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{"id":8786,"date":"2014-08-27T23:11:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T03:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=8786"},"modified":"2014-08-27T23:24:52","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T03:24:52","slug":"god-is-working-his-purpose-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2014\/08\/god-is-working-his-purpose-out.html","title":{"rendered":"God Is Working His Purpose Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Can we tell what God is trying to tell us with events in our lives? Does<\/em> God use events in our lives that way?<\/p>\n

I used to be more confident than I am now that this was a spiritually-fruitful way of thinking. That was basically because I\u2019d asked myself what purpose various things in my own life had served\u2013my birth defects, that was the main thing\u2013and I felt like I had a good sense of some plausible answers. E.g. by problematizing my body, my birth defects helped me honor the body not for its perfection or its capabilities but simply in itself, as God\u2019s creation. Stuff like that.<\/p>\n

I did know that you shouldn\u2019t tell other<\/em> people what painful events in their lives meant. If you asked me directly what I thought God might<\/em> be doing with a specific painful or challenging thing, I would give you some possibilities, but anything beyond that I knew was Job\u2019s-comforters stuff.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m now even more skeptical that this is the best way to approach our own pain, or others\u2019\u2013as lessons to learn, or messages. Partly I realized how much we project our own beliefs about ourselves or others onto \u201cGod\u201d: God is telling you that [thing I already think you should do]! Events are experience, and experience requires interpretation<\/a>; and I\u2019m on the record as being pretty skeptical that we are always good interpreters of our own experience, let alone others\u2019.<\/p>\n

Partly I realized that just because objects in the world are words spoken by God, that doesn\u2019t mean we can see the whole story He\u2019s telling. For one thing, we don\u2019t know how it ends. Before<\/em> the Resurrection, what would the apostles have thought if they asked what God was trying to tell them with the Crucifixion?<\/p>\n

[ETA: I knew I\u2019d forget something!] The focus on God\u2019s uses for pain can make God seem like an evil Rube Goldberg, designing sainthood machines made of cancer fangs. I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s the best way to view the possibility that God uses our pain for specific purposes which we can sometimes discern\u2013God can have a lot of ways of showing us stuff and maybe pain could be one of those ways. We might not be looking at the other ways; and anyway I don\u2019t think saying \u201cthere are things you can only learn through pain\u201d is false. (I\u2019m not sure<\/em> it\u2019s true, but it rings true.) I\u2019m also very open to the possibility that discerning the purposes of events is a specific spiritual gift which others have more than I do.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019d already learned to respond to most challenges and catastrophes by saying not, \u201cGod is trying to tell me something,\u201d like pain is a code, but, \u201cThere is a way to serve God in every situation.\u201d Suffering can be offered up for others; it can change us, make us more humble or more loving; it\u2019s an opportunity to trust in God; when the suffering is a result of societal crimes and \u201cstructural sin\u201d it can be an opportunity to fight for justice. These are all ways of serving God through pain. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s best to think of these acts as revealing the meaning which was always embedded by God in our suffering, or as imbuing our suffering with meaning by imbuing it with love.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"