LETTERS FROM CHARITY

Part 9

Dear Beth,

I hope this email finds you doing well.  I know I haven’t given you a chance to respond to my last message, but I feel like so many things have been happening and I wanted to share with you before too much of it rushed out of my head.

I’ve read through Job three times, now (I’m still out of work, so I figured I would use my time wisely!), and I continue to be struck by how much I never understood about what was really going on with him.  Job was always presented as a cautionary tale warning us never to get too uppity with God.  God is God and we aren’t, so there.  Well, I had no issue with that idea.  God being all-powerful and all-knowing were not concepts that I had difficulty grasping.  The problem for me came in trying to figure out why He would inflict ridiculous amounts of pain and chaos on a man who, by His own admission, was blameless and upright.  I mean, really?  Did Job ask to be an object lesson on the awesomeness of God?  Did he want to be some pawn in the cosmic struggle between God and the satan? That never made any kind of sense to me and it kind of confirmed the thoughts I had about God being really rather cruel.

What I never caught before was just how much of a, well, “I got it all down and God should really get that” kinda guy Job seemed to be when it comes right down to it.  He was quite convinced of his own goodness and the rightness of his cause, wasn’t he?  That didn’t hit me even on the first read, but by the third time I was working my way through the book, I was sort of knocked over by how cheeky he was when he talked about how God had done him wrong.  I remember that we used to have an associate pastor who always used “Thee” and “Thou” whenever he addressed God in prayer during worship services.  None of that from Job!  I guess you could argue that there’s a lot of “Thee-ing” and “Thou-ing” in the King James Version.  I’m pretty sure, though, that however Job was talking, he wasn’t trying to be super reverent.

Here’s the thing that really caused my brain to explode.  At the end of the book, God tells Job’s friends that they hadn’t spoken the truth about Him but Job had.  What?!?  That’s insane!  Job accused God of humiliating him, abusing him, wronging him all over the place.  And he was speaking truth?!  Job’s friends all presented God in a manner I’m used to hearing, that He is just and righteous and what He does is nobody’s business but His own.  We just have to live with it.  And yet that wasn’t truth in God’s eyes.  I’m still struggling mightily to comprehend it all, but wow, this really puts God in a whole other universe of light for me.

I mentioned in my last letter that I had done some serious scrutinizing of my life and the choices I’ve made throughout the years.  As I started getting into it a little more, I realized even more just how much I sounded like Job, although I’m not sure “realized” is a strong enough word.  Having a mountain dropped on my head would probably be more accurate.  I have always, always thought of myself as a victim because, well, I’ve been victimized in too many ways to count.  Yet as I read the words of Job, I heard so many of my own thoughts, and I felt the hot conviction of guilt — but it wasn’t like anything I’ve ever felt before.  It was a gentle burning if that makes any kind of sense at all.  Because so many of the most life-altering, soul-crushing, spirit-devastating events occurred before I knew what was what, I’ve always concluded that I was in the right and God was in the wrong for allowing, or even causing, such abhorrent, unspeakable things.  And exactly like Job, I’ve questioned and cried out and received no response.  So I have called God unjust, questioned His goodness, and cast aspersions on His love and compassion.  I honestly believed I had nothing to be forgiven for because all that I did stemmed from what my parents and those others did to me.

How could I have been so blind to the truth?  No matter what my past, I was still responsible for the things I did, and there’s really no way I can wiggle out of that.  And I’m not saying this in a “I’m the worst person in the history of the world ever to draw breath” sort of way.  I really have come to see that my whole perception of myself throughout my life has been skewed.  God called Job blameless and upright and yet He still had to show Job the truth about Himself, and maybe it couldn’t be done any way other than how God did it.  I think I’m starting to see that all the things that happened to me may have been the same thing.

I am finding it difficult to communicate the reality of what I feel without it sounding overly dramatic or way too nonchalant.  Maybe I should just say it the way that Job did — I’d heard about God all my life, but I’d never really seen Him.  Most of what I thought was interacting with Him was actually me trying to connect with ideas about Him.  The thing that kills me is that I was so absolutely and utterly unaware that I had never really met God.  I fanned the flames of a raging fury that was hotter than a million blue stars against someone I didn’t even know.

When I was a little girl, probably about six or seven, I got in trouble for passing notes during church.  I had been allowed to ask a friend to come to church with us and we were sitting in a pew very close to the front because my father had been asked to speak that day.  As best I can remember, we weren’t making any noise and we certainly weren’t being rambunctious (I knew much better than that), we were just quietly passing notes back and forth about something that I’m sure was wildly unimportant and silly.  After we got home from church, my father took me into my bedroom and quietly announced that he was going to spank me.  He even asked me if I knew why I was being punished.  I honestly don’t remember what I said because I was way more terrified of my father when he spoke quietly than when he was in hurricane mode.  The whooping I got that day left me feeling like I couldn’t sit down for hours.  I bawled and bawled and at one point, my mother told me to shut up because she was sick of hearing it.  More than the physical pain, though, that incident got frozen in my brain because I had zero comprehension as to why passing notes was such a heinous offense that it merited one of the worst spankings I ever received.  Truth be told, even as a woman in her 40s, I still don’t understand it.  But every time I would read anything in the Bible about God punishing or disciplining, my mind always went straight to that day and I couldn’t see anything but my father’s cold, hard face right before he wailed on my backside.  That’s the inescapable image I’ve always had of God.

Beth, I feel as if I am finally coming to a reckoning within my heart and soul.  In the grand design of all that was, is, and will be, I know virtually nothing.  I cannot see the next nanosecond much less the next day.  I’ve spent so much time and energy scrambling for any shreds or scraps of control I could possibly get my hands on, but at last I can admit to myself that I have virtually no control at all.  I cannot in any way control other people and I can’t control circumstances.  Oh sure, I can manipulate like nobody’s business, but that’s not the same thing as true control.  So where does that leave me, particularly when I have to come face to face with the truth of my rage towards those who have wounded me the most deeply?  I now understand that it leaves me in a position of either flailing about in that rage or, as David phrased it in so many psalms, lifting my soul up to God.  The true God, not the god I thought I knew simply because I went to church all my life and prayed a prayer when I was younger.  I’m keenly aware of the fact that I’m not entirely certain exactly how I’m to lift my soul up because so many of the things I thought I knew, so many of the rituals, only seem to perpetuate the falseness I was taught.  I’m floundering a bit, but as I said in my last letter, I am still clinging to a hope that continues to seem more and more real every day.  If you have any thoughts you think might help me on this new path I’m walking, I would be ever so grateful if you could share them.  I have come to trust you and the way you see God.

I can’t thank you enough for continuing to take the time to read what I write.  You have shown me in just a few short emails more about God than anyone I’ve ever known in more than four decades of life on this earth.  I thank God for you every day.

In Hope,

Charity