Disappointment With God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud by Philip Yancey

Author:Philip Yancey [Yancey, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Personal Growth, Religion, Christian Life
ISBN: 9780310565758
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-05-17T22:00:00+00:00

Our Gain

Such grand thoughts, however—agents of God, supreme achievement of creation—represent God’s point of view, a vantage unavailable to us. What are the costs and gains of God’s plan for us who live on earth? We still inhabit a world cursed with pain, tragedy, and disappointment. And what I have presented as a great advance in closeness—from the smoke of Sinai to the person of Jesus to the indwelling Holy Spirit—may, ironically, seem like God’s withdrawal from direct involvement.

Some people pine for the “good old days” of the Old Testament when God used a more obvious, hands-on approach. The Old Testament tells of an actual contract signed by God guaranteeing physical safety and prosperity, under certain terms; the New Testament offers no such contract. The change from the visible presence of God in the wilderness to the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit involves a certain kind of loss as well. We lose the clear, sure proof that God exists. Nowadays, God does not hover over us in a cloud that we can gaze at for reassurance. For some, like Richard, this seems a great loss indeed.

In fact, God’s reliance on the church almost guarantees that disappointment with God will be permanent and epidemic. In the old days, if the Hebrews wanted to know God’s will about a military maneuver, or what kind of wood to use in the sanctuary, the high priests had ways of discerning the answer. But 1,275 denominations in the U.S. alone attest to the difficulty of the church agreeing on God’s will about anything nowadays. The confused voice of the modern church is part of the cost, the disadvantage to living today rather than with the Hebrews in the desert or among the disciples who followed Jesus.

What, then, is the gain? The New Testament takes great pains to spell it out, especially in Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. I can almost picture the apostle Paul, an excitable sort, responding to a question like “What is the gain?”

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