I had a hunch that since God was the Creator of the universe and everything in it, He should be able to fix my life. Or at least help me.
Thus I started asking questions. I didn’t think they were hard questions, but maybe they were:
“If God chooses our lineage, then why did I end up in a family where I was labelled 'the accident'?”
“If Jesus came to give me abundant life, then why did my business fail?”
“If God is strong enough to protect me, then why has he allowed me to be hurt?”
“If God’s designed marriage, then why is mine falling apart?”
The more I asked, the more it became clear to me that there either were no answers, or nobody knew what they were.
I was on the brink of throwing Christianity away. After all, it seemed pretty useless. I was tired of hearing useless tag-lines (see my last blog) recited by well-meaning but ill-equipped believers who – when all was said and done – seemed to not comprehend any of the truth they were parroting.
As Shakespeare would say, “There’s the rub.” The problem is that there was truth buried in those Christian one-liners. And I instinctively knew it. BUT, I also knew that I couldn’t see it.
I remember in the 80’s when those 3-D optical illusion pictures first became popular. I was among a group of people standing in the mall staring at them. One at a time we focused, as instructed, on a point about 3 feet behind the image in an effort to make the hidden 3-D image become visible.
One by one, various people in the crowd would exclaim, “I see it!” and then they would proceed to report what they had seen. Try as I might – I could not see the image for myself. The rectangle of brightly-colored geometric designs remained a flat, lifeless puzzle to me.
This was what was happening to me with the Christian one-liners. One person, the pastor or a speaker, would press in and find a life-changing Biblical concept, they would “see it” and share their experience.
Their message would get passed from person to person like a huge game of “telephone.” Inevitably condensed into an easy-to-remember slogan, the original, full, deep meaning was eventually lost. But, try as I might, I just couldn't "see" it.
Unfortunately, by the time one of these saying got to me, it seemed to cause more harm than good when it came to my Christian growth. These slogans tended to provoke more doubts, more questions and thus, loads more resentment within me, rather than satiate my very-real-need for very-real-answers.
Readers: What is your most-hated Christian platitude?
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