God of Bad Snaps

Football players ready for the snap. Image source.

[content note: abusive Christian theology]

All right, I read this extremely bad, abusive article on Desiring God and, you know, God called me to blog about this crap: God Wounds Us Because He Loves Us.

(You can tell from the title it's going to be bad. It's actually worse than you think.)

Here's a bit from the beginning section:

Sometimes the Lord’s love for us feels like the opposite of love, but that’s only because we can’t see everything he sees. Behind the real pain he allows is an even more real love for those for whom he sent his Son (John 3:16).

The world would never call any kind of pain “love.” The world simply does not have categories for God doing whatever necessary to draw us to himself — his strength, his righteousness, his help, his peace. But his love for us explodes the world’s small categories and far surpasses its weak expectations.

First of all, "Sometimes the Lord’s love for us feels like the opposite of love, but that’s only because we can’t see everything he sees" is pretty much the dictionary definition of gaslighting. Telling someone that they're wrong about their own emotions, and they don't truly understand what they really need, so they need to just trust someone else to know what's best for them. Even though that someone else is hurting them. See, it's not really hurting them, they only think it's hurting because they don't really understand. Ugh. Gross.

And this kind of crap can be used to justify any type of immorality under the sun. Oh you think xyz is bad? Well, God says it's good, so clearly you are wrong. This ideology trains people to ignore their own conscience and simply follow an authority figure. Because they just don't know what's good for themselves. 

(Any time people start believing that the true nature of reality is something other than what we're perceiving with our own senses, you get into some very dangerous territory. That's how people justify killing in the name of God. Oh, it may look like they're doing something evil when they kill people, but actually they're doing a good thing because of these beliefs about the spiritual world which can't be proven or disproven. And the killer might truly, genuinely believe this.)

Also, I love how the writer of that Desiring God article says "The world would never call any kind of pain 'love'" as if his readers are going to be like "ah, the world, they're so foolish, they don't understand how pain can be loving", but, seriously? I read that and I was like "yep I will stick with 'the world' then. Pretty sure causing pain is NOT love."

It gets worse when the article starts giving us examples from the book of Amos:

We see this kind of unexpected and painful love in Amos. God has done everything reasonable to awaken his people to their sin and to rescue them from their rebellion against him, but they simply will not relent.

He withheld food to make them hungry: “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me” (Amos 4:6). God was willing to watch them hunger if that’s what it took for them to hunger for him, again.

He stopped the rain to make them thirsty: “I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither; so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me” (Amos 4:7–8). God was willing to let them thirst if that’s what it took for them to thirst for righteousness.

He corrupted the fields to ruin their harvest: “I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me” (Amos 4:9). God was willing to compromise his people’s livelihood if that’s what it took for them to look to him for all they needed.

Most devastating of all, he even killed their loved ones: One last time from Amos: “I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me. . . . I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me” (Amos 4:10–11). God was willing even to see them die if that’s what it took for them to truly live.

Wow, I mean, God is REALLY BAD AT THIS, huh? Like, you want people to like you, so you cause terrible things to happen to them? What? Does God not understand human emotions at all?

This isn't love. This is using threats and violence to control people. If you can get them so desperate that they fear for their lives, they might choose to beg for help from their attacker. Make a deal with the devil, so to speak.

Also, wtf is going on with the "God was willing to watch them hunger if that’s what it took for them to hunger for him, again"? It's phrased as if God is the one suffering, like we should admire what a noble sacrifice God is choosing to make just because he wants so much to be close to his people. WTF? This is like in the movie "Shrek" where Lord Farquaad tells his soldiers, "Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make." Y'all realize that was a joke, right? You know that line was meant to show that Lord Farquaad is a heartless jerk, right?

The god described here does not actually love these people. He is not interested in giving them blessings and happiness; what matters the most is that they worship him. If they experience blessings and happiness but ignore him, well he's not okay with that.

There are lots of things in the world that only make the news when somebody screws them up. If they do their job properly, nobody ever hears about it. Like a bad snap at the Superbowl- normally, people don't think about who is snapping the ball, but then somebody screws it up and we all learn his name and blame him.

(For those who don't know football: The "snap" is the start of a play, where the football is originally laying on the ground and then the designated player "snaps" it up so the play can start. This happens maybe 100 times each game. Occasionally there's a "bad snap" which means the player who was supposed to snap made a mistake and the football went flying or rolling on the ground in some weird direction.)

The God of evangelical Christianity is like that football player, snapping the ball. Going along, doing his job well, and he's not happy about it because he doesn't have fans. He feels like nobody appreciates what he does. Even though his work is contributing good to the world, allowing the game to happen- that's not what he wants. He wants fans.

If he is making people happy and successful, but they don't realize it's because of him, he's not okay with that. Because his goal isn't actually to make people happy or successful.

So he starts messing up the snaps. He starts dropping the ball, every single time. The whole team is thrown into confusion, trying to figure out what on earth has suddenly gone wrong and why they can't even run one play.

And his team loses. Over and over and over, because you definitely can't score any points on offense if you never have a successful snap. The snapper isn't doing his job, and it causes a huge crisis. Snapping the ball is one small simple thing that usually goes well and his teammates don't have to worry about it. But if he doesn't do it, it ruins everything for his team.

So they come and ask what's wrong and why can't he snap the ball correctly. But he still refuses, because they're not worshiping him yet. Finally it's at the point where all the players and fans are begging and offering him ANYTHING just PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE we'll do ANYTHING, if you would just snap the ball correctly. And then he agrees, and goes back to doing his job the right way. But if they ever stop worshiping him, he'll ruin the game again.

Because he's not really concerned with how other people feel. He doesn't really want to do good for the world. If his team wins but he doesn't have many fans, he counts it as a loss. If his team loses but suddenly tons and tons of people are paying attention to him, begging him to snap the ball, he calls that a win.

This is a god who's not okay with helping people if he doesn't get the credit for it. He hates it when people are living their good happy lives but not worshiping him. He believes they must be punished for that sin. He can't stand anything that's not all about him, no matter how beneficial it is to people.

That's what we see in those examples from Amos. God thought the people didn't love him enough, so he destroyed a bunch of their things, and even killed some of them.

If you ever meet a god like that, don't worship them. Don't love them. Because they never loved you. They never wanted you to have a healthy and happy life. They just want fans.

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I was called by God to write blog posts in response to the abusive theology of John Piper/ Desiring God/ The Gospel Coalition. Here are some of my other posts:
I knew Desiring God ideology is spiritual abuse, but wow.
"The Authority of Scripture" is One Hell of a Drug