NILS VON KALM explores what it means to trust God when facing tough questions…
Do you have a question you want to ask God? One that has been bugging you for ages and that you just can’t seem to work out?
I do. My question is this: If God is trustworthy and Jesus says that if we seek first the Kingdom (Matthew 6:33), “all these things” of shelter and clothing (Matthew 6:30-32) will be given to us as well, why are so many people homeless? Are they not trusting God enough? Are they doing something wrong?
PICTURE: Jon Tyson/Unsplash
I find myself reluctant to ask God to make sure I’ll never be homeless because there are many homeless people and I’m certainly not convinced that every one of them is doing something wrong and not trusting God. I’m sure there are others who have prayed that they won’t be homeless or have prayed for God to meet their basic needs, and they haven’t been met.
So, is God trustworthy or not?
“My question is this: If God is trustworthy and Jesus says that if we seek first the Kingdom (Matthew 6:33), ‘all these things’ of shelter and clothing (Matthew 6:30-32) will be given to us as well, why are so many people homeless? Are they not trusting God enough? Are they doing something wrong?”
One of the biggest influences in my life has been the late Dr Larry Crabb. He wrote numerous books about faith and the goodness of God. One thing he said that has stuck with me has been that faith is a stubborn, determined confidence that God is good despite what seems like all evidence to the contrary.
I still cling to that stubborn faith. I still believe that God is good.
If I didn’t, I may as well pack it all in and live a different way of life. The reason I don’t is that I’m actually more convinced than ever that the way to live life is by following Jesus and being more and more surrendered to Him. I’m utterly convinced that that is the path to a flourishing life, to being more human. I am convinced that Jesus is who he said he is and that the life we all crave is ultimately found in him.
So, back to my question. Why do so many struggle? I’m reminded of the line of a John Mellencamp song called For The Children. It says, “Why do so many suffer? Oppressed to the end of time. Why does freedom move so slowly, unable to speak its mind?” Indeed.
We talk about trusting God and we say things like ‘God will provide’. We say them so often to each other that they have become well-worn cliches. I remember when my parents split up and my mother was anxious that she was running out of money. A good Christian friend of hers at the time said to her, “You will never starve”. I can still picture her saying it. And Mum never did starve. She always had enough. Why did she have enough but the other single mother who is trying to raise her kids is forced onto the streets? It’s a conundrum.
So, what does it mean to trust God? Do we play a part in it or do we sit back and just ‘trust’ that things will work out?
I’m the sort of person who needs answers. I feel a sense of security if I have an answer to my questions. So, here’s what I think.
In the end, I think it does come down to trust; trust that God really is good despite seeming evidence to the contrary. That doesn’t necessarily answer the question as to why some people do get by while others are forced onto the streets. But I still think we can trust God. I believe that for the reason I mentioned above: I remain utterly convinced, based on my own decades of faith and life experience, that Jesus really is the source of all existence and is who He says He is in the Gospels.
I also think we need to embrace uncertainty, the fact that sometimes we simply don’t have an answer and we don’t know why some things happen and others don’t. Jesus didn’t seem to worry about it; he said the rain falls on the just and the unjust and that our job is to respond with the compassion of the Good Samaritan. We are simply called to love God and our neighbour.
As well as that, there are complex societal and global factors that keep some people struggling while others get by. The global capitalist system survives by keeping many people ‘in their place’. If Covid has taught us anything, it’s that the free market is completely powerless to provide for everyone to get by. The global financial crisis proved the same. In both cases, there had to be massive government intervention to make sure that millions of people weren’t made destitute.
Western society also has an epidemic of loneliness and mental illness. As the author Johann Hari has said, we are the first society in human history to actively dismantle our tribes. Despite the incredible and wonderful work done by many welfare agencies, our individualistic society forces millions of us to struggle alone, and that is actively encouraged by the cultural mindset. We are quite literally sold the message that freedom is found by going it alone, not relying on anyone else. We are given images of freedom as being out on the open road in your new car, alone, away from any responsibility. That, our society teaches us, is freedom.
According to the Scriptures, though, freedom is found in Christ and His community. It’s not for nothing that the beginning of the church at Pentecost was characterised by the believers all living together in community and that no-one was in need. In Matthew 19:29, when Jesus says that the many who have left everything, including houses, to follow Him, will receive a hundredfold, He wasn’t giving a defence of the prosperity doctrine. He was saying that following Him in community with others – communality was a given in those days – we would receive a hundredfold because in true Christian community, everyone looks out for each other and, like the early church in Acts 2 and 4, no-one is in need.
Surrendering our lives to Christ is indeed a trustworthy endeavour. It’s just that it was never meant to be done alone, as our Western culture teaches us it is. Much of the church has, of course, succumbed to this Western ideal, and that of endless consumption and growth, to the neglect of true community. We have seen this in the mega-church model, where endless growth and numbers are emphasised but where people are left to struggle alone among the masses. That was never Jesus’ idea of what the church was meant to be.
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So, I am convinced that God is to be trusted. That faith brings me joy in the midst of my struggles. We often question where God is in struggle, but when you ask those who struggle the most, they will invariably tell you that they have more faith, not less, because God is all they have left. Those who really struggle don’t seem to have a crisis of whether God is good or not. They are much more likely to have a childlike faith which they cling to in the very midst of their struggles.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenged people with the question of what good it would do if they worried. Would it add a single hour to their life? The fact is that worrying probably takes away from our life, as research has shown that anxiety has eventual physical impacts on our bodies.
The cry of ‘why?’ is a common one throughout the ages. It fills the pages of the Bible as the Psalmists sometimes rage against God and question why the wicked get away with murder while the innocent suffer.
In the end there are multiple factors as to why some people suffer and others get by. What I do know is that the more we follow Jesus by loving Him and our neighbour, the more we will look out for each other and live in true Christian community where no one will be in need. We can do it; we just need the will.
