We Add God to Your Misery

The sign over the entrance to the homeless shelter reads, “We add God to your misery.” I don’t remember the plot of the particular Simpsons episode in which that establishment exists, or whether the word was “misery” or “troubles” but I was certainly struck by this pithy and apt bit of satire. It taps into something universal, I think. For those who want to be on good terms with God as well as for those who wish to have as little to do with God as possible, there are times it can feel as though God is just an added and even unnecessary burden when it comes to getting along in life.

That sign’s words could serve as a one-sentence summary of The Book of Job. A big element of that man’s trial was the long-winded manner in which his friends tried to add God to his misery, causing him to conclude, “Some comforters you are.” And yet, subtract his friends from the equation, and Job is still confronted with the question of what to do about the God issue. His wife’s suggestion was to curse God. A more modern trend would be to advise subtracting God from the equation entirely. That way you cut out a huge element of your agonizing.

My original plan for this essay was to post it in January, after stockpiling three or four essays as part of a series, and that way I could post them at a quick enough pace to build a good momentum. (I like the word “essay” in that it  means “an attempt”.) But then I realized the Christmas season provides a good illustration of what I want to ponder in this introductory essay.

That is, I realized one could readily change the slogan to “We add Christmas to your misery” and there would be a similar message.

After all, as the gentlemen of charity try to remind Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is a time when want is keenly felt.

The point is also well-illustrated in A Charlie Brown Christmas. (No surprise that I bring it into the proceedings, for those who know me. I consider it a work of genius.) Life is already full of angst for the titular character—for a mere five cents, he discovers he has fear of everything—but matters are worsened by the arrival of the Christmas season. Instead of the happiness and cheer it should bring, the absence of those things in his life is only accentuated. Perhaps things wouldn’t be quite as bad if there were no Christmas, and no Christmas letdown.

But that’s not where he goes with it. There’s a spark of hope in him that some Christmas satisfaction is to be found. A big part of the problem, he suspects, is the commercialism he finds all around—even with his dog. Maybe it’s possible to get past that. But if you accomplish that, where does it take you? You could direct a Christmas play. That will at least get you doing something. But here again, you run into futility. The play rehearsal doesn’t even get off the ground. Maybe a genuine Christmas tree will do the trick. Nope. More derision from friends and even from the dog.

Linus, of course, comes along and gives an excellent answer to Charlie Brown’s cry, “Can anyone tell me the meaning of Christmas?” with the Biblical account of the birth of Jesus.

But in the closing minute of the show, an even more succinct statement of the essence of Christmas comes up. Often when the show has aired, these words are lost under the voice-over announcing whatever show would follow. I wonder if there was something deliberate afoot here, because otherwise people might hear the words—plain as day—on national television—“God and sinners reconciled”—part of the lyrics of ”Hark the Herald Angels Sing”.

Here is the central issue—the one much bigger than Christmas: reconciliation. It’s the broader topic I hope to address in a series of essays. In a sense, I want to be the Linus figure here. After all, I’m the type who might say, “I never thought it was such a bad tree.” But there’s a little more to reconciliation than quoting scripture alone, especially when the spirit of the times would say we’d be better off without the empty shell—as some would see it—that is Christmas.

(I see the spirit of the times in the Christmas decorations featured at one unit in our townhome complex. It brings me down just to walk past it, so I won’t go into detail, but the display is a cynical send-up of other, typical decorations. Harmless stuff, in a way, but just enough of a twist to make the shoulders slump.)

In the bigger picture, some would have us think the whole God thing is an empty shell, and we’d be better off without such ideas.  I’m not exactly sure I could persuade a person otherwise, if this is their thinking. But what I can do is reconcile myself to the things of God and if anyone cares to, they can look over my shoulder, so to speak, by reading these essays.

Reconciliation with God, in the Christian scheme of things, is both a one-time occurrence and a life-time process. For me, a big part of the process  is writing, and has been since my college days.

I said at the outset that I think it’s a universal experience, this sense of God being an added burden in life. There are just different responses to that sense. We can decide the problem is with the idea of God existing at all. Or we can conclude the problem lies within us. Those of us who take the latter path and are satisfied with Biblical answers still wrestle with God—or we should. The trials of life compel us to do so. Or when things are going well, we can get “dull of hearing” (Hebrews 5:11). The things of the Bible become white noise. Or understanding becomes fuzzy, since somewhere in all the teaching and preaching—if one is exposed to a lot of that—there are contradictions that are hard to put one’s finger on—as though noticed in passing, in peripheral vision.

The cure for this is the truth. In the Biblical outlook, truth isn’t merely a mental exercise. It’s something to live. (III John 1:4) It’s also knowing a person—Jesus. (John 14:6) But the mind is a good place to start. Romans 12:2 says we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. This renewal removes the grit and grime and rust from the machinery of our thinking. It restores the shine to what had grown dull and shabby-looking. I find hearing the same old regurgitation of teachings with the same old words can become ineffective for such a project. One must, I think, put the truths in ones own terms. Assumptions must be examined. Falsehoods must be corrected.

Job’s  friends had some wrong ideas. God said, they “have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has.” (This is interesting, by the way, in the light of all the dumping on Job—the man—that teachers and commentators are willing to do.) But I have to admit, God’s response to Job is, on the whole, enigmatic to me, though I’ve thought long about it. There’s something about his words, on the face of them, that seem as though God himself were only adding God to Job’s misery. But this is the very sort of question I want to plunge into—the ones where I don’t necessarily start out with a set answer.

Here’s a preliminary thought though—a hypothesis of the sort I want to explore in the essays I hope to write: perhaps God’s  gave the same kind of response to Job that Jesus gave to the Canaanite woman who begged him to deliver her daughter from demon possession—that is, after ignoring her at first. He told her it’s not fitting to take the bread from the children and toss it to the dogs. She replied that even dogs get the crumbs from the table. I see in her answer not only a willingness to engage Jesus—to, in a sense, wrestle with God—but an ability to do so in an imaginative, creative way—to track with Jesus and his metaphorical language. (This in contrast with, for example, Nicodemas’s obtuse reply to Jesus’ proposition that a person must be born again, or the disciples concern over packing enough bread when Jesus told them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.)

In giving a difficult answer to Job, perhaps God  is inviting us to wrestle with him further. I don’t know. My goal will not be to convince anyone of anything, but to spur thought, perhaps even reconciliation.

May your Christmas be, far from an added burden, something that makes your spirit light.

“The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.” Proverbs 10:22