Or so says Christian Ray Lewis, veteran linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens.
I love the way Ray Lewis plays football. A hard-nosed, no-excuse, disciplined player, sure to be inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame when he retires.
However, when it comes to Lewis’s outspokenness about Christianity, my love quickly cools. I don’t have a problem with Lewis being a Christian as much as I have a problem with Lewis interjecting Christian drivel into media interviews.
Over the weekend the nineteen year old brother of Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. Smith played in the emotionally charged game on Sunday and played a crucial part in the Ravens defeating the New England Patriots.
Mary Smith,Torrey Smith’s Mom, said, “He wanted to get out there and win that game for his brother and the Lord made that happen for him.”
It seems that the “Lord” was everywhere in this tragedy except where it mattered, keeping a nineteen year old man from dying in a motorcycle accident.
I understand that calling of the Lord is a coping mechanism. It is a way of finding strength in, and making sense of, tragic circumstances. I have no criticism for those who appeal to religion when life turns on them. I have no desire to rob people of whatever it is that helps them make it through the darkness of night.
The bigger issue for me is the general idea that permeates of our culture, the idea that, to put it in Ray Lewis’s words, God Don’t Make No Mistakes.
Behind Lewis’s profession is the notion that the Christian God is the Sovereign of the universe. God has a purpose and plan that he is working out and that includes people dying in accidents like the accident that tragically killed Torrey Smith’s brother.
Connected to this notion is that the Christian God’s purpose and plan must NEVER be questioned. God is perfect and he makes no mistakes. When we begin to question God’s so-called perfect actions we are quickly reminded that, God’s ways are not our ways. In other words, shut up, God knows what he is doing.
This is one of the reasons I left Christianity, this notion that God is perfect in all his ways and that we as fallible, frail, created human beings must submit to, and accept, anything and everything that God does. (or doesn’t do) No matter what tragedy, adversity, or trial comes our way:
- It is happening for God’s own purpose and glory
- God is trying to get our attention
- God is making us stronger
- God is chastising us for disobedience
- God is preparing us for an eternity with him
The Bible says in Romans 8:28-31:
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
The God who don’t make no mistakes is a God who foreknows and predestinates everything in our lives. We are called according to HIS purpose and everything in our lives works together for good. (not that everything is good but everything works together for good)
This is why Paul could say to those who dared to question the actions of God:
Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? (Romans 9:20)
I am a rational human being. With my senses I take in the natural world I live in. As a Christian I was forced to interpret what I saw and heard through what the Bible said about God’s purpose and plan for the universe. I was forced to ignore what I thought was true and instead I accepted what an ancient book told me was true.
I came to a place where I could no longer accept this way of viewing the world. Everything I saw and heard told me that God was not working out his purpose and plan. I came to see that the Christian God was no different than the Baal. In 1 Kings 18 Elijah said of Baal:
And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked.
When Baal didn’t show up, Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal and said that Baal must be busy talking to someone, taking a shit, on vacation, or sleeping.
And this is exactly how I came to see the Christian God. He is nowhere to be found. The world cries out in pain and all that is heard is silence. Everywhere we look we see pain, suffering, and death. Where is God?
When it comes to the big things of life the Christian God is conveniently paralyzed and silent. Now, according to Christians, in the small things of life God can be found everywhere. While God cannot be troubled with matters of pain, suffering, and death, he is johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to determining who wins football games and who wins an election.
Such thinking is cognitive dissonance on the grandest of scale. Why would anyone want to worship a God who can’t keep a nineteen year old man in the prime of his life from falling off a motorcycle but who can easily helps a Christian find their lost car keys?
If I were to believe in a God it would not be the God don’t make no mistakes God of Ray Lewis. At best, God set everything in motion and said, there ya go boys and girls, do with it what you will.
A personal God that controls our lives, a God that does everything for our good, a God that has the whole world in the palm of his hand? Such a God is not supported by the evidence that those with a mind not clouded by religious faith can clearly see.
I understand WHY the God of Ray Lewis is so appealing, however I find no comfort or peace from believing a myth. Life is what it is. Shit happens. People die. Tragedy is part of the human experience and it will come our way whether we want it to or not.
I find no comfort in writing these words. I wish I had a magic wand I could wave over people who are suffering and make all their pain go away, but all I have to give them is my sympathy and support. This is all any of us have to give.
I think your sympathy and support are better than those words that ‘it’s God’s will’ or ‘he’s in a better place’ or whatever words Christians feel they have to blurt out. People need empathy, not rote statements, religious or otherwise.
“Why would anyone want to worship a God who can’t keep a nineteen year old man in the prime of his life from falling off a motorcycle but who can easily helps a Christian find their lost car keys?”
In my family (yeah, we’re mockers, every damn last one of us) whenever there’s a huge natural disaster like a hurricane or tornado or tsunami we all exchange glances and say something like, “God must have been off looking for Grandma’s earrings or her car keys and NOT PAYING ATTENTION. POOF, there goes another 5 thousand people. Yay, God.”
Hi Bruce,
If God has predestined everything (which some passages of the bible teach), then he has predestined all the rapes and murders that occur; all the little children who die from hunger, malnourishment and disease; all the people killed in earthquakes and Tsunamis etc, , so it seems impossible to fathom how these things could be for our good.
Paul simply made a mistake when he says “all things work together for good to them who love the Lord”, since Christians are sometimes murdered and raped, they sometimes die from starvation, malnutrition and disease and also die in Tsunarmies and earthquakes.
Has God gone to sleep? Perhaps he is simply compassion, mercy and kindness that we see displayed in human action but, then, this is not the bible god of bible Fundamentalism.
Shalom,
John Arthur
You have taken Calvinism and all it attendant doctrines to its logical conclusion.
The advocates of Arminianism don’t get off the hook either. They must explain how God can idly sit by while humans savage, rape, and murder.
Ah. I now see what this site “really” is. It’s just a place where a bunch of God haters can get together and Rambo away on their keyboards at that “big ole’ mean God…errr uh yeah I forgot – he doesn’t exist.” ;-D
But I’ll make up my own site where I can make fun of someone who doesn’t exist. After yearsssss of saying he does.
Hopefully Bruce your site is more than this, you say it is, you say you talk about all kinds of things. But if this was a harbinger of things to come here – then I will let you all babble about someone who doesn’t exist.
ps- Remember Sam Kinison{sp}??? Be careful big boy.
Gregg,
Please do make your own site.
If you are going to comment here then comment on what I write and not on me, my motives, or the good people who comment here.
You need to know this…you are not the reason I blog. I have no interest in making Christians into atheists. My focus is on those who are considering leaving Christianity or who have already left.
I have little patience for Christians who evangelize or do their best to remind some of us of why we left Christianity. Either make your comments revelent to what I wrote or this is your last comment.
On this blog I am God.
” Now, according to Christians, in the small things of life God can be found everywhere”
Actually, that would be according to IFBs and some other tradition- and preacher-believing people. I believe — For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Romans 8:22
Not every Christian thinks that God is at our beck and call. Often he lets us stand or fall on our own. I believe God has a plan for mankind, but the plan for the individual is much looser.
You say, “often He lets us stand or fall on our own.” If he is doing the letting isn’t it he who has control? Is there anything, I speak from the Christian perspective not my own, that is not according to his purpose? And if there are, how do you square this with the verses that say, for example, that God orders our very steps.
Are there things that we can do that God does not know or things that surprise him? Now if you are an open-theist then I can fully understand such a view but if not…
Just testifying to my own experience-all the Christian women, at least, did think that God was intimately involved in their everyday lives-helping them be a good parent, helping them find their car keys, cure cancer, making the stoplights work in their favor, everything, laws about abortion, gay marriage, politics, them somehow having enough money or food, car repairs, all of it.
Prayer was all about these things. And if it’s not about a personal relationship where God helps you and cares about you, then I don’t think many people would be to into that kind of God-one who’s remote, who doesn’t care if your child is dying or you can’t find your keys-why worship a God who doesn’t care?
To me, he obviously doesn’t care, but I think many people can’t stand that idea, so they pretend that he didn’t have anything to do with the motorcycle wreck, but the moment AFTER the wreck, he cares deeply. Makes no sense. But I see the purpose of that kind of thinking.
It all reminds me of an abusive relationship-you depend on the abuser (they have all the power) so you enjoy the good parts, put up with the bad stuff, and makes excuses for them or pretend in your mind that they are something which they clearly are not.
“the Lord made that happen for him”-Okay, so, would he rather win some stupid football game or have his brother alive? To me, these are just games people play in their minds! The point of the game is to have some kind of feeling at the end that things are okay after all. We want everything to somehow be okay in the end, after all is said and done. We don’t like tragic, meaningless endings, so we MUST make it okay in our minds.
If you look at it starkly and objectively, this football player has a dead brother and a won game. That’s what he actually has in reality.
Sorry to go on and on, but it’s like we’ve been told a story, so everything that happens after that must somehow fit into that story. People will NOT question the original story. It’s like a scientist who has his pet theory and he is then determined to fit all facts into that theory, whether they fit or not. He’ll MAKE them fit.
It’s the same unproductive loop that became one of the many reasons I left. The conversation goes something like this:
“If we are made in God’s image then why do so many of us commit the most horrible, unspeakable acts imaginable to each other?”
- That’s not God’s fault. Humans are imperfect and they sin.”
“But God created us.”
- We originally ate the (metaphorical or literal) apple and fell from grace”
“Why would he put that there in the first place?”
- You see, it’s like God’s your parent. He can only try to point you in the right direction, you just have to eventually learn to be good through His example
“Would you give your child a fork and tell him not to put it in the electrical socket that you haven’t child-proofed?”
- You just don’t understand. God gave us the temptation of sin so we wouldn’t all just be mindless, autonomous robots with no freewill
“So God just created us for shits and giggles? Why would you want to worship such a being in the first place?”
- You can’t comprehend the mind of God
…and so on, and so on. It’s such an abhorrent thought exercise, because all of the logical conclusions I reach using the Bible as a reference put God as either a sadistic asshole, an indifferent being or a really moody and emotionally insecure spouse.