Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels.

• 2 Timothy 2:23

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is noone who does good.

• Psalm 53:1

“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

• Ephesians 4:26-27

A few weeks ago, I put out a short story about Georges and Jochebed Evident wanting to adopt Clarence “Clay” Bell.  His mother wanted to regain custody, but she had only just gotten out of drug/alcohol rehab.  She had no job.  She had no permanent domicile.  Pink Lady gave her a job and an apartment and hooked her up with an AA group and found her a sponsor.  Now it was just a matter of time before Child Services could rule that she was a fit mother.  In the meantime, the Evidents would be the foster parents.

My usual boiler plate said that Pink Lady was recording these projects to show how God was at work, and Jochebed gave a shortened testimony where she said it was God’s providence that she survived when her four little boys were killed right in front of her.  That was only there to show that Clay was roughly the age that her oldest might be.

There was absolutely no preaching, but I got a notification that I had a pending comment.  It was not on my notification board, just a red dot on Comments on the sidebar.

The comment was five words, one was a contraction, but you might say six.  The last word was a four-letter curse word, a verb but used as a noun.  The comment was “God doesn’t exist you ****”  Notice, no punctuations, but the words were spelled correctly.

I am thinking that WordPress handled this e-mail, definitely “hate speech” but in most countries hating Christians is allowed.  Even without capitalization and punctuation, there is deep anger in the words, and calling a WordPress contributor by a vile curse word probably led to WordPress wanting me to handle the comment away from the post itself.  Otherwise, I should see it on the notification pulldown bar.

I remember what someone who used to write a daily blog entry said, “I always approve comments.  I always respond.  Maybe I can reach them.”  I even remember reading some of her comment “arguments” with her being nice and the non-believer not being nice.  When they start off by calling you a curse word, it only gets worse.

I am not an apologist.  The verses above came to mind.  I should not enter into a foolish argument, or an argument with a fool.  And David defines a fool by the biblical definition – someone who does not believe in God.  Mentioning this to an angry non-believer would be like throwing gasoline on a bonfire.

I deleted the comment.  It has not been removed from the trash can.

Then, I heard from the Holy Spirit.  Maybe this person is angry because he is deeply hurt.

My mind started running back through nearly six decades of being a Christian.  Why would someone who grew up in a “Christian Home” turn away from God and do so with that much anger.  My short story only mentioned God a couple of times and then not as the primary agent in the story.  But for a Christian, we always see God in everything.

I have seen teenagers ask God for something in a prayer and when the answer was “No”, they turned from God with resentment.  That could be a death of a loved one.  That could be Mom and Dad refusing to buy the teenager the car they wanted.  It could be that Dad lost his job and the family lost everything before a good job was obtained.

You can explain that God is not a vending machine.  You cannot make a prayer, slide it into the payment slot, and have a “Yes” answer because God really loves you.  God really loves you, but He knows that the other people involved in your request may not be at a point to deal with your request.  And you need to know that God does not work for you.  Romans 8:28 says work for the good, not that things will always be good.  And the condition is that we love God.  God does not do things for our good when we only love God as long as He never says “No.”

The philosophical arguments might apply.  The classic argument is that if God is good, then why is there bad in the world.  And if God is good and He loves us and He is all powerful, why do we stub our toe, get COVID while visiting the grandchildren, and spend the children’s portion of the inheritance on over-priced medication.  The manufacturer is price gouging the “miracle cure” for COVID since the government is no longer subsidizing the drug.  I took six pills per day, and each pill was well over $20 per pill, after the insurance company nearly cut the price in half.  They could have been solid gold, and they would have not cost that much. But I digress.

A believer sees God in everything, even the bad stuff.  What will I do when the next test of faith comes?

The non-believer has the same thing happen, but relying on God is not available.  They either get angry or they have a panic attack.  I guess you could do both.  And then, the resentment sets in.

If you are one of those who does not do well with tests of faith, you need to “test your faith.”  What do you believe?  I am writing vespers services on Wednesday afternoon on the book of Job.  Job demands that God explain why this happened to him, but Job never loses faith in God, even with three, and then a fourth, friends claiming Job to be the worst sinner on the face of the earth – evidenced by Job’s suffering.

God comes to Job and is not gentle in His rebuke.  But then, Job is restored to good health.  Job has more sons and daughters, etc.  Why?  Job never blamed God for his suffering.  But He knew that God knew about it and God had the power to fix it.

That is how we respond, that is a true believer’s response.  We endure the suffering with God’s help.  We praise God in the suffering and afterwards.

But the same thing happening to a non-believer, or the one non-believer in a family of believers, and the resentment starts to grow until the resentment is the only god that you worship.

So, I have one more person to add to my prayer list.  He calls me a four-letter curse word to show that I am his enemy.  But God told me to love my enemies.  Thus, I pray for him that this anger subsides and someone is there to talk to him about Jesus and how God loves him.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.