On believing in many things a non-believer says

I met a feisty student yesterday. Let’s call her Jane. She goes to Rhodes University and she has issues with God. Brash, opinionated and standing back for no one. (Not God, her.) I had half a mind to advise God to tread carefully here. A meeting was arranged by this young woman’s gran who found some of these questions beyond anything she’d had to manage before.

It was a stimulating conversation.

Jane could not understand why she needed to be in relationship with God. She could not understand why God demanded to be worshipped (isn’t that, like, just a touch too selfish?) She wanted to know why Christians she knows focus so much on sin when her life is about blessing. She wanted to know why Christians are always banging on about reading the Bible and going to church when she found Life in so many other places other than church. She wanted to know why people like me say things like, ‘It’s all part of God’s plan’ when it so clearly isn’t. She wanted to know why, when she truly sought God, God was nowhere to be found - no reciprocation, just unrequited love. (I didn’t have the heart to tell her Mother Teresa died with the same question burning in her chest, and if she couldn’t find the answer, well, what chance do the rest of us have?) Jane wanted to know why Christians talk such a good talk but when she is helping the poor of Grahamstown they’re nowhere to be found. 

She also wanted to know why Christians only side-hug - ‘Are they afraid their crotches will accidentally touch?’ - and I momentarily thought to myself, When did saying ‘crotch’ and ‘touch’ become acceptable things to say in front of a minister? I would never have said that, not even in my third year at Wits University. The candour of the young. Gran spluttered. I nodded sagely. She wanted to know why - Oh why! - do Christians demand that there be this space between a hug, ’Space for the Holy Spirit?’ she enquired disbelievingly, fairly spitting those last words out. It struck me that Jane has bumped into a fairly conservative breed of Christians somewhere along the line. I reckoned, as she continued unabated from ‘Holy Spirit’ to ‘crotch’ to ‘meaningless platitudes’, that I would find that church to this day by the dead bodies of cliché-ridden Christians lying crumpled in piles, having met their match before this vortex of liberal disbelief.

I do love Jane.

‘Oh, and another thing,’ she continued, me nodding in return, mentally calculating the distance to the door… and freedom, ‘What on earth is up with all that ‘I see God’s hand in all of it’ nonsense?!’ Sometimes crap just happens and it’s just crap. ‘God’s got a hand in all of it’, I ask you. Have you ever!?’ Cue eye-roll and dismissive glance towards gran. ‘Flip, if I hear another Christian platitude I will, I will…’  She rather left that sentiment there, leaving gran and me to ponder what course of action she would take, but that, whatever it was, it probably wouldn’t be good news for any unsuspecting Christian within arm’s reach.

Jane had questions and she wanted answers dammit! She looked at me, tucking her leg up on the couch suggesting a readiness to pounce on any half-baked, sorry-assed response to this slowly growing conviction that I, as a religious person, and the circus I brought to town, are in need of a truth-telling overhaul.

I told her that I figured before we met, that her problem might be more with the church and less with God. I told her that the problems she spoke about I take exception to as well (mostly) and I offered those words: tell me the God you don’t believe in and the chances are that I don’t believe in that God either.

 I told her that maybe, instead of God not speaking to her, God was in fact speaking to her all the time and that a couple of prayers of thanksgiving might open her to that blessing. I also told her that all those things churchy people do – praying, reading scripture, worship – are less about checking boxes and more about opening oneself up to the Great Awakening, and that most Christians could with reminding on this score as well. I told her that God was keener on relationship than worship, perhaps, and that God really cared about how we handle the less fortunate. I told her that, despite some pretty bad press, the church actually was not that bad at helping those in need - that many churches were taking the Matthew 25 injunction really rather seriously. I told her that I also think the Original Blessing is a good thing to keep in mind (you know, before Original Sin) but that sin is real and I need to deal with the demons that run amok within me in order for me to see God, and, you know, also just to be decent to other people, for left to my own devices I’m a rather self-involved son-of-a-gun, a slightly dulled apple in need of a spritz. I told her that Christian platitude is a real thing, unfortunately, and besides apologising for it, I’m not sure what else to do about it. 

Oh, and I mentioned that parts of the church had done a pretty good job all too often of taking Real Sin – the sin that threatens us all, our planet, our lives – things like Greed, Selfishness, Naked Ambition at the expense of others, Fear and Judgment – and had wrapped them up neatly, cast them in the trash, and chosen to focus almost exclusively on Sexual Sin. (Here, let it be known, I added the vignette that Sexual Sin is a real thing and that one should not be unnecessarily bumping into people’s nether-regions, and that space for the Holy Spirit might not be biblically mandated, but still stands as a pretty solid suggestion.) 

And so I prattled on.

She seemed enamoured by most of my responses. I draw this conclusion by the fact that I escaped in one piece. 

I did close by encouraging her to keep her critical thinking intact, to not be persuaded by tired and unconvincing arguments and to ‘keep on keeping on’, which struck me as I said it as a touch ironic, considering my previous statement on platitudes.

And had I a little more time to think through my responses, I might have suggested, considering the wide array of pronouncements we were both making, that, channelling Fred Craddock, we should probably be careful about talking about God in a manner that suggested we’d ‘walked all round God and taken pictures.’

Later that same day I sat with a beloved member who has seen so much in her lifetime – good and ill. She has suffered much, persevered through much, and by faith and an unyielding, beautiful perseverance has ushered in a season of absolute blessing in her own life and the lives of her loved ones. Her closing remark to me? ‘Andrew, I see God’s hand in all of it.’

‘I do too Jen,’ I told her. ‘I do too.’