Why God Annoys Me

God is infuriating sometimes.

Why? Well there’s quite a lot of reasons. For a start, he insists – just like my mum does – on always being right. This would be fine, obviously, both in the case of God and of my mum, if it wasn’t for the fact that I, also, am always right. Since God is always right, and Mike is always right, the rather irritating possibility emerges that we might disagree about something, and then, surely, reality itself will be forced to implode.

Attached to this dilemma is the whole issue of God’s elusive behaviour. As tempted as I am to keep being silly, this is actually a really serious thing. There are quite a lot of times where I am convinced that God is able to do something, and I’m sure that he ought to do it, that it’s the sort of thing he loves to do, and I ask him to do it, and then he doesn’t. Or even just every day – I know that he’s capable of being tangibly present with me. I’ve experienced it many times, and I know loads of other people who have too. And I really want more of that – I think, surely, if I was more tangibly aware of you with me all the time, or even most of the time, that would be better, it seems to me that that would be better in so many ways. But he doesn’t do it.

And there are loads of reasons that I know for why he might not do this or do that, but if I’m honest with myself, I still don’t really get it. And there are things where even though I accept that he actually is always right and I’m sometimes wrong, it is really, really, frustrating; it’s really hard for me to accept that I don’t know everything – I hate it. It wouldn’t even be so bad if he always sat me down and gave me a full explanation of why he was right – if he actually tried to persuade me. On some things he does. But then some times, like my mum used to, when he says something or does something or refuses to do something and I ask him ‘Why?’ he just says, ‘Because I say so’. In fact, I’m even making it more palatable for the purposes of blogging here – he doesn’t so much say ‘Because I say so’; actually he has taught me stuff through the Bible and through his Spirit and through other people over the years to the point that I can’t help answering myself for him. I ask ‘Why?’ and then that annoying bit of me that will not be silenced says, reluctantly, ‘Look, he’s bigger than you. You are small and human and often quite stupid. He’s the perfect, eternal, and almighty God of the universe – King of kings, Lord of lords, God of the ages, Creator of all things seen and unseen, of all that you can and cannot imagine – he’s allowed to be mysterious. It is, in fact, to be expected.’ And even though in a lot of ways that is marvellous and beautiful, I cannot pretend that it’s not also really, really hard. Several times in the last couple of weeks, as I’ve been reading and thinking and struggling with some big question about God and the world – what the right thing to do is, what God really thinks – I’ve found myself genuinely hitting things in frustration. Because it really really matters and it’s really really difficult – sometimes genuinely impossible. And that is infuriating.

But then today I was thinking about this bit of bible that I’ve loved for a long time. And I looked at it again, and it really was like honey in my mouth. I’ll let you read it first – he’s talking about all the ways that Christians know about and experience God:

“We know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

The bit that really gets me in that is the very last line. “I have been fully known”. It’s important to note at this point, that there are two different types of knowing – there’s knowing about, and there’s personal knowing. If someone asks you whether you know Michael Hood you wouldn’t say, “Yes, he’s 5 foot 8 inches, brown hair with a few greys emerging, lots of freckles, born 4^th May 1994…” because that’s not what they mean. Knowing about someone is very different to knowing them personally. And definitely what Paul (the writer of this bit) is talking about is knowing personally – it’s seeing “face to face”. And that’s not just true of us knowing God, it’s true of him knowing us as well. And here’s where it gets deep: there’s a bit where Jesus was asked about who would enter into eternal life with him, and he said that there would be some who would, but there would be some who wouldn’t, because there are people to whom, in the eternal moment, he says: “I never knew you; depart from me.” He says there are people, many people, who he’s never known. Now of course God knows everything, he knows everything about everyone – but we see here that there are still people he never personally knows. Because personal knowing is voluntary. It’s vulnerability. To be known like this we have to allow someone to know us – we have to give ourselves to them and let them see us.

The bible actually uses the word “know” as a euphemism for sex, and I think that’s incredible. “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived…” And when I think about it, it actually makes so much sense, because the Christian vision of sex is of utter, intimate, knowing. I remember somebody telling me once about a couple of our friends who were going out, and they’d started having sex, but the girl had told this person that even though they’d had sex a few times now this guy had never once taken his shirt off. Because he had a bit of a belly, and he wanted to keep it covered up. Now I know that that’s story is sort of funny and quite weird, but I genuinely was so, so sad when I heard it. I just thought it was tragic – that they were having sex but he was still ashamed, still holding back and covering up; he still didn’t feel like he could be naked with her. Because if you believe like I do that our bodies and our minds and our souls are all wound up with each other, then being naked together is an utterly beautiful thing. To be absolutely exposed and vulnerable to each other, but to feel completely safe in that. To feel completely and unconditionally and ecstatically embraced – all of you, exactly as you are, every curve and dimple and imperfection – loved. And for someone to surrender themselves to you at the same time – to let you see them entirely, know them fully, and love them completely. It’s an incredible thing, isn’t it?

So when it says that I will know God fully, even as I am fully known, that gets me. He knows me, and I will know him, in the deepest, most intimate, most beautiful sense. And he’s not just another person – he’s the perfect one. He’s the risen Son. He’s the matchless, indescribable King, the true hero, the ultimate rescuer and the maker of the ultimate sacrifice. He’s the inspiration for every beauty of creation. The True Lover, my first love. And I am just broken and small and insignificant; but somehow I will know him, and he knows me.

And this truth has two effects on me. First, it makes me desperate to let him in, right now. Because like I say, knowing personally is a voluntary thing, so I really want to volunteer. I want to – weird as it sounds – get naked with him. I want to give him all of me, all the imperfections and knots and shadows, and also I want to give him my very best. I want to surrender every ounce of my brilliance to him and every bit of brokenness.

Someone told me a made-up story once about a young boy, who had a big collection of really beautiful marbles. And then one day he met this girl who had an amazing collection of shells. And he was looking at all her shells, and he liked them a lot. And she saw his marbles, and she loved them! So they decided to make a deal. They agreed that that night he would choose his ten best marbles, and she would choose her ten best shells, and they would bring them the next day and swap. So the little girl went home, found the best ten shells she had and put them in a bag. And the little boy did the same with his marbles. But as he put them in the bag he started looking at them again and thinking about how lovely they were and how he really did like them. Especially the very best ones. He didn’t want to give those away. They were his favourites. So he took out his very favourite marbles and hid them under his pillow, and put some others in the bag instead. The next day they swapped, just like they’d said. And that night the girl played with her new marbles for hours and she loved them – and she slept soundly with the little bag in her hand. But the little boy couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned all night worrying, one question turning over and over in his mind: “What if she kept her very best shells?”

And so whenever I get frustrated that it feels like God isn’t giving me what I want him to, I remember that story and I look under my pillow for the bits of me that I’ve refused to give to him. Because first and foremost I want to be known by God. I want him to have all of me.

And the second effect it has is to give me a certainty to hold onto in my uncertainty. In the times of anger and confusion at God for insisting on being huge and mysterious, I can hold onto this. Right now I know him in part – and it’s a pretty incredible part. I know him in Jesus, who came and revealed God’s character to us so that we could understand it, and revealed that fundamentally, it was love. I know that he loves me fiercely, and I know loads and loads about what he is offering me and what he wants me to do. Plenty to be getting on with. And I know him in the Spirit of Jesus that lives inside me, even though it’s tricky to pin down and sometimes much more obvious than others. What I know of him already is honestly greater than anything else I’ve ever known. But that’s not everything, because at the moment I only know him in part. One day, I will know him fully, face to face. And every drop of frustration and pain will melt into joy. I will approach the unapproachable. I will take hold of the uncontainable, incomprehensible glory of God himself, and I will know him, as completely as he knows me.

The Party is Real.

It is party season in Cambridge. My apologies if you have a life which renders this blog completely unseasonal because you’re in the middle of lots of ordinary hard work – but here, in the land of ‘I-think-in-terms-of-IQ-all-of-us-here-are-geniuses’ (genuine quote) and of multiplicitous boat-based activities, it is definitely the celebratory season. And parties are brilliant. I personally always used to love the time in a party when it had got really quite late, and people had sort of dissipated a bit, and you ended up having these hilarious, strangely deep conversations with just one or two people for hours on end. To be fair I also loved ceilidh-dancing the other night with seventy-ish people – so I suppose my tastes are fairly broad. Anyway, I came across an incredible story about a party recently and it made me have thoughts, so I wanted to share it.

The story is from a guy called Tony Campolo – he’s really cool, he’s a sociology professor, but also a trained minister in the church, and he does loads of stuff telling people about Jesus but also loads of projects trying to improve education, or medicine, or small business in the poorest areas of the world. He’s an all round top lad really, and this is a true story from one of his visits to Hawaii. Here’s a sort of abridged version of the story – in first person like he tells it.

***

Anyone who’s done it knows that when you travel to Hawaii from the east coast, there’s a time difference that makes three o’clock in the morning feel like nine. It was for this reason that I found myself wandering up and down the streets of Honolulu at three-thirty in the morning, looking for somewhere I could eat. I found a little place that was still open – a greasy little diner, the sort where you don’t really want to touch the menus, or think too much about anything before you eat it. But it was all that was open. So I got a coffee and a donut and sat down, and resisted the urge to hold my breath. As I ate, the door of the diner suddenly swung open and, to my discomfort, in came eight or nine boisterous prostitutes. It was a small place and they sat down on either side of me, chatting loudly and crudely. I felt thoroughly out of place and I was just about to get up and get out when I overheard the woman beside me say, “Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m going to be thirty-nine.”

Her ‘friend’ responded in a nasty tone, “So what do you want from me? A birthday party? What do you want? Ya want me to get you a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’?”

“Come on!” said the woman next to me. “Why do you have to be so mean? I was just telling you, that’s all. Why do you have to put me down? I was just telling you it was my birthday, I don’t want anything from you. I mean, why should you give me a birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?”

When I heard that, I made a decision. I sat and waited until the women had left, then I called over the fat guy behind the counter and asked him, “Do they come here every night?” He said they did. “The one sitting next to me, does she come every night?” He said yes, that was Agnes, she came every night at 3:30. He asked why I wanted to know. “Because I heard her say that tomorrow is her birthday – what do you think about us throwing a birthday party for her – right here – tomorrow night?” A smile grew across this guy’s chubby face, and he called his wife out from the back room and told her my idea. She said that was a wonderful idea, that Agnes was one of those people who is really nice and kind, but nobody ever does anything kind for her. So we made plans. I said I’d come back at 2:30 the next morning with decorations and maybe a cake. Harry – the fat guy – said no, the birthday cake was his thing. He would make the cake.

At two thirty the next morning I was there, setting up paper decorations and putting up a sign I had made out of big pieces of cardboard that read, “Happy Birthday, Agnes!” It actually made the place look pretty good.

The man’s wife must have spread the word because by 3:15 that morning pretty much every prostitute in Honolulu was in that place. And me.

At 3:30 on the dot, the door of the diner swung open and in came Agnes and her friend – and we all shouted together, “Happy Birthday!”

Never have I seen a person so flabbergasted – so stunned – so shaken. Her mouth fell open. Her legs seemed to buckle a bit. Her friend grabbed her arm to steady her. As she was led to one of the stools along the counter we all sang “Happy Birthday” to her. As we came to the last line of the song, her eyes moistened. Then, when the birthday cake with all the candles on it was carried out, she lost it and just openly cried.

Harry mumbled at her to blow out the candles – “if you don’t blow out the candles, I’m gonna hafta blow out the candles for you!” – and eventually he did. Then he handed her the knife and said gently, “Cut the cake, Agnes. We all want some cake.”

Agnes looked down at the cake. Then without taking her eyes off it, she slowly and softly said, “Look, Harry, is it all right with you if I… I mean is it okay if I kind of… what I want to ask you is… is it okay if I keep the cake a little while? I mean is it all right if we don’t eat it right away?”

Harry shrugged and answered, “Sure! It’s okay. If you want to keep the cake, keep the cake. Take it home if you want to.”

“Can I?” she asked. Then looking at me she said, “I live just down the street a couple of doors. I want to take the cake home and show it to my mother, okay? I’ll be right back. Honest!”

She got off the stool, picked up the cake, and carrying it like it was the Holy Grail walked slowly to the door, and went out, to show it to her mother.

***

I love that story. I love it because it suddenly makes you realise just how beautiful it is for someone to know our name, and celebrate us. Birthday parties are amazing ideas – we just celebrate together the sheer fact of someone else’s existence. And we celebrate it because we really care about them; they matter to us; to us they are worth celebrating.

The other day I was listening to somebody talk about the bit where Jesus told three stories back to back, all really similar (it’s Luke 15). The first is about a shepherd who loses a sheep, and he leaves the other ninety-nine sheep to go after this lost one, and when he finds it he picks it up and carries it home, and then tells everyone to come to his house and celebrate that night, because he has found his lost sheep. Then the next is about an old woman who has only got 10 coins left to live on, and she loses one of them. And so she turns the house upside down looking for this coin, all day just searching for it, until eventually she finds it. And she’s so overjoyed at finding this coin that she declares a feast that night and invites everyone around to celebrate her lost coin, which has been found! And the last one is the most famous – the story of the ‘prodigal son’. A father loses his son – he takes his inheritance and runs away from home. Eventually the son has wasted all his money and he’s going to starve, and he decides –dirty and broke – to come back home and beg for work as a servant. And when he comes his dad is waiting for him, he sees him and he goes running out to him – picks him up and kisses him, dresses him up in all his finest clothes and throws a feast for the whole village to celebrate the return of his son.

And Jesus says as he tells these stories, again and again, “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.” That means that the stories are about God and us: God is the shepherd, the old woman, the father, and we are the sheep, the coin, the son. And when you think about them like that, these stories are incredible. In each one of them the person really, really, cares about the thing that is lost. The shepherd will take ridiculous risks to go after this lost sheep because it means so much to him. He knows that sheep by name. He’s watched it grow up since it was a lamb. He loves it. And he carries it home, close to his heart. Jesus is saying that God really, really, cares about us. Each one of us personally, not just us put together. He cares passionately about you. About me. About everyone you ever meet. He knows you, he’s watched you grow up from your mother’s womb, he knows your name and he loves you with a fierce love. You personally. And so if we come home – if we ‘repent’, which just means to turn away from our selfishness, our rebellion, our independence, and come home to our Father asking him to forgive us and take us back, if we do that, he throws a feast. He declares a spectacular party in heaven.

Now this is completely impossible for us to imagine really – but its fun to try. What’s it like? A hundred thousand angels invited to dance and feast and celebrate. Beauty and movement and laughter and joy. And at the top table, at the head of the feast, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit sit, celebrating together. And then imagine – lets imagine that above their heads is a banner, a huge banner with a name written on it – the name of the person in whose honour they are feasting, the name of the person whose return they are celebrating. I genuinely had tears in my eyes when the guy said this, because I’d never thought of it like this before. If you’ve repented, if you’ve heard Jesus calling you and come home, then there was a night, when there was a feast in heaven, and above the top table, where the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit sat, there was a banner with your name on it. Your name. Imagine it.

I don’t know about you but that thought is strange and beautiful to me. Because the assumption of our age is that the universe is fundamentally impersonal. That ultimately, s**t happens and the world doesn’t care, so we just have to laugh in its face as much as we can. We live and we die and all we can do is improvise something in the meantime that will sustain the sensation of meaning. We pitch tents on the sinking sand of the universe and call them ‘personalities’.  But I really believe – even though sometimes I forget – that the world is better than that. That to be human is not to be in denial. That behind and beneath and beyond all things is the beat of a heart that loves personally. The arms of a shepherd who carries us home close to his chest; the face of a father who knows our name, and whose pulse races when he hears it. The truth is so much better than we think it is.

And I know it sounds like it, but I promise you that this is not just wishful thinking: not least because in a lot of ways even though it’s better it is harder. Love is by its very nature inconvenient. But much more so it’s not wishful thinking because I came to believe it not out of wanting it to be true but because I was convinced by the evidence. I am convinced, along with many others, that the only explanation for events of which we can be certain is that Jesus of Nazareth came back from the dead. A guy called Frank Morison set out to write a book explaining the true events that led to the obvious misunderstanding of the early Christians’ that Jesus had been resurrected. He looked into the history, the evidence, all the different explanations for what happened. The book he wrote is called Who Moved the Stone and its thesis is this: there is no other explanation. Morison argues that Jesus must have been resurrected and explains that he has become a Christian. If anyone wants to read the book just drop me a message and I will very happily buy it for you as a gift for summer reading. Because I am sure that the world is better than we think. That there is a God, and he loves you intensely. That he is the source of everything we truly need and he longs to give it to us. I think that something in us knows that right at the bottom of it, life is meaningful, and it is personal. And I honestly think that we’re right.

If you don't have me on facebook but do want the book = or suggestions of other books about the evidence for Jesus - you are more than welcome to email me, mikehood1994@gmail.com . Cheers!