouting words of faith and hope that do their best to convince people of God's goodness but really only leave them prisoners of fear and contradiction; to afraid to ask questions, to afraid to make sense of life's punishments, pain, trouble, and suffering.
How can I believe in His love in the midst of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and sword (Rom 8:35)? How can I be a conqueror when "for thy sake we are being put to death all day long (Rom 8:36)? Don't you ask these same questions? Don't they seem like raging contradictions.
They were not for Paul. Paul had no problem with claiming the love of God in the midst of death, life, angels, principalities, things present, things to come, height, depth, and other created things assaulting his life trying to separate him from God's love. He didn't care that he was beaten, unable to preach, belittled, betrayed, stabbed in the back, depressed, and heartbroken. He somehow knew that this world would punch him silly internally and externally but that God's love was not disrupted.
His hope was different than mine. His hope transcended this world and eliminated the contradictions that beat me up.
His expectations of life were different than mine. His expectations of answered prayer were different than mine. His view of pain was different than mine. His view of the blessed life was different than mine. He wrote and I grabbed the wrong glasses and began to see things differently than what he was trying to communicate.
Let's face it, Rom 8 is the preachers showboat. It is the passages of scripture we use to gloss over the monsters within. It is the scripture we use to shove people into a cave of contradiction and defeat. Why? Because we are afraid that if we acknowledge this contradiction we feel, live, and recognize, we too will conclude with so much of the world, that God is not as good, great, and mighty as I make Him out to be. And if so, then maybe I am better off without Him.
Paul says that God is for us and that I cannot be separated from His love. God is fixing my mind to make this not just a thought but my experience.
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