One day, when I was
a child, I lent my relatively new bike to a friend, the friend promptly broke
my prized bicycle attempting to go over a jump. In a whirlwind of tears,
burning anger and shame at the fact that
I was responsible for a broken bike I ran my it back home. I discarded
it on the drive and ran into the house and flung myself on the sofa, barely
noticing my fathers presence on the sofa opposite. My dad asked me what was
wrong ... To my shame I think I told him to piss off, or at least words to the
same effect.
So pretty much a run
of the mill tantrum right? Why would I be talking about this now? Because some
things about the human condition don't actually change. They change their
outfit, sure, but the issue itself remains the same. You, I and every child in
the world still have tantrums it's just that most of us dress them up
differently now that we have 'grown up'.
When you think about
it we have a great number of things to have tantrums over - certainly better
reasons than when we were children. We discover poverty, injustice, chronic
health conditions, relationship break downs and any other form of suffering
that you can think of. There is an in-built trigger of rage and sadness in each
of us when we are party to and particularly when we are the target of said
suffering.
Of course being
grown up we now realise that there is absolutely nothing that our earthly
parents can do about these problems, indeed in many cases they are in fact the
source of many of these problems. So what do we do? Well all too often we
perpetuate the problem, we either internalise and end up imploding turning to
self loathing which in turn sabotages all of our closest relationships or we
externalise and end up exploding which respectively sabotages all of our
closest relationships. Not good.
So this is why I
started with this story - because my bike fiasco did not end this way. In
response to being told where to go my dad could have taken offence and left me
to cry it out on the sofa. Fortunately for me however, I have a good father. He
told me that I could tell him what happened and that he could try and help. In
my infinite wisdom I had already
concluded that the damage to my bike was beyond repair and as a result there
was really nothing that my dad could offer me as consolation in this situation,
hence I felt the need to rebuff him. I articulated the conundrum quite
effectively - 'my bike is broken'. Of course my dads knowledge of bikes was far
superior to mine and so he decided that rather than solving the small problem
of my bike he would fix the bigger issue of my attitude. He came over to my
sofa and wrapped his arms around me.
Of course he assured
me that he would do his best to fix my bike but he was far more interested in
letting me know that a much healthier way for me to resolve my issues was to
come to him and explain my problem rather than believing the lie that all hope
was lost. I had tried to fix my bike myself and couldn't - that doesn't mean my
bike is beyond repair. But more important than any of that, my relationship
with my dad was of far greater value than any bike I could own. The refrain
that shaped my childhood came out once again. 'I might not always like what you
do but I will always love you, no matter what.'
After some time on
the sofa I calmed down a bit and apologised to my dad, we went out together to
get my bike and of course my dad showed me how it could be fixed easily without
even needing any tools.
Ok, time to bring
this back to us adults. We experience the 'broken bike' in our lives and it
hurts, we don't really have any human relationships that are able to fix those
hurts but we certainly try. We marry people who 'complete' us, we drink,
gamble, sleep around, advance our career, work harder, get stronger be better
all in an attempt to fix our broken bike. The issue is that at best we only
break our bike further. We divorce, become alcoholics, get into debt, traffick
modern day salves, get addicted to porn and cheat to get ahead in the game.
Sooner or later we come to the end of our self destructive resources and we
have to face the fact that our bike is broken and there is nothing we can do to
fix it.
Now comes the
equivalent of telling your dad to piss off... We blame God, we say that he
cannot exist because of all this mess. We become frustrated with him and run
away from him, we throw one heck of a tantrum.
Now here religion
can do some seriously weird things, as Christians we often feel the need to
cover up our problems. We can't possibly throw a tantrum that is beneath us.
God is good and we know it but this situation makes it feel like God is not
good. Both cannot be right so I will just bury the feelings and say God is
great, YAY, praise the lord! We sell God short and don't actually take our
frustration and anger and pain and anxiety to him we just say he is good and
busily try and figure out how to patch ourselves up so we can look pretty on
Sunday. We even create whole schools of theology to explain why there can be
suffering and a good God (we call it a
theodicy) instead of facing our problems. Well this is a Faberge egg. We can do
great at making it look pretty on the outside for a bit but it is paper thin
and has absolutely no substance to it and just ends up propagating the problem.
What's more this is not what the God of the bible tells us to do at all. It is
some weird twisted, dismembered, decaffeinated version of what Christ has given
us.
Fortunately for all of us as good as my dad is
he is not even a touch on how good God is. While we are far off trying to sort
ourselves out and failing miserably he asks 'what is wrong?' it's not that he
doesn't know the answer. He is giving you the opportunity to cry out and admit
to him and to yourself 'my bike is BROKEN!'.
I can assure you
when you make that admission to God, as painful and messy as it can be there is
release. For some reason western Christianity has completely forgotten the
place of lament, of unashamedly calling it like you see it. Life sucks some
times and God is absolutely big enough to handle us screaming at him every now
and again. When you are honest with God you give him the opportunity to wrap
his arms around you and be enough for you. Now despite the fact that your bike
is still in pieces on the drive things are looking better. Why? Because the far
more important issue of your relationship with God is improving and that will
set you free! The fact that God is also able to put your bike back together
(and improve it too) becomes a small side issue by comparison to the fact that
you have discovered something better than life itself. The love of God.
