Bees in My Bonnet

So we've been reading Job (in the Bible) together as a family.  It's a challenging book - full of questions and musings... And the discussions have been interesting. It's so easy to see suffering, question it, and we SO BADLY want an answer.  We want to know why, what for, purpose, goals and such.  We want to engineer life so we can avoid suffering.  If we knew the theological neat and tidy little package as to all the why's of life, we could just dot every little i we're missing and go on our merry way knowing that God will surely cater to our sloppy theology and give us what we want so that we can praise ourselves knowing we did better than the next guy whose suffering we can't comprehend. Okay, maybe we're not ALL like that, just some of us. And the book of Job, and the description of his suffering is so our there... far from our reach, far from our understanding.  It blows us away with how bad his life was and how few answers there were for his pa...

I am fed up with spiritual platitudes and nice-isms. They don’t work for me. Instead they communicate judgement and rejection. “Take your frustrations to God.” Are you saying I don’t already do this? “Where is your joy?” Are you saying that simply because you detect frustration that there is a lack of joy in me? Seeing through these phrases, all I can see is judgement. Don’t deny it and dress it up in any other language. This is exactly what comes through. By saying these things it creates an atmosphere of insincerity. These comments send the message: don’t be honest and open with me. Wear a pretty smile and all will be well. Keep your frustrations between you and God. Don’t share them with me. Don’t be real with me. Instead, just be like ______________(insert story of missionary who didn't get frustrated when all went against him) – bumble along with thoughts of ‘all will be well’. That’s fine for him, but God (I am sure of this) makes room fo...