"To Glorify God"

Fire. Image source.

I wanna tell a little story about when I started this blog, back in 2012. Specifically, I made a deliberate decision that I was *not* blogging "to glorify God."

Yeah... so... back then, I was very evangelical, and so of course everything I did was supposed to be "to glorify God." What does that mean, exactly? The best I could tell was, it means people see something that I do, and they think, "Wow, God is even more awesome than I thought!" Whatever I do should serve the purpose of showing how amazing God is. Or, to interpret it a bit more loosely, I have to do my best to make sure that everything I do is what God would want me to do.

I used to post a lot of Christian things on Facebook, back then. Writing long Facebook posts where I shared my testimony, having arguments about why I believed it's a sin to "act on" one's feelings of same-sex attraction, whatever random thoughts I had about my obedience to God, etc etc etc. And whenever I wrote some big long thing on Facebook, I very carefully prayed over it. I checked over every single part of my writing, because I really really wanted to make sure that every single sentence was what God wanted me to say. 

If I wasn't sure if some little phrase "glorified God", I deleted it. I remember one Facebook post I wrote, which in an early draft included the phrase "if we can't figure this out, we're screwed" or something like that. During the editing process I stopped there and wondered if it was really okay to use "screwed" like that. Isn't that kind of a bad word? I felt that emotionally, "screwed" conveyed what I was trying to say, and no other word could quite capture the same feeling, but still I wasn't sure if God was really okay with me saying that. And since I wasn't sure, I eventually decided I couldn't in good conscience publish the Facebook post with that phrase in it. Everything I wrote needed to glorify God. Everything needed to be what God would want me to write. I finally changed the word "screwed" to something else, and published that post.

That's what I mean. Whenever I wrote some long post about God, I made sure to think through everything very carefully, to pray about it, until I was sure that it was really what God wanted me to write.

When I started this blog, I asked myself, "Am I blogging to glorify God?" And I decided, no. I remember that it was an actual question I had to think about, and an actual decision I made. This blog would be different from all my previous writing on Christianity. This blog would be about saying what I needed to say. Asking the questions I needed to ask. Even if I wasn't sure if God was okay with me asking.

I decided I wasn't going to get stuck, asking myself "does God really want me to say this?" before I hit "publish" every time. You can't get anywhere, if you do that. The conversation can never even start, if I have to make sure I'm really really confident that it's a conversation that's going to make God look good, before I even say anything.

I decided the purpose of my blog was not "to glorify God."

The 5th post I published was God kills Uzzah (2 Samuel 6). (If you don't know this story from the bible- it's about when God killed Uzzah for touching the ark of the covenant, because it was falling off a cart and Uzzah tried to catch it.) And yes, there are things in that post that I would not have said, if I had wanted to make sure that every single thing I said "glorified God."

I love God and I trust God and I'm gonna call it like I see it: God is being really unreasonable here.
...
People always say "God loves everybody" but I don't know if it's true.  Did God love Uzzah?
...
In conclusion, I don't like it and it's not fair.  But God can do whatever he wants so... whatever.  I guess.  I'm still not okay with this.  Anyone have any insights to add?

I read that and I'm like, damn, shots fired. Look at what little Perfect Number comes up with when she says what she really thinks, rather than limiting herself to what "glorifies God." This is a great start. (Also, it's normal to cringe when you come across something you wrote 10 years ago, right? That happens to everyone, right?)

I believed that there was a way to ask questions and express doubts and still "glorify God." But, it was tricky. I would have to come to a conclusion first, and then based on that, I would decide how to frame the story. For example, one acceptable "doubt" narrative in evangelicalism might be "I had doubts about [whatever] and I thought God was not being fair. But then I realized the bible says this because [some reason] and I was not able to see it because [some sin or weakness that I have]. So now I see that yes, this belief about God is right."

At our bible study groups in college, I felt like I could ask any question at all about the bible and how certain parts of it seemed wrong. But, we couldn't just leave it there- we couldn't conclude the bible study still believing "this seems wrong." We had to come up with some explanation to convince ourselves that it made sense- or at least to convince ourselves that even if we don't understand the reason, obviously God is always right, so we can trust that it does, somehow, make sense.

When I stated this blog, I didn't have a "conclusion." I just had my questions. And without the conclusion, how do I know if me posting these questions is going to make God look bad? 

So I deliberately made that decision, and this blog has never been about glorifying God.

Instead, I blog because I have a "fire in my bones" like the prophet Jeremiah:

But if I say, “I will not mention his word
    or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
    a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
    indeed, I cannot.

I have things to say, and I just need to say them, so here we are. That's what this has always been about, for the past 10 years.

At the beginning I wondered if, in a roundabout way, I would end up "glorifying God." I don't really care about that anymore, though. God doesn't need me to do PR for Them. If They didn't want people to talk about, say, the problem of evil, maybe They shouldn't have made a world that has evil. I just call it like I see it.

So... I used to be very very careful about making sure everything related to Christianity that I posted publicly was approved by God. Spent a lot of time praying, so I would be confident that it was really what God wanted me to say. When I started this blog in 2012, I decided it would NOT be like that. I wouldn't blog "to glorify God"- I would blog because I had things I needed to say, and some of those things didn't have a neat, tidy conclusion about why God/the bible is always right. I blog because I have a "fire in my bones." I still do.

---

Related:

They Prayed About It (a post about the #NashvilleStatement) 

Accepting Myself (or, I'm Great, and It Doesn't Matter What God Thinks) 

Katy Perry's God-Given Freedom

Honest Advent: Jesus Hasn't Fulfilled This Prophecy

A statue of Justice, blindfolded, holding a set of scales. Image source.

For Honest Advent, I'm looking at Jeremiah 33:14-16:

“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will fulfill the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah.

“‘In those days and at that time
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.
In those days Judah will be saved
and Jerusalem will live in safety.
This is the name by which it will be called:
The Lord Our Righteous Savior.’

I like this. It's about the kingdom of God and resurrection. It says someday, God will bring justice, righteousness, and safety.

Because "a righteous Branch ... from David's line" is mentioned, Christians take this to be a prophecy about Jesus- specifically, the birth of Jesus. But here's the problem: Did Jesus actually do these things? Did Jesus change the world (or Israel in particular) so it's now a place characterized by righteousness, totally safe, with perfect justice?

Ha. No.

Yes, Jesus was an activist who dedicated his life to love and justice, and spoke out against the corrupt powers of his day. Yes, he made a difference, and he set an example for us. But he didn't quite do what this verse says he would do. "Jerusalem will live in safety"? A lot of violent stuff has gone down in Jerusalem over the past 2000 years. (And not just Jerusalem- pretty much everywhere in the world has been not very "safe" at some point.) Jesus did "what is just and right in the land" as far as he was able, but the world is still a messed-up place.

Jesus did not fulfill this prophecy. Or rather, he hasn't yet. I believe he will eventually. But it's super shady when Christians say things like "There were SO MANY Old Testament prophecies about the messiah and Jesus fulfilled EVERY SINGLE ONE! That COULD NOT have happened by chance. This is PROOF that the bible is true!" Because, no. There are prophecies like this one, which talk about the utopia that God will eventually bring about, and guess what, that hasn't happened. (Yet.) So basically Christians are finding things in the Old Testament that seem sort of related to Jesus' life, and marking those as "messianic prophecies", and wow would you look at that, Jesus fulfilled them all 100%. Okay then. Circular argument is circular.

I believe what these verses in Jeremiah 33 are saying. Someday God will bring resurrection, and the whole world will be full of righteousness, justice, and safety. Jesus will do it. But he hasn't done it yet. So be very suspicious the next time someone tells you how "it's so amazing that Jesus fulfilled every Old Testament prophecy."