Struggle Bus Thoughts: God is Not Like Pizza
There is something about staring at a white blank, fresh, new document on my computer screen. I have really been enjoying writing a weekly post, it is a healing processing thing for me that I guess I was missing and didn’t even know it. It’s a fun blessing to be able to share my heart and thoughts with you all and gain your insight as well. A win-win. Each week when I open the sparkly new word document, I pray about what I should write that might help me process through something or to think more Biblically about a situation and bless this community we’re building together. Typically I start by writing exactly what’s nagging me in the back of my mind or the things I am struggling with, which could honestly be the title of this whole website in and of itself:
“THE GREAT STRUGGLES OF RACHEL DYE”
It would be great; laughs would be had by all! I go hard on the struggle bus, might as well let my friends and family watch from a safe distance nearby. I mean the whole cancer drama’s not really my fault, but you add that too my over-feely, extra-honest, transparent personality combined with my need to talk things out, my parents taught me to read and write, my
husband bought me a laptop and here you find yourself on THAT blog.
This week's episode on the cancer survivor girl’s struggle bus
I find myself viewing God’s personality, or at least his actions, as pizza slices, based on the seasons of abundance or lack.
Happily married, having children = God’s blessing
Get cancer = God’s reproof and correction
God gave me a season of health in between cancer recurrences? = His grace
Cancer comes back? = More chastisement
Four distinct events in my life, and I am tempted to boil them down to a transactional exchange between God and I.
Not only that, but I interpret each of these different seasons as indicative of God’s feelings towards me. Like God was one type of person one day (He was a father chastising on diagnosis day) and another person on a different day (merciful on during remission). It’s like I view His personality made up of individual slices that indicate if God is pleased with me, based on my actions. Like an infinitely hard-to-understand pizza, made up of some tasty slices and some slices that don’t taste good at all.
(Some of you might be cringing at the idiocy of this, but this blog is about my struggles. You can start a blog about your own issues. I’d read that blog)
BUT that is not the God I love, that is not who He is. Jamison has graciously helped me think through these errors in this way of thinking and lovingly guides me back to truth when I start to wander off the Biblical path of how God really interacts with me.
How did I start thinking this way?
In earthly relationships, our actions can sometimes make or break our friendships. All of us experience at one time or another in life, a friendship that dies and we are left alone wondering if we had only done this, that, or the other thing differently, could we have saved that bond? This is conditional love when you experience the pizza slices of friendship that say:
Things are good, I will stay
When things are hard, I leave
Though actions are often led by emotions and commitments shallow and superficial, God is not this way. Through the joys and sorrows of experiencing abundant friendships and friendships that end, God’s goodness, and love are not conditional. Where we might go through a painful disagreement with a friend or spouse, that could cause division and separation, God is not so easily dissuaded. I project my experience with imperfect humans onto my perfect God. Lord forgive me.
God loves unconditionally, with an unbreakable bond.
God is not pizza at all, he is a seven-layer bean dip.
He is all his attributes all the time. Romans 13:8 says “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” What this means is that he does not change himself to fit my narrative of how I am feeling towards him today. When things are hard, that is not because he is handing me the slice of himself that is hard to deal with. No, he is always all attributes of himself, at all times. When God interacts with me, he does it with all of himself, any one attribute is inseparable and indistinguishable from who HE is.
When he is leading through the hills and valleys as the good Shepard with me, never leaving me alone, but letting me experience the hard and painful things, always correcting me as his daughter, its hard for me to comprehend because of my limited mind. Life experience with earthly relationships sometimes communicates a different heart motive behind a rebuke or chastisement. While my parents might have disciplined out of anger or frustration at times, or I give Jamison negative feedback based on frustration and not for the sole purpose of his growth, this is never the case with God.
Isaiah 54:10 For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
The layers of God’s love, mercy and justice are never separated. We can feel like those who love us can sometimes only offer us pizza slices of themselves at times. We project this model onto God, but he promises to never let his “steadfast love will never depart from us”, even when things are hard. The point is, God is all good, all justice, all mercy, even (or especially) when chastising his children.
Hebrews 12:6-8 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
The Cross Shows Us God’s Layers
The cross is such a powerful and beautiful picture of God acting fully within what seems like contradicting emotions, wrath in sending his son to the cross, justice and anger against all of humanity; satisfied in single heroic act of sacrificial love and mercy in submitting to that plan and being willing to be nailed to that cross. I see both love and justice when I look at the cross. Like the hymn goes “sorrow and love flow mingled down...”
Romans 5:8-9 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
Notice that this verse talks about both God’s love towards us as well as the wrath of God that we are saved from. God did not put off his wrath like a slice of himself in order to love us. He fulfilled it in his Son as our replacement while still demonstrating deep and unfathomable love.
Slowing the Bus
So here I am, just a wicked sinner-pagan, on that struggle bus again instead of putting off my old ways of thinking and letting Gods word communicate the truth of the intricacy of God’s layered love, that we don’t experience in any human relationships. Only God can love us perfectly, and in all seasons of life are blanketed in this over-arching truth GOD IS ONLY EVER FOR OUR GOOD.
Zephania 3:17 The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.