Fairytale Christianity

[memoriesbymichelle]

Why do we want to believe in fairytale Christianity? Alot of us have been taught that if you are good, and obey God and read your bible and pray that you will be blessed and have no worries.

We know this isn't true, but yet.....

When something good happens in our lives we tend to think that God is blessing us and must be "happy" with us.
Likewise if something bad happens we are sure that God must be mad at us, we must have some sin we forgot to repent of and we are being punished.

And we tend to believe this even though we know it's not really true.

Bad things happen to "good" people all the time. Bad things happen to Christians. Bad things happen to Atheists. And sometimes some people have more bad things happen to them then we like to imagine but it's true.

In our Christian lives we will have tribulation. Jesus promised this. But IN our tribulation, Christ is there. He will either deliver us FROM it or deliver us THROUGH it. Whatever He decides.

The reason we have tribulations is because we live in a broken world. And sometimes it's because of stupid decisions we have made that caused us to be in a bad situation. But it's usually NOT because God is punishing us.

I really hate the mantra that if you become a Christian, all your problems will go away, because that is simply not true and none of the stories in the bible are like this. Most of the stories are about innocent people that really did nothing to warrant what happened to them, but it was for God's purpose and God's glory, and they were shown that somewhere in their journey.

God is not up there waiting to pounce on us for our mistakes or our sins. Otherwise what Jesus did on the cross for us would not be necessary.

For those of us that have children, you know you are never sitting around waiting to get your kids in trouble, so why would we think that is how our Father would be toward us?

 

[dayhiker]

Good thought Michelle. Tho When I read the 1st paragraph that wasn't where I thought you were going to go with it.

We have the spiritual disciplines of reading our Bible, prayer, giving(to the church), fasting, church attendance. I've heard these so many times now but I really don't feel God asking me to do many of them. I still do them all, but what I feel the spirit of God asking me to do is get out of the church and be a friend to people. This weekend I meet a guy in the service, works in intelligence. He has been in ever war zone since Bosnia. He has killed people and had his friends killed beside him, he has picked up the dead bodies, he has had to go talked to whom ever he can find and everyone he can find till he gets in the info he needs. The intensity he has lived with for the last 15 years plus means that everything in normal life is boring as he doubleL. He is retiring from the service in two yrs and don't have a clue how he is going to find life interesting! I didn't really get to share Jesus with him, but I have his email and will see if a door opens to share Christ with him. He needs Jesus beyond anything he knows. But he is in a research mode, a gather intelligence and make an intelligent decision about life. His heart is so shut down even tho he feels he had dealt with all the death he has seen.
Pray for Steve.

Anyways, that is what I feel God asking me to do but I missed church to be in a situation to speak with him and a few other guys. very few pastors would say miss church and miss giving money to the church to go out into the world and meet people where they are at.

 

[redblue22]

lots to think on.

 

[memoriesbymichelle]

curious as a cat I am, dayhiker what direction did you think I was going in?

 

[dayhiker]

smile ... something closer to what I posted of course.

 

[memoriesbymichelle]

I think this view is so intertwined that it's almost impossible to get away from it entirely.

I can even remember telling my kids "God sees everything" which is true but I was using it in the sense that "you might make God mad if your bad" and that is NOT how God is in reality.

 

[scraparcs]

Just be careful that you don't attribute anything to God, that way leads to non-theism. Some things are chance, but keep looking for divine intervention.

 

[blackribbon]

When bad things happen, I first start to look to see if there is something in my life "that isn't right". If it doesn't jump out at me, I start to look to see what lesson am I supposed to learn from this situation.

I figure if something is significantly sinful enough for God to be punishing me directly, He won't mince words on the sensation of guilt in the troubled area that I need to work on. If isn't there, then time to move forward and just grow. Sometimes we need trouble to gain an ability to emphasize or we need it to become stronger.

A bone in our body will just start dissolving if there is never any stress place on it. I suspect that our mind and our soul is the same way.

 

[dayhiker]

Well, I've had God deal with me about things in my life. So I know what that is like. They weren't all sinful tings either, sometimes God just wanted me to be part of something that I wasn't naturally inclined to be part of.

Most of the time, God just wants me to love people. If I'm loving people, then I feel God is approving of what I'm doing.

Clearly stress and conflict gets one motivated to change to get out of a situation. But sometimes people get in a mode of I want to grow and mature. I didn't have any need to have more than one GF. But I have been on a mission to learn better communication skills for 7 yrs now. When I have more than one GF I have to communicate. I have no option to avoid hard conversations. So I'm growing by choice.

 

[memoriesbymichelle]

When bad things happen, I first start to look to see if there is something in my life "that isn't right". If it doesn't jump out at me, I start to look to see what lesson am I supposed to learn from this situation.

I figure if something is significantly sinful enough for God to be punishing me directly, He won't mince words on the sensation of guilt in the troubled area that I need to work on. If isn't there, then time to move forward and just grow. Sometimes we need trouble to gain an ability to emphasize or we need it to become stronger.

A bone in our body will just start dissolving if there is never any stress place on it. I suspect that our mind and our soul is the same way.

But what if it's just in God's plan for you to be going thru whatever trouble you are in at the time? What was the lesson for Joseph then, when he got sold into slavery by his brothers?
I don't think God punishes us. I think we usually suffer just from the consequeces of our actions. I think God allows us to go thru difficulty and sometimes it is for a lesson (and we can always learn something from our trials) and sometimes it is for His purpose and His glory. JMHO