Languishing in a Moral Universe..

Has it been over a year since I last posted here - I can barely believe it. Mind you It was a tough year and I just wanted to pull my head in and hide like a threatened snail in the gaze of a hungry thrush.

I did some thinking this morning about 'signs from God' and why certain, people (christian ones particularly) assume that little things that happen in their daily lives are signs from God. Let me illustrate.

A CC (concerned christian) sits down at their computer to write to the editor of their local newspaper to expose the falsehoods of an equally local polititian. Our CC types away furiously failing to save the document as they go and just as they reach the end of their complaint there is a city-wide power out-age. The computer dies (it's not a laptop with a battery) and seemingly the document is lost - and such a shame too, as CC expressed themselves so very well and may never again be able to do so.

Some might say, "a sign from God - he didn't want CC to send this letter into the newspaper" Maybe the chance of being sued for slander was too great. Maybe he was sparing CC from embarressment..maybe! Maybe!! Maybe!!"

Maybe it was Satan caused the out-age. Isn't he on the side of lying politians. Maybe he didn't want to see his 'friend' exposed but rather to remain in office spreading more lies and confusion, so advancing the Kingdom of Darkness.

And if neither God nor Satan exist? Everything then is random, meaningless and however we try from our Christian perspective to see patterns of grace and providence in the odd events and coincidences of our lives, our 'signs from God' are self-deceptions.

I do believe in God. I believe some stuff about Satan - that there are limits to his power, and I don't like to give him too much credit for very much at all. What I don't believe is that a situation as I have illustrated above should be interpreted as a sign from or an intervention from God. It's not that I don't believe he can and does intervene and communicate with us, I just find it too big a leap of faith to believe that this his how he does so very very often (if we are to believe other Christian folk). In fact I find it hard sometimes to nail down for myself the 'mechanisms' by which he does involve himself with us and guide us. I do wish I could - my life would be so much less troubled and difficult.

Part of the reason I have trouble with 'signs from God' of this nature is that they can so readily be interpreted in other ways and perhaps even be equally attributable to the Evil One. We all know of the terrible harm that comes in the wake of someone who is so sure they've heard from God and have not, or have grossly misinterpreted what they though they heard.

And the other reason I have the trouble I do, is that there are such long chains of cause and effect in our Universe that it is beyond any of us to trace them to source and so ascertain a possibility that the hand of a spiritual being (good or evil)has been in them.

Looking at my illustration again, it could be that the timing of power out-age had nothing to do with CC at all and that it was actually a sign from God for someone about to fall into a much more serious error, or an intervention from the Devil because a much more serious sin than those of our local polititian was about to be exposed. Who can say?

So how are we guided as Christians. We have Scripture, we have the Holy Spirit and we have the wisdom of our elders, pastors and other brothers and sisters. But how do they all work to give us certainty in an uncertain Universe. Take Scripture for example - the words of our Book beg for interpretation whether we be literalists or liberals. And history is littered with the consequences of our less than inspired interpretations of our Bible. And others have attributed some pretty weird and off-the-wall stuff to their being led by the Spirit. 58 years on and I ought to know - I let my own interpretation of a dream I had get me into some serious trouble. Though, to be fair to God, he did bring good out of it.

As American singer songriter Bob Franke has it in his song "Hard Love" - "For the Lord's cross might redeem us, but our own just wastes our time/And to tell the two apart is always hard, love.

Time is a precious commodity ("time is money" the lawyer said!) and chasing down some highway cos we got a 'sign' wastes our time an leaves us with a journey back that we'd rather not have to take sometimes, such is the pain and embarressment of it.

Bob's song continues:

Yes, it's hard love, but it's love all the same
Not the stuff of fantasy, but more than just a game
And the only kind of miracle that's worthy of the name
For the love that heals our lives is mostly hard love

I leave these thoughts with you and hope they are of value as you consider your lives and how you propose to live them out from here.

kia kaha

Richard