Angry with God

There’s a reason why all I’ve been blogging about over the past few months are white folks and blonde girls (to be fair I can’t remember the last time I talked about blonde girls, but whatever).

I’m quite thankful for the service tonight.  Throughout most of his sermon tonight on Exodus 17, our intern – also my friend – took the time to share some very, very personal experiences of when he was angry with God.

I figured that I am pretty much angry with God right now.  Like the Israelites, I am currently asking: “is the Lord amongst us or not?”

I think that’s it.  I think that hits the nail right on the head for me.

I have been so sick of Christianity.  I am so tired of the bubble we live in and the little principles we follow – be it consciously or not – that really have no place in our faith.  I am sick of praying packaged prayers.  You always hear us Evangelicals talking about our faith being about a relationship and not about a religion or a set of rules, but honestly: is that really what happens in our lives?  And what on earth does “a relationship” mean anyways?

This is exactly the same reason why I get really angry and want to shoot someone whenever I try doing the 40 days thing with Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life.  I am sick of all this Christianese and shallow understanding of this supposedly greatest truth I will ever discover!

I remember going out with this really artsy friend from C4C sharing our faith at the UBC SUB, and he shared this concept along the lines of “life is a journey for us to discover”.  At the time I thought it didn’t sound very Christianese, that it sounded a bit too liberal.  But now, I think he’s so right.  As Christians, we never take the time to process our thoughts and find out why we believe in the things we are “supposed to” believe in.  Everything is presented on the dinner table like a buffet at Uncle Willy’s.  We seldom discover anything for ourselves.

Last week the senior pastor at my church asked me out for lunch.  I hesitated at first, not knowing why he wanted to meet me.  I was afraid that he was gonna ask me to do something new at church.  It’s weird, having gone to my church for something like 8 years now, I have maybe met with my pastor only 3, 4 times, the last time being my meeting with him about Halifax Project ‘07 in early 2007.

Turns out he wanted to meet me because he knew I have been quite discouraged.  You see, after having invested almost every Saturday in the past 3-4 years into the youth at church, I have finally called it quits.  Our English pastoral staff decided that it was best that we dissolved our one and only high school youth group.  To be honest I felt so relieved.  I was so happy.  It meant that I finally had my weekends back – that I can now be a proper game-attending Whitecap, and that I no longer have to be a party pooper (I used to have to ask my friends to “book me” at least 2-3 weeks in advance), and that I no longer have to face disappointment every Saturday evening.

I mean I have been feeling so out of it, so stale, that I needed this girl that I could technically fancy (but I never did actually fancy her) to tell me that I am apparently very good at the piano to finally put in any thought into preparing my worship sets.

Join my pity party.

Anyways that’s enough self-pity.  So my pastor gave me some much-needed encouragement (since I thrive on positive reinforcement and words of affirmation).  He praised me for my loyalty, claiming that many youth leaders would have left the church many a days ago if they faced the same situation.  He asked me if I ever thought of leaving the church.  I honestly told him that I did, but I simply had no idea how to work it through.  I have always hated people who switched churches like switching King deals at Burger King.

If this is my home, then this is my home.  If I switched churches, if I ever got married I would want to switch wives too.  This has always been my rationale for staying at a place that has, quite honestly, made me quite miserable at times.

But I suppose it’s like supporting a football club that is never going to win anything.  You simply take joy from being able to stick through the thick and thin with the club.  Winning just becomes an extra bonus.

My pastor then started talking about him finally understanding the concept of discipleship – about the effectiveness of starting small, simple, genuine one-on-one relationships.  You’d think that as a C4Cer, I would’ve been so excited that I’d immediately jump in headfirst to help see this vision come through.  But with me being in the bad shape that I’m in – you know, being angry at God and discouraged and everything – all I felt was apathy. In fact, I think this is the most apathetic I have felt in a long while.  I remember in one of my journal entries from back in my first or second year at UBC – back in the time when I just bought into the whole Crusade thing (which really is the Jesus thing) – I wrote that my biggest fear was seeing myself becoming a fat, lazy, apathetic loser who just shows up at church and does absolutely jack squat.

Here I am, fitting into that exact mold.  Bleh.

In my defence, right now I just really wanna know that God is outside the 4 walls of this building called church.  I want to know that the Church really does actually mean the Body of Christ, and not merely this social group we meet in every week.  If I am sick of church, but not sick of God, then I want to be able to take this relationship I have with Him – my Father – and take it everywhere I go.  As a football fan.  As a person at work.  As a student.

My friend closed the sermon with The Gospel Song by Drew Jones and Bob Kauflin.  What simple words that capture what this thing is all about at the end of the day:

Holy God, in love, became

Perfect Man to bear my blame

On the cross He took my sin

By His death I live again

Anyways, I am apparently meeting up with “Not My Type” this coming Tuesday for a C4C staff support appointment.

It’s funny, the name “Not My Type” came about because on our way to Winter Con ‘07, I asked my friend to show me who the female Key Student Leader at this nearby uni was, as I have only heard of her but never met her in person.  But all my friend said in response was, “Ricky, she’s not your type”.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we?  If all goes well at this appointment maybe I will ask her to marry me or something.  Afterall I am turning 24 in a week.  It would be a good time to become engaged and all.

“I’d love to join your prayer list and support you financially, but would you like to kick it up notch and become my wife?  Might as well, you know?”

I think this pickup line is gonna work like a charm.

And if she rejects me, I could just say, “Ministry at [university name] is very tough.  You are going to need all the support you can get, including spousal support”.

Wow, I can’t wait!

Church-visiting

Disclaimer: this blog was written when I was a bit downtrodden. It does not necessarily reflect what I believe, but more so what I felt at the time. I post it because I believe it can serve as a warning.

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What is this Christianese – “church-visiting” – I talk about?

I am not talking about your regular “church-hopping”, where one permanently moves from one church to another to another to another like a Halloween pub crawl with the frat boys. Because, as we all know, such behavior is destructive to both the church-hopper and the church herself and often, deservedly, gets looked down upon (especially in Korean circles, I am told).

I am not talking about “church-shopping” either, where one takes bits and parts of every local church and end up developing only skin-deep relationships all round. “I love the smallgroups at that Baptist church, the morning service at this Anglican church, and the evening service at that Black Pentecostal church. They just make me feel so alive!”

Not that.

I am talking about “church-visiting” – ‘I check you out, but I can’t settle and serve even if I wanted to because I am not from around here’.

I have church-visited twice this past month. And I hope to do it a few more times as it can be fun.

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But anyways, long story short, throughout all this I have come to see a disconcertingly lack of synergy. I see a massive difference in maturity level across congregations. Some churches are moving forward, yet many are falling increasingly behind. A 20 year old can be a leader of men here, but another 20 year old over there who has gone to church all his life cannot tell you the first reason why Jesus came to die.

Some churches are totally big on discipleship and authentic Christian fellowship, fitting into the “Acts 2″ mold like a glove, hence blessed with very committed men and women. Some slip under the radar as your regular Evangelicals, teaching the right doctrines and praying big prayers yet doing little in reality, creating a lukewarm atmosphere. Yet others cannot be called anything Christian, where there’s little selflessness but truckloads of legalism and politics, leading to crowds of people going to church for all the wrong reasons.

Yet, if every church appointed leaders according to Titus 1, you really wouldn’t expect to see this happen. If every leader had the heart and attitude seen in 1 Thessalonians 2, you wouldn’t expect to see this happen.

All this get my heart feeling a tad watered down and discontent. At times very disappointed.

The late Dr. Bill Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ, said this: “Win the campus today, reach the world for Christ tomorrow”. Of course, much of that is based on what Jesus said in Acts 1:8 – that His followers, being filled with the Holy Spirit, shall reach the ends of the earth with the Gospel.

Yet, I have become disillusioned as to what it means when people say God is at work and that we can really join in and change the world. Can we really?

Is not every culture moving in the direction where faith in God is increasingly being ridiculed? Is not morality being thrown out the window, incoming the ‘everything is okay as long as no one is hurt’ ethics?

Genesis 1:26 says this, “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Yet congregations are always needing to be built up from the bottom again and again; people are walking away; so few are maturing that there is no multiplication but simply 1:1 replacements.

Is God really at work?

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Those of you guys in the C4C circle would probably have already read Samuel Chua’s blog written during his missions trip in Uganda (where he still is). If not, go look it up on his Facebook:

“Silver and gold I have none to offer, but the message of the gift of life and God’s gift to the world. Do you know where hope shines the brightest? It shines brightest in the darkest places, the eyes of the Ugandans who have found the light of life.”

Well, clearly our Lord YHWH is at work.

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I told you many times, didn’t I? I hate it when my heart hardens. I mean, what the hell.

This past Sunday I attended a service where the preacher probably came from England and had some sort of an English accent. He preached on Jonah 4. While I dozed off my mind during most of it, the passage itself was a lesson I needed. Jonah never liked people, yet he thought he loved God. But how can anyone claim to love God when he/she does not love what God loves?

On loving God and people, I quote Paulman Chan:

“In other words, you and I can talk about ending poverty, or we can talk about bringing the Gospel to people lost in spiritual darkness. But the thing that matters is living out a life that makes Jesus your treasure, first, and making it your priority to help others to know Him, followed by the inescapable desire to bring comfort and help to those who need it physically, socially, or emotionally.

Spiritual needs are the most important, even if a person is starving. But a person who says he loves Jesus but does not care about a starving person is living a lie, to a large extent. The solution then is not to force Christians to care for the poor; I believe the solution is to help Christians become great lovers of God so that we naturally want to care for the poor.

That kind of change of heart is what’s known in the biz as a “miracle”.”

Indeed, Proverbs 31 describes the model wife……I MEAN, I need a quick injection of adrenaline straight into my heart Mia Wallace style……I MEAN, I need to love people.

My heart hardens everytime because I do not love people.

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In other news, I got this from my brother, which I will take it as a grad gift:

Better than Gillette Mach 3 Turbo – the best a man can get?