"Waiting On God" - But Like, Why Though?

A picture of a clock, with the text "God's timing is always perfect." Image source.

I came across this article on Desiring God: When We Want to Give Up Waiting. It's written by Vaneetha Rendall Risner, and it's about the concept of "waiting on God." I was inspired to blog about this because yes, back when I was a good evangelical I bought into the whole "waiting on God" thing, but now it just reads as ... odd.

Let's take a look:

I am an impatient person. I don’t like waiting. I get annoyed by slow drivers in fast lanes. I audibly sigh when I get into a long checkout line. I am quick to remind wait staff in restaurants that I’m waiting to be seated or served.

That seems ... fine? Like, it's totally reasonable to not like wasting one's time waiting. It would only become a problem if you treat other people rudely because of your impatience. Or if it's making you so angry/stressed that it's really taking a toll on your mental health. But in this article there's no indication that Risner's impatience is that bad, so... this doesn't seem like a problem at all to me.

Like, I would advise you to look at the whole situation. See that you are not the only person affected by a slow-moving line; everyone else is just trying to do the same thing you're trying to do, so you should treat them with the respect you would want them to show you. And especially be kind to the customer service employee, because they have to deal with annoyed customers all day. And pay attention to your own mental health and emotions- if you're getting disproportionately angry, then it's time to take a step back and figure out why that is, and how to handle it.

Those are trivial situations, yet I still find it hard to wait. There are bigger, much more important issues that I’ve waited for as well. I’ve waited an agonizingly long time for healing from my post-polio. For clarity on which path to take in an important decision. For restoration of a difficult relationship. For a dear friend to return to faith. For each, I have waited long past the time when I thought my requests should have been answered. For many serious requests, I’m still waiting.

Umm. Okay these examples are ... odd. "Healing from my post-polio"- well, how long did your doctor say it was supposed to take? (I'll admit I don't know anything about post-polio.) Maybe the doctor's estimate was wrong and it's actually taking longer than that- yeah that sucks. But I wouldn't really use the term "waiting" to describe that situation. I would call it, trying to figure out how to live a good life when your health isn't what you would want it to be. And the other examples- "For clarity on which path to take in an important decision. For restoration of a difficult relationship. For a dear friend to return to faith."- umm these strike me as extremely weird because there's not necessarily any reason to believe these things will actually happen. Doesn't the term "waiting" mean that you're sure the thing is going to happen, sometime in the future?

And also, "for a dear friend to return to faith" is extremely creepy. People are in charge of their own lives, and they're not going to "return to faith" just because *you* want them to. That's their own decision. Very very creepy to pray for God to force someone to change their personal religious beliefs.

Anyway, maybe Risner is "waiting" for these things because she prayed for them to happen and believes they are "in God's will" so God should do them sooner or later. I guess? Her article doesn't say. (Though later on she does mention that it's possible the things we "wait" for will never have "fulfillment on earth" ... so ... yeah I'm still confused. How is your "dear friend" going to "return to faith" in the afterlife? Isn't it too late by then? Or ... does "fulfillment" not necessarily mean that the thing will happen, but that you will stop feeling bad about the thing not happening?)

Okay moving right along. Risner presents the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael, to teach us about how we should "wait on God."

God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. And then there was silence. Nothing happened for eleven long years (imagine where you were eleven years ago). Abraham’s wife, Sarah, was barren and well past her childbearing years.

After more than a decade of waiting, they both assumed that perhaps they needed to act on their own to fulfill the promise of God. So, Abraham took Hagar, Sarah’s servant, and had Ishmael. For a while, they thought the promises would now come true through Ishmael.

Thirteen years later, God told them Sarah would bear a son, Isaac. They had waited so long, neither of them believed God was going to do it now. Abraham was decidedly unenthusiastic at the proclamation. After he audibly laughed and inwardly doubted, Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!” (Genesis 17:18).

Abraham had figured out a way to have heirs on his own. The thought of waiting, being wholly dependent on God, wasn’t part of his plan. He wanted God to bless what he had done, rather than wait for what only God could do.

Umm. Wait. So, it was bad for Abraham to impregnate Hagar, but why was it bad, exactly? Risner seems to be saying it was bad because that's not the way God wanted things to go.

Umm. Okay let's think about this though. First of all, Hagar was a slave. Kind of f***ed-up that Abraham owned slaves. Kind of f***ed-up that the biblical writer was totally fine with that. Kind of f***ed-up that, in my experience in the white American evangelical church, Christians don't seem to notice the slavery part of the story.

Oh, what's that you say? She wasn't a slave, she was a servant? Okay, sure, call it what you want, but the fact is, it's extremely f***ed-up that Abraham and Sarah believed they had the right to order her to have sex with Abraham and give birth to his child.

Yeah let's talk about the sex part. The biblical story gives no indication that anyone cared about asking Hagar for consent. (And neither does Risner's article... And what's more, throughout the article, she keeps using Ishmael as simply a symbol of doing things your own way instead of God's way- she doesn't treat Ishmael like a real person. Which would be fine if she believed this is a fictional story rather than a thing that really happened, but lololololol this is Desiring God we're talking about here.) Indeed, the power dynamics between a slave and master make it impossible that consent can actually exist at all. The correct term for this is rape. Abraham raped Hagar.

Oh and it's worse than that, actually. He forced her to get pregnant and give birth to a child. Abraham seemed to think he "owned" Hagar so completely that he had the right to use her body as a vessel for growing his child for 9 months. Eww. (How will I explain this to my children?)

So why was it wrong for Abraham to impregnate Hagar? In reality-land, the reason it was wrong was because of the slavery, rape, and forced pregnancy. But Risner doesn't mention any of that. She seems to think it was wrong because ... like ... it wasn't God's plan, or something?

Moving along...

That’s what I often do. I don’t like waiting. I want to act, to figure it out, to know with certainty what’s going to happen. And then I want to move ahead. Abraham wanted God to bless Ishmael so he could have descendants through him. God had something different in mind, something that unfolded to Abraham over time — something impossible in the eyes of man.

Honestly, often I want Ishmael too. I want the thing I can figure out, that I have control over, that doesn’t require waiting and trusting.

Umm. What.

Okay, first she says "I want to act, to figure it out, to know with certainty what's going to happen." That seems totally fine to me. Those are perfectly fine things to want. What's the problem?

I guess, in Risner's worldview, the problem is that it's WRONG to take action and find your own solution when God told you that's not how the plan is supposed to go. But in practical terms, how would you know that God told you that? Sure, in the story of Abraham, God speaks with a real voice, but that's not how things work in our lives. And what if actually God wants you to take action to accomplish the thing, and that's God's way of answering your prayers? I just can't see any scenario where one could actually be sure that "Option A is waiting and praying and not taking action, and that is what God wants me to do. Option B is taking things into my own hands to solve the problem, which is BAD because it's NOT what God wants me to do."

Unless, of course, option B is bad for other reasons. (For example, if it involves slavery, rape, or forced pregnancy.) But in that case, you shouldn't do option B because of those other reasons. The reason you shouldn't choose option B has nothing to do with "waiting on God."

So, if option B is bad for other reasons- like it's immoral or just a bad idea- then why introduce the concept of "waiting on God" at all? And if there's nothing inherently wrong with option B, then how can you be so sure God wouldn't want you to do it? Sure, maybe "God told you" that A is right and B is wrong- but a lot of us ex-evangelicals have testimonies about things that we were sure "God told us" that turned out to be really bad ideas. I know I do. (And from where I'm sitting, if God tells you "don't solve this problem using the obvious solution that's right in front of you; instead you should wait and do nothing and maybe the problem will magically solve itself at some unknown time in the future", that sure sounds like an example of a bad idea.)

However, in the examples Risner gave earlier in the article, I don't understand what the "option B" would be. About her health problems, or repairing a relationship, or creepily wanting someone to change their religious beliefs, umm how exactly would one go about taking matters into their own hands and finding a workaround that's not "God's way"? Like, does she mean getting really discouraged/angry and then letting those emotions come out in unhealthy ways? I can't really think of what else she might mean- what obvious solution is sitting there staring her in the face but she can't do it because she has to "wait on God"? I don't see any quick fix for those problems, so I guess maybe "taking it into your own hands" would mean giving up in frustration and handling those emotions badly, in terms of how you treat other people and your own mental health. I guess?

Which, as I said, would be a bad idea because it's inherently a bad idea. Not because of any nonsense about "waiting on God."

And the rest of her article pretty much goes along those same lines. About how we're supposed to "wait on God" so don't "settle for Ishmael" and so on. Without explaining how one could know that God wants you to do option A instead of option B, and without talking about option B being unhealthy or immoral anyway so that's why you shouldn't choose it. All in all, I'm left feeling quite confused about the whole concept of "waiting on God."

Like, why don't we just look at the reality of our situation, look at our options, evaluate each one, predict possible outcomes, and make a decision that way? Why do we need to add this extra layer of vagueness about "waiting on God" and pretend it's actually about that?

This is the problem I have with the stuff I learned in church about morality and how to make decisions. They didn't say "look at the actual reality of the situation and go from there"- instead it was about praying and listening to God, and we very much believed it was possible that God would tell you something that made no sense at all (ahem, Risner uses the term "impossible in the eyes of man"). And "faith" means you should obey and do that thing that makes no sense. Don't pay attention to reality. In this system, there's no way to say "no that is clearly a bad idea, so obviously I shouldn't do it." Lean not on your own understanding. Christians think Abraham was right to obey God's command to sacrifice Isaac. That Joshua was right to obey God's command to kill entire populations and take their land. If God tells you to do something that's clearly a terrible idea, well, just trust that God has a reason and actually it's somehow a good idea.

I've also talked about this a lot in my VeggieTales reviews. Instead of just teaching kids to look at the actual reality of the situation, understand the consequences of one's actions (particularly how they affect other people), and use that to inform their decision-making, VeggieTales introduces completely unnecessary concepts like thankfulness ("Madame Blueberry"), selfishness ("King George and the Ducky"), and temptation ("LarryBoy and the Bad Apple"), and teaches that we should strive to embody/avoid these abstract concepts. (And in "Josh and the Big Wall", they teach that you should always obey God, like Joshua did when he drove the inhabitants of Jericho out and stole their land, what a great role model.)

Yes, I also believe in abstract concepts. But mine are things that are directly tied to reality and the actual real-world results of one's choices. Boundaries. Mental and emotional health. Communication. Consent. Standing up for yourself. For example, instead of "selfishness is bad", I believe "it's good and healthy to put yourself first, but obviously we have compassion for other people- so 'selfishness' becomes a bad thing ONLY if it's causing you to mistreat other people."

And now "waiting on God" feels like such a bizarre, nonsensical idea to me. Why on earth would you "wait" instead of trying to solve your problem if you're able? And if the only potential solutions are actually really terrible ideas because they are immoral, make no sense, etc, then don't do them because they are immoral, make no sense, etc- not because they're not "waiting on God." The whole "waiting on God" idea is completely unnecessary.

Maybe it's just a Christianese way of saying "don't respond to uncertainty about the future by doing something that's a really bad idea"- okay, fine, then it's possible that you can hold that belief in a non-unhealthy way. But why? Why even introduce it? At best, it's a distraction. At worst, if people actually buy into it, if they think that God is actually telling them to do things that make no sense and that's what "faith" means, well that's harmful.

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Related:
From "Virtues Morality" To "Boundaries Morality"
Honest Lent: Abraham's Slaves
I Wish I Was This Angry About Slavery in the Bible
The Bible Lied About Lot's Daughters