Early Friday Morning Thoughts

Life is unpredictable.

Last year Glorie was involved in an accident.
Earlier this year, Cheryl was hit by a car.
A few weeks ago, John Paul died in a motorcycle accident.
Countless others, whom I haven't had the honor of intersecting life with, have gone through the exact same thing.
What's up with the craziness anyway?

The funeral for J.P. was today. I didn't go. I didn't really know him that well. Sure we've talked and stuff but we were barely even acquaintances...much less friends. My parents did end up going and apparently witnessed some of the strangest things.

When they entered the funeral home, they were immediately greeted with the sound of a screaming woman. Silence and screaming collided to really put a depressing overtone in the entire building. The woman was the wife of J.P. and was yelling (probably out of frustration/confusion) about how she couldn't take it anymore. Tears flowed down her face and she yelled and yelled about how hard it is. Complaining, in vain, about how J.P. wasn't supposed to die.

I found out through a friend that Cheryl was in an accident. When I found out exactly how she was involved in an accident, I literally felt goosebumps do laps around my entire body. The fact that someone getting hit by a car was insane; the same act happening to two people? That's just crazy talk. Yet the reality was that it did. And now Cheryl is mightily rehabbing in much the same way (I imagine) Glorie is.

I say all of this to simply consider what the point of this life is anyway. Many eventually discover this monumentally important question but few really find an answer that satisfies. The aforementioned "tragedies" are stark reminders of how disturbing life can be. This naturally leads one to question the very nature of God.

That is, if God is loving and just, why would there be such an unfair balance in life? Why would the radiant life of someone like Glorie all of a sudden be radically shifted for, apparently, no reason at all? Why would people as exuberant as Cheryl and J.P. have to "suffer" needlessly? Perhaps most disturbing is when we consider that "bad" people are often blessed abundantly. Corrupt, greedy business men enjoy the riches of life all at the expense of single mother/fathers working 3 jobs just to make ends meet. Murderers live well into their 90s while innocent children have their lives taken before their 1st birthday. It seems like God can't make up His mind.


...but what seems to be true often is not truth.


The truth that many fail to accept at face value is this: God isn't fair. He doesn't even pretend to be fair.
That may come across as incredibly unsettling but if you dwell on it long enough the profound nature of that truth will resonate within you.

In all of the aforementioned "unfair" circumstances, the end result is to wonder whether there really is life after death. It is easy to wonder whether or not this speck of dust called earth, and this sliver of existence that we call life, is all there really is to the universe. If it is, then we should be doing whatever we please for this is our only shot at experiencing anything. But if it isn't, then it's reasonable to believe that heaven and hell, if they exist, are pretty significant.

Here is where much of the disconnect exists in the modern realm of Christianity. Many non-followers find it incredibly hard to swallow that getting to heaven is accomplished only one way. In other words if there really is such a thing called heaven, then surely there's more than one way of getting there. Muslims could get there. Jews could get there. Buddhists could get there. Wiccans could get there. Scientologists could get there. For Christians to assert that their way is the only way to get to heaven is either incredibly arrogant or incredibly dull. Either way it's ridiculous.

However, the problem with this way of thinking is that it assumes that only good people go to heaven. That is, only people who have lived full, altruistic lives go to heaven. After all, would a lot of people agree that many of the islamic followers who executed the 9/11 attacks are in heaven right now? Does anyone believe that Hitler (believed to be a roman-catholic) is enjoying heaven? Certainly not.

Therefore, if there is a line between who gets to heaven and who doesn't, where is that line and how is it defined? Which religion has that line defined with the greatest precision? What is the cutoff for heaven? In other words...how good is good enough? You should start to see where the problem is.

This is precisely why I say, with confidence, that God isn't fair. The brilliance of Christianity is that it is the only faith that stresses that forgiven people, not good people, go to heaven. The standard is clearly set. According to the bible, not a single person is worthy to go to heaven due to sin [separation from God]; to reconcile this (restore the previous separation from God) there must be atonement for said sin. This is accomplished only through Jesus' death/resurrection (since Jesus is the only innocent of all wrongdoing). Therefore relationship is restored and access to God is now available to anyone who believes.

Which takes us back full circle. There's joy to be had everywhere in this whisper of a life; and that joy comes singularly from Christ. We can certainly find happiness in the pleasures of earth (Getting married, eating that one delectable piece of oreo cake for dessert, laughing until your tummy hurts with your best friends). But it's so important to remember that we find joy in the darkness as well. It's just hard to do so.

When the John Paul in your life is so abruptly taken from you, the pain is real. Joy seems extremely far away at that point.
When the Cheryl in your life is suddenly facing the reality of a life that is entirely different than the one she had been previously known for, the change is troubling. Joy seems like a fantasy instead of reality.
When the Glorie in your life doesn't want to have anything to do with you, the rejection is agonizing.

But the joy still remains. It's an incredibly small speckle of joy...but it's there. And it's real. And the more you look at it the bigger it will get. The pain will start to subside. Then the first smile will emerge just like the first flower that blooms from the dead of winter. And it will satisfy.