Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Is God a risk?

I have an aversion to risk. I play it up like I'm an adventurer and my life may even look like I am, but I meticulously plan every detail. I like to know for sure that the choices I make will benefit me and not cause me heart-break or cost me my emotional comfort. This aversion to risk plays itself out most devastatingly in my spiritual life. I want my relationship with God to be nailed down, taped up, wrapped in twine, inside a nice little box with a bow on top. I don't want to have to guess about anything. This, I often think to myself will be the most meaningful, secure way to live my life as a Believer. Because obviously if you have to ask too many questions about something or if it looks and feels a little too much like a real relationship, then it can't possibly be true. But Daniel Taylor in The Myth of Certainty thinks otherwise:

"No significant area of life is free from risk. It is a key ingredient in every accomplishment and every relationship. Whenever a decision is required, there is a risk. Wherever we must act, there is a risk. Wherever people intertwine their lives, there is risk. Should we expect it to be any different in our relationship with transcendence? Why should we insist on being certain about God, on having proof of His existence, or on having unmistakable absolutes on which to build a faith when none of these is compatible with being the finite creatures God has created? If risk is an inescapable part of the daily life of the businessman or woman, the politician, the farmer, the artist, if it is at the heart of all meaningful relationships between people, then we should not be chagrined or embarrassed to find it also at the heart of a relationship with God."

So what about you? Would classify your relationship with God as a risk? Why or why not?

2 comments:

  1. Here's an interesting thought I had while reading this:

    When it comes down to it, you're making a choice between two lives - your life here on Earth or your life in heaven. Choosing a relationship with God means choosing to give up your life on Earth for him, but choosing to deny him means giving up a life in heaven with him forever.

    What God asks of us is not easy, because you aren't simply choosing between a good life and a bad one, you're choosing between the happiness you can see and the happiness you can't see. If you choose the latter, and you're wrong, you've wasted the one life you had.

    What is it that convinces you that this other world (heaven) exists? What makes it better than the world you know? And what is it that keeps you here, in this life, that prevents you from moving on to something better?

    I like your site Charissa! Keep posting!

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  2. Those are really fantastic questions! Here's what popped up when I read them:
    Heaven is not just a place I long for when I die. It's something real and tangible now- just not complete yet. The Lord's prayer says, "Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." We are charged as Believers to pursue and savor the Kingdom of Heaven right now. This life is not just something we have to survive to get to heaven, this life means something. But you're right, sometimes it comes down to choosing happiness I can't see yet over "happiness" I can. Although I've figured out from experience the happiness I can see doesn't usually satisfy for long. This life is/will be hard. But I get these little tiny glimpses, little tastes of "heaven" that are enough for me to long for the Kingdom to finally be complete. I'm not 100% convinced that the "other world" exists. No one is, but nothing whets my appetite for it like knowing Jesus does. Ultimately I believe for, hope for, and trust for my complete satisfaction some day.

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