Welcome to Resurrection Parish, especially to those of you who may be visiting us for the first time, or maybe just in a long time. As we begin the Season of Lent, we are also beginning a new message series which we are calling, “When God Doesn’t Make Sense.” On the surface, there are many things God does and doesn’t do, says and doesn’t say, that don’t make sense.
Today, we are going to look at when God says, “No” and “No” doesn’t make any sense, at least to us. For those of you who are back to Church for the first time in a long time,
you may have stayed away precisely because it seemed like “No” was all God ever said. When it came to God and religion it was all about “Thou Shall Not!” Not surprising, for many they looked for the first chance to get away from the Church. If this was your experience of Church, then this message series is just what you may be looking for.
Before we get into when God says “No,” it is important to outline three basic principles which we will come back to throughout this series.
First, it makes sense that God doesn’t always make sense. If God is all wise and all knowing and we are limited in our wisdom and knowledge, it makes sense that we don’t always understand God’s ways of doing things. We see life through a very narrow perspective of time, space and experience. God, however, has the perspective of ALL time, ALL space, and EVERY experience.
Second, there is a difference between God not making sense, and life not making sense. While there are certainly things that God does or says that does not make sense to us, however, not everything that happens in our lives is God’s will. In other words, it is life not making sense, not God.
This world is not currently as God wants it or wills it, there are forces of evil that oppose God. Nature itself has been broken and acts in ways that cause destruction and chaos not in alignment with God’s will. God can make all things work together for those who love him. What others intend for evil, God can use for good. And God eventually will have his way, but in the meantime there’s a lot going on that is heartbreaking…to God.
This is an important truth to keep in mind because there is a well-meaning subset of Christians who lead people to a negative view. When something bad happens, these people chime in, “It is God’s will.” Some people hear this and respond, “If that is God’s will, then I don’t want anything to do with God.”
The truth is God doesn’t want poverty, disease, war, terrorism, violence, addiction, and all the rest. And yet, he allows it. Some theologians describe it in this way: there is God’s preferred will and God’s permissive will. God’s preferred will is what God wants to happen, how he calls people to act, how he desires history to unfold.
And yet God has given human beings freedom to act any way they want, including ways that are contrary to what he wants. He permits people to have free will because only with free will can we truly learn to love. And that’s what he wants for us most of all.
Third introductory point, no matter how much we study God, we really don’t know much of anything beyond what he himself has told us in Scripture. We cannot know the mind of God, we cannot conceive the ways of God, but we can know the heart of God. Through Scripture God reveals his heart. And in prayer, in the Sacraments, in a loving relationship with the living Lord, in our sacrificial giving, in our Christian, we can come to know it more intimately. Faith isn’t opposed to reason, it’s just that it doesn’t start there. It starts in the heart.
So back to the question we raised earlier. Why does God say “No” to things that are good things? To explore the answer to this question we are going to look at today’s first reading from the Book of Genesis. Genesis doesn’t tell us how creation was formed, but that it was according to God’s loving plan. Genesis tells us that when God created the world, all was perfect. There was perfect harmony in creation, between people, and with God. God had only one rule in this perfect world, “The Lord said: You must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17).
While free choice did exist before the fall, evil existed only as entity wholly separate from the human psyche, and it was not in human nature to desire it. Here’s what happened to change all of that, “Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made. The serpent asked the woman, ‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1).
Notice how the serpent twists the words of God and plants a seed of doubt in Eve’s mind. He makes it sound as if God is holding out on her. Eve starts to cooperate with the serpent by exaggerating what God commanded them; God only said that they must not eat of the fruit of that tree, He did not prohibit them from touching it, and He said nothing about dying. This is what the evil does, this is what evil always does. It works to question God and steal our trust.
The serpent is basically saying, “If you want to have a great life you need to let go of the myth of God and God’s control over your life. You need to go on alone and on your own. What you are calling God is a lie, a fraud.” This is the lie we all hear repeated over and over again in various ways.
“The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes and desirable for gaining wisdom,” (Genesis 3:6). Good – Pleasing – Desirable: More disguises for evil. Nothing seemed wrong with the fruit. It was desirable. This happens in life all the time. We see things. They are pleasing to the eye. They look good on the surface. They seem desirable for gaining whatever we’re after or whatever we want. And there’s a voice in us that says “Stay away from it. Don’t touch it. Don’t taste it. You really don’t want to go near that.” But there is another voice that asks “Why?” or “Why not?”
“She took the fruit and ate; and she gave some to her husband and he ate. Then their eyes were both opened” (Genesis 3:6-7). Previously they didn’t know good and evil. They only knew good. Their disobedience introduces them to everything that God was intending to keep from them, namely EVIL. God sometimes tells us “No” not because he is keeping something from us but because he wants something for us.
For those of you who are parents, this needs no explanation or argument, you face this everyday, multiple times a day. You say “No” all the time to your children.
Child: “Can I have candy for breakfast?”
Parent: “No.”
Child: “Can I wear my bathing suite to school?”
Parent: “No.”
Child: “Can I have…?”
Parent: “No.”
Sometimes it seems like that’s all you say to them. You say “No” even though they don’t understand, even though they resent it, because to have greater knowledge and experience then your young child. Your love for them wouldn’t permit you to do otherwise. That’s why God says “No.”
As we wrap up this first week, I invite you to make one of two commitments. If you’re new, or its your first time in a long time, commit to simply coming back. For those of you who attend regularly, you probably know someone who needs to hear this series. Invite them to join us.
You’re not alone in the experience of God not making sense. But on the other side of God’s “No” is always God’s grace.