Though he slay me

Job 13v15 Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;
I will surely defend my ways to his face.

One lesson I have learned in life is that some things have unexpected consequences. You take a path and it does not always take you where you expected it to take you. Another lesson that is obvious but that I struggle to learn is that even though this happens on a regular basis, I often fail to learn from it, and instead like the goldfish perpetually swimming around the same bowl, I'm still surprised.

Theology matters, by this I do not mean academic theology, but instead what we really believe about God, and what we believe we are here on earth for.

If you believe that God is a man with a big smile on his face who put us on earth to be happy, you are going to have severe problems with reality.

If you believe that God is a strict puritanical God who does not like people to have fun, and put us on earth to do worthy things then it is not likely that you are going to be much fun to be around.

If you believe that God is distant, then most likely while he is far away you are not going to take much notice of what He would think about your behaviour if He was closer by.

As human beings it is quite normal to like pleasure and want to avoid pain. Given the choice between a well paid job, a happy family, a nice house and trying to survive in a slum we would pick the former, and because we would do so we would expect that if we follow God and are obedient that God would do so to.

Solomon was a good boy and he got everything. David well, he misbehaved a bit but the Psalmist became Israel's great King, who thought he could get away with murder. Abraham was blessed materially, so was Jacob, so was Joseph (eventually).

God is nice and he likes us. All true, well depending on your definition of nice, but that does not mean he wants us to be happy - as if God's sole purpose in existing was to make mankind happy.

The problem is with this theological outlook, is that good fathers do not want their children to simply spend the rest of their lives bouncing on daddy's knees going gurgle gurgle. A good father wants them to grow up.

Perhaps I need to grow up a bit. I struggle at times and get angry with God because life has not constantly drawn me a happy lot with everything easy. Indeed trying to follow Jesus tends to make life awkward rather than easy. There are choices, there are prices to be paid, there are at times sacrifices.

And for people who have an attachment to the give away God, the idea that I might have to make some sort of sacrifice - that it might not all come easily and ready on a plate for me to bung in the spiritual microwave is a bit of a shocker. I mean Jesus paid the price to give me free entry to the party, an access all areas pass - didn't he? Isn't all I need to do is to take the pre-prepared and warm it up a bit and enjoy?

The problem is that life can be very tough and it does not always have easy happy endings. This real life, not the Waltons.

If we believe too strongly that we are meant to be happy, we can be vulnerable to the temptation that says I must find my happiness elsewhere. Therefore rather than working it through with God, we walk away to find something else to feed on.

It may be cheesy to say that what God gives us satisfies and nothing else can fit that God shaped hole, but in this case it happens to be true. There is no back-up replacement God for those times when the Almighty seems far away - indeed that is exactly what the people of Israel wanted when the demanded a golden calf.

God is a bit far away a bit distant while idolatry and temple prostitution and the like provide instant gratification. However, God is quite clear that there is no place for idols. We come to Christ, and as the famous phrase goes Christ alone. There is no place for substitutes, no easy quick fixes.

The early Christians were known as the people of the way, Jesus did not invite people to an instant destination, but to an onward journey. We are not called to love the world, not called to pitch our tent and build our castle here, we are just passing through. This is not home, this is not our comfort, we are as T. S. Elliot puts it in the journey of the magi.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

There is something haunting in Elliot's words (written following his conversion) it is a recognition that it is not all found in this world. Life is bigger than this life because God is life and He is bigger than this life.

Therefore trying to be satisfied here in the things of this world is not just missing the point, not just bad theology, but mission impossible. It is when we die that we live, it is when we give everything to God, really give everything to God, that we find what we really have - what really matters.

Christian life therefore is also Christian death - the two are not in this case different. It is through not just Christ's death that we find life, but also our own.

The problem is that without faith, without a belief in something more, without belief in God - then it is all so much hocus pocus. We are called to choose a road which is a tough road to travel, a difficult journey. We are called to walk past the thousand stalls of sin that are set to entice us and call us away, to call us to stop the journey and stay where we all - the problem being that if we do so we may never make our final destination.

We live in a world that worships pleasure, and if I am entirely honest, at times that includes me. I want happiness that is here and now, I want the sun to always shine, and I don't want any clouds to spoil it. Yet God calls me to die to self and to truly live.

It is not, in the end, all about my pleasure, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.