Your God is too easy...

At the risk of sounding somewhat like Jared Wilson's book title, which is not my intention, especially since I haven't read the book, five words have been running through my head the past little while:

Your God is too easy.

It started out with somebody pointing out to me that my relationship with God shouldn't be so hard, that maybe I don't have enough faith in a God who loves me just as I am, and it ate at me all week.

My God is too easy, but in different ways than that. I don't tone God down to ease my discomforts. I don't say, "Why would God not want me to do this if He and I both know it would help me in this or that way?" I don't say, "I know that having a carefully controlled fling would help me get over some of the traumas of my past, and I've prayed on it and God is ok with it." No. Just no.

My God is work. And He's not work as in that I have to serve and stop swearing and so on and so on. Nor is He work because I have to be somebody I'm not. He's work because His righteousness points out my crap. And I know God loves me now and He loved me yesterday too, rather than waiting for me to become a better person first and then reciprocating with affection. No, God loves me even when I'm all busted up and continue in my mistakes, but that's just it- now I have mistakes to contend with.

No matter what God you create for yourself, there are things in the Bible that just click with us on a spiritual level even if we don't agree with them. What I mean is, when God says sex is the intertwining of souls, we can scoff and point out our one night stands, but deep down, we know it's true. We know that those people we slept with are somehow apart from other people in our lives. We know it because no matter how much we deny it, we feel it.

So I can say that bit of the Bible was misinterpreted, mistranslated or was meant for people of a different time, but I'll feel the truth. And the difference between an easy God and a God who works on you is the reaction you have to that truth.

What is it?
Is it just Christian guilt?
Or is the negative reaction you have there because you know it all means something more and you're taking that meaning for granted?

If I have my fling, I won't feel Christian guilt. I won't come home and shower till the hot water heater is empty in an effort to feel clean again. There really is no difference in me right now versus me right after sleeping with somebody I don't care about. We're the same person. If I sleep with somebody next Thursday, that person, the one who would sleep with somebody next Thursday, is also me now. Do you know what I mean?

Behaviors don't just happen. They grow out of our own deep-seeded ideologies. We can't feel guilty for those. Instead, that is where we're supposed to lean on God to change our heart and make it so He is enough.

It almost makes me believe that we shouldn't do any behavior modification at all until we believe in it and really understand the root of the behavior. Why? Because there's this idea in society today that if you go to the gym for twenty-one days straight, it will become a habit. It will become something that is just natural to your day. And if you apply that to bad behaviors, then you really could program yourself to not do certain things, and when a new undesirable behavior takes the old behavior's place, you can conquer that too. And the end result is that you live an entire lifetime skipping from one behavior to the next without ever coming to the conclusion that these behaviors are masking a giant idol in your life.

If I say that having a fling is bad and it's a behavior I want to avoid, then I'll do whatever is in my power to avoid it. And I might mess up sometimes and be all, "Oh, well I did the behavior. Bad me." And I'll dive back into programmed abstinence and resort to gardening, watching movies, staying busy or buying things to not think about it or worse yet, remove myself from the presence of men entirely. Just being in a room with one puts me at risk, right? Temptation... Can't risk temptation...

I hate that. I'm the kind of girl who wants to be in the room with temptation and fail nine hundred and ninety-nine times until one day, that thousandth time, I realize what I'm doing and walk away. Walk towards God instead. I'd rather that than walk away the first time and be all proud of myself for being so strong. I'd rather get crushed if that crushing brings me closer to God.

So no, I'm not a behavior modification girl and that is why my God is difficult. I want God to get at the roots of my behaviors. I want God to win. But at the same time, I know my inner dialog is incredibly combative. I know I am going to mess up. I know I'm saying, "God guide me," on one side and, "God, don't watch this part," on the other. I know I'm asking, "God help me overcome this," all while demanding He not touch it because I'm not ready yet.

I'm not abstaining from sex because it's in the rule book. I'm actually not abstaining at all. I'm not having sex, but not because I don't want to and not because I think God's plan is perfect. I'm not having sex because I'm far too busted up for it right now. I can't let anybody close to me because of what happened. But I want to. I want to be able to again. And God is supposed to heal me, not some guy who I overcome mistrust around for a few hours. And God knows I'm fighting, both for Him to win and for Him to lose, but He knows I'm fighting. He knows what He's asking of me is not just about this behavior today or tomorrow or next week or whenever. He knows it's a lifetime of crap that I have to sort through just to overcome this one thing.

My God isn't easy. My God works me hard. And I wouldn't have it any other way because life as I've lived it has never been easy, and if God guides me into some hard patches that help me grow in a positive way instead of the way the hard patches I've brought upon myself have broken me down, then why would I give that up?

I'd rather God kick my ass so I would never consider giving this body, my body, the body entrusted to me, to a stranger who doesn't care one way or the other as even a plausible option, let alone one that I expect to bring some sort of healing.

But I'm not there yet, so the ass-kicking continues.

Bring it on... I guess. :D