I don't like to think of God as a Genie in a bottle, but sometime I am inclined to, and I feel a sense of obligation to put him back in said bottle.
See, there is a certain feeling that I encounter and I have a hard time shaking. I feel it's quite outwardly when I'm in the darkest of times. With the world crumbling around me, I feel the weight of this enormous mystical being pressing down one me. He continues to press and press until I start screaming and yelling and throwing my fists. Its a fight or flight mechanism in our brains that causes us to do this. We want to persevere through the wicked and the pain so as to help others when we come out of it, hoping to have a better story to tell. But that's just not how life is, we are not pressed and pressed only to see ourselves overcome. Rather the longer we take to get to the point of giving up, the more this monolith of eternity will crush us under His hand.
We are forced into a position of crying and begging and confusion and pain, laying on the ground giving up on everything. Brought to our lowest point, we think back on the world and wonder what it is that we can do to make things right, wondering what it was that we did to piss of this great super being of awesomeness. All the while he presses down on our soul with his thumb and pushes us closer to hell, and all for what? To make us stronger, to test us, to help us?
We question God, I question God, and yet we are told to have faith in him who we question. Now don't get me wrong, I don't question God's existence, not for a second. Rather I question what I am suppose to be in his eyes, so in a way I guess I question myself. I lose faith in the glorious and liberating knowledge that is being a "Christian".
Someone once asked me, while I was in a very dark and painful part of my life, "Do you really think that God is taking these thing away from you? You really think that he would that 'to' you. He would punish you for something like that?" I think on that a lot, because the fact is I absolutely do. I absolutely believe that God takes from us, and at his own will, when he pleases. It only makes sense to me. Look at the book of Job, Through Satan, God took from him. Look at David, because of his sin, God took his child, heck he took almost all his children. Look at Jonah, he took three days of his life. Look at Neberkenezer, one of the worst People in all of history, and he took his sanity, his royalty and shelter, and basically turned him in to a wolfman... look it up Daniel 4.
Besides, its only logical to give Him the glory of our lacking and pains, since we have to give him our glories in everything good. If you have ever seen me give a speech or comedy or writing or anything where people give me applause for something I did, I always, ALWAYS, give back to God. "He's the one that gave me the words. He really was the one talking there. No, I'm terrible at bass, but God gave me the power this time." So if I give him the blame for all the good stuff, then should he not get the blame for that bad as well? Do you believe that God would be so egotistical that he would only allow us to recognize him for the best parts of our lives, and allow Satan to to take the fall for all our misadventures.
As well, I look at God with a bitter sweetness when I ask for something from him. I Love the X-files, awesome show, and in it there is an episode with a Genie. She is a cold and emotionless woman who gives people exactly what they want. The first man we see asked for invisibility, when he walks around invisible he gets hit by a car and dies. When Mulder asked for world peace, the entire population of earth disappears except for him. In bedazzled, with Brendan Fraser (cause i haven't seen the original.) Satan gives him wishes and they are fulfilled, only to be ruined by some unseen event.
Now that I sit in a position of some what comfortably, I am scared to death of what God is "going to do to me". People have told me, be careful when you ask God for humility or Patience, because he will give them to you, and you will have to use them. What kind of God are we worshiping if we are terrified to ask him for things? Especially when he did so much to open the line of communication. He has given us permission to ask him for anything, and he sent his own son to die in order to keep us close. I'm terrified to grow and become better because I don't want to go back to the life I was living, to poverty and suicidal thoughts. To humility and embarrassment, to having people look down on me and question whether is good to have me in their life or not.
David continued to sin against God all his life, even when his first born of Bathsheba had died, he didn't learn his lesson. Jonah was forced to go to Niniva and then scolded for his personality. Though Job's life was restored to him and he was given back everything in ten fold, and Neberkanezzer was given back his sanity and ruled over Babylon as a God Fearing King, totally cleaned up his act.
So what do I get when I ask God to make me better? I get a rock hard ass cause I keep cringing and waiting. Then I'm given a moment to relax, but soon find that I am worried about what's going to come next. Hoping that I am one of the few that figures out how to give up all my lunch money before getting punched in the face. Or that I'm getting punched in the face enough will allow me to stop caring and become a stronger person. Either way I'm told That I don't fully understand what's happening and that I should just let God do what he does, and hope that his will is done.
But if there is one thing I have learned from my Israel like relationship with the Lord, it's that God always gets what he wants. Always.
T.W. Clawson
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