God in the Dock

In the Genesis story, Satan accuses God of ill will towards our first parents, and tempts them to judge Him morally. Obviously, very few of us have ever had conversations with demons. So how does an ordinary person develop a sense of offended justice towards God?

Every human being, even those who do not profess belief in God, has a deep inner sense that his creation is not complete and will not be complete until he is happy. Happiness is not just a state of mind; it is the state that we attain when we become what we are supposed to become. [1] If we do not become what we are supposed to become, then who else should we blame but our Creator? Was it not His responsibility to complete our creation? Once we decide that we have found the key to our happiness and that key is something other than God, we have subconsciously created an unjust claim on God, and if God does not recognize and satisfy our claim, we will have a grievance towards him.

Ironically, we do have a legitimate claim on God of a congruous nature. God cannot owe us anything, in an absolute sense. But we can have a reasonable expectation of blessing, just based on what we know to be “congruent” with God’s loving nature. Among other things, we can legitimately expect God to finish the work of creation he has begun in us. In fact, scripture invites us to have that very expectation. “Be confident of this very thing,” Paul tells us in Phillipians 1:6, “that he who hath begun a good work in you will be faithful to complete it in the day of Christ Jesus.”

But this congruent expectation is predicated on the assumption that we let God be in charge of the work of creation. Bill Gothard offers the useful illustration of an artist and a painting. What would an artist think, brother Bill asks the people who attend his seminars, if his painting jumped off the easel, seized the paint brush and starting painting itself? If we want God to finish the good work He has begun in us, we must stay on the easel! And if we have jumped off, we must get back on!

When a person insists on ruling his own life, yet continues to have an expectation that God will complete His creation in the exact way that He originally planned, then that expectation is no longer appropriate. It is no longer “congruent.” I find it useful to think of this kind of evil claim on God as a stronghold of expectations. An expectation is really a claim, but a claim so subtle, at times, that we are barely aware that we are making a claim. If God does not live up to our expectations, we accuse Him of having done us an injustice. We put Him in the dock, and we judge Him. It is a great paradox of human psychology that we can usurp God’s prerogative of guiding us towards happiness, then accuse Him of doing us an injustice when our own inadequate formulas for happiness disappoint us. “A man ruins his own life, yet his heart rages against the Lord,” says the writer of Proverbs. [2]

All human beings have the tendency to develop strongholds of expectations and then become embittered when their expectations are disappointed. We see it occur among Christ’s disciples in the gospels. In the story of Lazarus’s resurrection, [3] the apostle John relates how Jesus delayed in responding to the pleas for help from the family members of Lazarus. By the time he reaches Bethany, Lazarus has already died. Mary refuses to come out to greet Jesus! Martha comes out, but immediately reproaches him for arriving too late! Why would these two faithful women who love Jesus become deeply offended towards him? Because he disappointed their most passionate expectations of him. An expectation is an intellectual stronghold, a disordered concept of justice or rights that derives from a disordered will. Both Mary and Martha were guilty of a self focus that led them to form a sense of ownership with respect to Jesus’ healing ministry. When Jesus did not heal Lazarus as they expected he would, it was as though someone had robbed them.

We see this story repeated over and over again in the church. Anytime we develop a self focus in ministry, sooner or later, we will become offended with the Church, with her servants, with her activists, with her clergy and with her more passive members. Offense, and often bitterness, is the inevitable result of a stronghold of expectation. [4]

There are two areas where people are especially prone to become offended and embittered, and in both cases the offense is founded on a stronghold of expectations:

• (1.) Loss of what we hold dear
• (2.) Dissatisfaction with ourselves

The bible story about the resurrection of Lazarus illustrates the first case. Mary and Martha were in thrall to a stronghold of expectation that was shattered by a loss. The same thing can occur any time we put our happiness, peace, sense of security or well being in any earthly thing: a love relationship, a job, a career, an inheritance, a piece of property, or a reputation. [5]

In the section that follows we will examine case two, dissatisfaction with ourselves.