Disappointed in God (3)
Generally speaking, disappointment is the emotional feeling we have when our expectations are much higher than what we expect or wish for. Set your expectations too high and you're setting yourself up for disappointment; sensible people have a good helping of realism.
Yes, but what has realism got to do with it when we're dealing with God? He has no limits and he is able to do far beyond what anyone can imagine. Yes, I'm acquainted with the text—what troubles me is what people make of the text and the kind of hoop they make out of it that they require God to jump through.
Part of our disappointment with God is that a lot of preachers and teachers make promises for God that God didn't make and when God doesn't deliver on them we're disappointed in him. Of course at that point those teachers/preachers begin to bob and weave and introduce "the fine print" connected with the promises though usually their answer is one of these: "God is testing you, be patient, keep on asking and you'll get your desire." Or, "The fault lies with you. You don't have the faith."
We're disappointed in God because he doesn't do the things daily that we saw Jesus do daily. We read the NT and see what he does in Jesus and we think (because we have been taught to think and because we want to think) that this is how God purposes to act daily in our world at this time. He did these things in Jesus, he did them in the apostles of Jesus and since he's the same God why doesn't he do the same things now as then?
Some preachers and teachers say that very thing and so we, the rank and file, expect God to continue to act in that miraculous and immediate way. We become impatient with people who consign God to the past or to the unknown future ("He used to do miracles, he will do them again in the future but he doesn't do any now.") We don't like this and in moments of desperation we're almost prepared to believe what we see in the three-ringed circuses and carnival exhibitions we see on the prime-time religious television channels conducted by flamboyant masters of ceremony.
We're disappointed in God because he doesn't appear to be like Jesus Christ. What we see of Christ is his moving among the needy attending to their needs and defending the defenceless. If he can make a difference he makes it and he didn't stand by while he had the power to make a difference.
However true this picture of Jesus is—and it is true, up to a point—it isn't the whole story. The fact is that Jesus did leave vast numbers unhealed and hurting and lonely and abused. If it had been a question of naked power he could have obliterated sickness and death with a word and buried the Roman Empire just by willing it but to read the Scriptures like that is to miss what God was and is after in Jesus.Sometimes our disappointment is because we look for the fulfillment of a promise that never was made. God wants not just our happiness but our selves; not just our comfort but our hearts; not just our gratitude but our love and not just our prosperity but our transforming righteousness. Christians share the suffering of the world because their Master did and does. Click here.
Whether we like it or not God is more concerned about our character than our ease and while he is eternally interested in our happiness and joy it isn't about us as individuals in isolation but as a world redeemed. Our unbroken peace and joy is yet in the future, here!, with the curse entirely obliterated!, and on an earth where the will of God is done as it is in heaven and where the glory of God fills the planet as the waters cover the seas.
Jesus never offered his miracles as substitutes for redeemed lives, he never offered health in place of righteous neighbour-helping living and peace among men was never offered as a gift that could be enjoyed without God. However else we are supposed to understand Jesus and his earthly ministry we are to keep that in mind.
I don't doubt that as individuals we'll continue to be disappointed in God but I think it's important that we grasp—at least have a shot at grasping—what his agenda is and asking to be allowed to further it before we let our hurting hearts bottom out in a permanent sulk.
And listen: Jesus isn't finished yet! There's a day coming when all the disappointed but brave ones will see and then look at each other and say: "We knew that, didn't we? We just forgot it for a moment now and then!"
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.