One tough moment after another can bring you to the question, ‘Does God hate me’? But I want to know more, so I sit with those at the coal face and grow in my knowing.
No one knows coal like a coal miner. I could go to a scientist and get a scientific explanation about coal. A commodities dealer could tell me the dollar value of coal. Someone cooking over a coal fire would give me another limited view.
But for me, if I wanted to know about coal, I would go to a coal miner. One of those old-fashioned coal miners who has entered the bowels of the earth and dug away at the dark. Covered in the dust, there is noise, danger, and fear, but there is a camaraderie among fellow miners.
No one knows God like someone who has been at the dark coal face of life.
I suppose that is why I am drawn to people who chisel away at the coal, face the darkness of life, and find God there with them. It’s not the theologians or the pastors that pull me in. More so, those who, in all the struggle of daily life, have found something like a diamond amongst the coal.
I would rather sit and shed tears with them for hours because that is where I believe Jesus the Christ would be.
Does God hate me?If someone was to ask you that question, how would you answer it?
Would you give an intellectual answer, quoting scriptures such as John 3:16?
For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that anyone who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
They are in a dark place and want to know heart truth, not head knowledge.
First of all, I think they would want to be known. To have their world explored and not sidelined. Maybe connection is the best word.
I would like to know how their understanding of what God is like was formed. Was it through various church experiences or parental influences? We’ve all got to start somewhere, so where was their starting point? What winds have blown across their path that has shaped their course?
Whenever I hear the words’ God hates me,’ I am filled with a kind of sadness for the person and the journey they have been on to get to this point of expression.
Quoting scripture upon scripture and getting into intellectual arguments rarely helps. This is because they need to hear words from the heart, not the head.
Our great problem is trafficking in unlived truth.
We try to communicate what we’ve never experienced in our own life. Dwight L. Moody
Alongside ‘God hates me,’ other words are often spoken, such as ‘God is punishing me’ and ‘God doesn’t care.’
I have found that there are at least three ways that people express this belief.
Three expressionsThey go on to say other things.
Look, I know you will tell me that God is love. I know you can quote all the scriptures about God being love. Then you will sing all those sappy songs about God being good.
But my reality is that I am in pain, and I want relief. I can see right through your intellectualism head knowledge, spiritual bypasses of avoidance, and coping strategies. It’s either God is really like Santa Claus, a Sugar Daddy, or a Disney’ wish upon a star’ God or not.
You see, at an early age, I was told that I am nothing, no one, a simple consequence of a couple of cells saying, ‘Howdy, doody.’
Then out I popped. I cried in pain, and I have cried ever since.
What sort of cosmic joke was my conception?
I think of the Christ of Jesus hanging on a cross and crying out ‘My God, why have you detached from me.’
The songs of lament and darkness from the coal miners of the Bible sing back to me.
I’m on a diet of tears—
tears for breakfast, tears for supper.
All day long
people knock at my door,
Pestering,
“Where is this God of yours?” Psalm 42: 3
I have a little sentence that I play around in my head that helps me make sense of things.
I am a broken man living in a broken world with broken people making broken choices.
But I am comforted by the coal face knowing of an unbroken God who is in the business of making all things new.
I still have the wafts of perfume from the Garden of Eden filtering through my existence. A beautiful sunrise, a bird that sings, a smile on a face, and then, at times, some droplets of joy touch my face washing the coal dust away.
I am caught between Eden and Heaven. We are a broken and fragile people living in a broken and fragile world, so of course, coal dust will clog our arteries.
I need others who know their brokenness but have somehow learned to dance—people who aren’t ‘happy-clappy’ or who live in theological fundamentalist squares and boxes.
I need people like Marva.
Marva Dawn dancesI once took a paper called Spiritual Formation. It was a week-long intensive, and the lecturer was a visiting theologian called Marva Dawn.
Into the week, she danced.
Let’s be clear; she didn’t physically dance. She wasn’t able to because of the many physical disabilities she had, and she actually danced into the fullness of God’s presence on April 18, 2021.
Here is an extract from a tribute.
Dawn’s joy came amid a lifetime of struggles with pain and illness. She faced battles with cancer, chronic pain, blindness in one eye, a kidney transplant, and problems with a foot that made walking difficult or impossible. Remembering Marva Dawn, a Saint of Modern Worship
I remember watching her hobble up to the lectern and clinging to it so she could teach. Words flowed from the coal face.
She authored more than 20 books in her lifetime, covering topics like Sabbath-keeping, the vocation of ministry, suffering well, and sexuality. Still, my favorite is Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity.
Read this
We do not understand how God accomplishes using even our brokennesses for the fulfillment of the Trinity’s purposes for the cosmos, but I am convinced that the Holy Spirit does.
Just one little example will suggest much wider possibilities than we could ever imagine.
Before embarking on one trip for a speaking engagement, I was complaining to my husband because a problem with my feet had put me in a wheelchair.
I did not use this specific vocabulary, but basically groaned that my “dream” of ease while fulfilling my obligations for that particular assignment was “shattered.”
During the conference a somewhat cynical man came to me after one of my later lectures and said, “I wouldn’t believe a word you say—except that you are sitting in that chair!”
I’d had too small a dream.
I just wanted my life to be easier by being out of that wheelchair; I hadn’t asked God to fulfill His larger purposes of deepening someone’s faith precisely because I was in it. Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity
Does God hate you?
No, God doesn’t hate. Quite the reverse there is so much love for you that it is vastly more than you could handle or even come into comprehension of.
God is with you at your coal face, in your ‘wheelchair’, and is in the business of making all things new.
Quotes to considerFurther reading
Barry Pearman
Upon Leaving the Cocoon
Learning to Detach Helps with Anxiety
‘Power over’ or ‘Power With’. What causes you to flourish?
Good things, like Mental Health, take Time. Let’s be patient
Would you Know my TRUE Name
Episode 15 Everyone needs a Batman
Episode 14 Every Man Needs the Gift of Respect
Episode 13 ‘We need to talk’ about Cortisol
Episode 12 Are you Strong Enough to be my … Friend
Episode 11 Stop ‘Shoulding’ and Start ‘Coulding’ Yourself
Episode 10 Washing the Memories Free of Trauma
Episode 9 Three Responses to Chaos
Episode 8 Every Footprint Needs Affirmation
Episode 7 To Listen to them Be Quick to Listen to Your 'Self'
Episode 6 A Mountain in Your Life? Where does your Help Come From?
Episode 5 Your Failure in Life Needs Love
Episode 4 Why Men Don’t Talk. 26 Reasons for Silence
Episode Three. God Sets the Lonely in Families
Episode 2. Is my Mental Illness because of Sin in my life?
Episode 1 God can handle your raw anger Jul 26, 2019
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