I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.
Comments are always welcomed.
Wrestling with God's Will
"With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?"
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:6a,8 (NRSV)
I am not skilled to understand
What God hath willed, what God hath planned
I only know at His right hand
Stands One who is my Savior
From "I Am Not Skilled to Understand" by Dora Greenwell
When I want to go out and do something but have nothing to go out and do, I sometimes end up at a bookstore, and, while I'm there, I usually end up browsing the religion section. One evening, I noticed that there are a lot of books about discerning God's will for a person's life, and I began to wonder why there are so many books about the subject. If someone actually figured out how to discern God's will and was kind enough to write a book about it, then wouldn't any other would-be writers on the subject just refer people to the first person's book?
The subject of God's will is something with which I have been wrestling for a couple of years now.
St. Paul once wrote, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose."1 Some people take this statement to mean that, as the old cliché goes, "everything happens for a reason." Some people believe that everything that happens in this world happens for some divine purpose. Some people even believe that God ordains all things that happen in the world as part of some greater plan.
A little over two years ago, someone I once deeply admired and respected asked me to consider making a certain choice in life. This person told me a lot of things to convince me that this was the right choice for me to make. She even went so far as to imply that God had prompted her to make this request of me. At the time, I felt as though she was in a position to say such things because she struck me as a wise person and maybe even a mystic. To make matters even more complicated, this request could have been interpreted as an answer to prayer, but it was not the answer I was expecting. These things led me to believe that maybe it was indeed God's will for me to make this particular life choice, but it was not really a choice I wanted to make.
Months later, this person proved herself to be a hypocrite who had absolutely no business saying what she had said to me. I was angry - I felt as though I had been manipulated by a person with an agenda. I ultimately said "no" to her request. I felt justified at first - in fact, I felt that her hypocrisy got me off the hook - but eventually I sank into depression and self-loathing. I felt horrible for months afterward, because I felt as though I was not only saying "no" to my former friend, but also saying "no" to God. I felt as though I had failed people who were important to me, and I felt as though I had failed God and rebelled against God's will.
Yet I had no intention of repenting and saying "yes."
One dark night, Jesus went to the Mount of Olives to pray. He knew that He had drawn the ire of the powers that be and that he would soon face the consequences of his recent acts of protest against them. Nobody says and does the type of things Jesus had said and done that week without facing resistance from somebody who has something to lose. The Bible says that He was so full of anguish that night that His sweat was like blood. Jesus prayed, "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet, not My will but Yours be done."2
We all know what happened next. Not long after He prayed, He was apprehended by an angry mob and abandoned by those who were closest to Him. Hours later, He was taken before the Roman governor, brutally beaten, and executed on a cross.
Jesus foresaw the metaphorical cup that would inevitably be set before Him, a cup full of pain and suffering. He prayed that God would deliver Him from it, yet He also prayed that God's will would be done. That said, was it really God's will for Jesus to suffer and die such a horrible death?
Furthermore, does surrendering to God's will always require a person to drink the cup set before him?
In my opinion, one of the most fascinating figures in the Bible is a man named Jacob. When Jacob's twin brother Esau was born, Jacob came out of the womb immediately afterward because he was clutching Esau's heel. This would prove to be a motif throughout their lives. Esau grew up to become a macho hunter; Jacob, on the other hand, was more of a mama's boy. Esau, as the oldest son as well as his father's favorite, was entitled to receive a double share of the inheritance along with a special blessing. Jacob, the runner-up, would receive significantly less than his brother. That was the cup set in front of Jacob - that was his lot in life. That was just the way things worked in those days.
Jacob refused to settle for second-best, so he became a man who would "wrestle" his way through life. Once, when Esau returned home famished after a hunting expedition, Jacob refused to feed him until he surrendered his birthright to him. Later on, when the time came for Esau to receive the special blessing promised to him, Jacob disguised himself as Esau and tricked their nearsighted father into giving him the blessing instead. Jacob effectively took the cup set in front of him and switched it with his brother's. Esau, sick and tired of being screwed over by his brother, made up his mind to kill him as soon as their father passed away. Jacob fled to his mother's homeland and began another proverbial wrestling match with Laban, the man who would become his father-in-law.3
The story of Jacob's life reaches it's climax one dark night while Jacob is on his way back to his homeland to face the brother he mistreated years earlier. Distressed, he sends his family across the river, intending to spend the night by himself, but he ends up spending the night wrestling with... well... someone. The stranger knocks Jacob's hip out of joint and demands that Jacob let him go. Jacob replies, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." The stranger tells him, "You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed." Limping, Jacob looks back on the event and says, "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved."4
I get the sense that, in modern Christianity, people think that one should accept one's lot in life gratefully and contentedly because it is God's will. After all, "everything happens for a reason," right? Last year, as I wrestled with God's will for my life, I was drawn to the story of Jacob's wrestling with God - I even wrote a sermon about it. I know that some people would be quick to tell me that Jacob did a lot of underhanded things, that "wrestling with God" is not really a good thing to do, and that a limp from God is not a blessing to be desired. Still, I cannot help but admire Jacob because he refused to accept what had been handed to him in life and fought for something better. Jacob had "striven with with God and with humans," and it seems as though he was commended for it by his mysterious sparring partner.
Of course, it is important to remember that there are two sides to every story. Jacob fought for a better life for himself, but he did so at his brother's expense. Life played a cruel joke on Esau: everything he had been promised his entire life was treacherously taken away from him. In a moment of weakness, his birthright was extorted from him, and the great blessing he had been promised was given to someone else. When Jacob stole the promised blessing, Esau received another blessing that could only be described as "the shaft."5 Though I like that Jacob fought for a better life for himself, I do not like that he walked all over his own brother to get what he wanted out of life.
A religious scholar who wanted to challenge Jesus once asked Him which commandment in the Jewish Law is the most important. Jesus replied, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" Jesus then said, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." In other words, anything God ever commanded the Jewish people to do, through their religious code or through the words of the prophets, was ultimately rooted in love for God and love for other people.7
What if that's all there is to it?
What if God's will has been a secret hidden in plain sight this whole time?
What if God does not necessarily have our lives mapped out for us?
What if God's will is simply that we love God and love each other?
Let's return to the Mount of Olives.
When Jesus prayed, "Not My will but Yours be done," what was He saying? Was He saying to God, "Whatever You want to happen to me, let it happen"? Or, if God's will is simply that we all love God and love one another, was Jesus perhaps saying, "I have made up My mind to make the most loving decision I can possibly make, even if it costs Me My life"?
John Ortberg, in his book Who Is This Man?, points out that surrendering to the mob was not Jesus' only option. Jesus could have led a revolt against the Romans and the corrupt religious establishment, fled into the wilderness, or struck a deal with the religious leaders or with the Roman governor. As the Son of God, He could have even summoned legions of angels to help Him. Ortberg argues that Jesus did none of these things because He realized that if He didn't surrender to the mob, somebody else would have died. Theology aside, Jesus died to save people's lives.8
If God's will is simply that we love, then sometimes surrendering to God's will requires us to accept our circumstances and drink the cup set in front of us, but that is not always the case. Jacob was not wrong to fight for a better life, but he failed to love his brother as he loved himself. If Jacob did not want to drink the cup set in front of him, he should not have forced his brother to drink it for him. If anything, Jacob should have fought for equality with his brother.
I will not deny that God sometimes calls people to make certain choices in life. I have a number of friends who feel as though God had called them to make certain career choices, and they experienced a sense of unrest until they made the choice to follow that calling. Frederick Buechner once mused, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." If you love what you do but aren't making the world a better place, then you haven't found your calling. If you have invested yourself in a worthy cause but hate your life, then you still haven't found your calling.9 For any individual, there will be certain ways of loving God and loving others are better suited for her than other ways.
A few months ago, I wrote that I was experiencing cognitive dissonance over some of my actions in the past couple of years. Regarding this one particular life choice, I have finally found a sense of peace. I cannot say that I acted in the most loving way possible - in fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't. What I can say is that if I had done what my former friend asked me to do, then I could have ended up doing a lot more harm than good, especially if my heart wasn't in it. I think that maybe her own personal failure is proof of that.
If you, the reader, are wrestling with God's will for your life right now, I hope that I have given you some things to consider. I do not, by any means, claim to be an expert on the subject of God's will. I don't even think that the authors who write about the subject can truly make such a claim. Each person must wrestle with God's will for his or her own life.
At least I didn't make you buy a book to read my thoughts on the subject.
Notes:
- Romans 8:28 (NRSV)
- Luke 22:39-44 (NRSV)
- Genesis 25-31
- Genesis 32:22-31 (NRSV)
- Genesis 27:39-40
- Adam Hamilton. Why?: Making Sense of God's Will. 2011, Abingdon Press. ch. 3
- Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV). This passage was also cited by Hamilton in Why?.
- John Ortberg. Who Is This Man?: the Unpredictable Impact of the Inescapable Jesus. 2012, Zondervan. pp. 171-173
- Frederick Buechner. Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC. 1993, HarperOne. p. 118-119
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