Disillusioned By God & His People: Part I

A little over three years ago, popular author Anne Rice made front page news by posting to her Facebook page that she was leaving Christianity.  The news was surprising, especially since she had so publicly abandoned atheism for Christianity just years earlier in her novel Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, a compelling memoir tracing the winding path that took her from atheism to faith in Jesus.

Yet, here she was, writing, "Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else." 

Sadly, Rice isn't the only person I know who has turned her back on religion...and maybe on her faith.  While there are a multitude of reasons many turn their back on both religion and God (two separate things in my book), two seem to top the list--the actions of Christians and the trials of this life.

I know too many people who have been hurt by professing Christians or who have witnessed too much hypocrisy in the church to the point where they incorrectly equate these people's actions to be representative of true Christianity.  Then, there are the others whose life circumstances have been incredibly difficult to the point where they've chosen to believe no God of goodness would allow such heartache.  

Both groups have said "enough" and turned their backs as they make their own path across a barren desert of their own choosing.

Abraham and Sarah's servant, Hagar, would fall into both these groups--those disenchanted with the actions of those who claim to be God's people and those whose life is cruel is unfair.

A day was coming when she would turn her back on God for these very reasons.  

But before then, Hagar met the Lord.

It is easy to look at the servant Hagar's life and conclude that if anyone had a grievance against God for the hand she'd been dealt, it was her.  Once a slave in Egypt, she had been casually given to Abraham, forcing her to leave behind likely the only country she'd ever known, friends, and perhaps even family to join these foreigners whose customs, God, and language were strange to her.

Then her new mistress, Sarah, decided to offer Hagar to her husband Abraham so the two of them could conceive an heir.  As was the life of a slave, Hagar had no choice in the matter.  She couldn't refuse.  And she had nowhere to run even if she did.  

Yet, perhaps she realized that with this forced coupling came her chance to become more than what she was--a somebody in the eyes of her master and perhaps even more...to escape slavery for a better life.  The wheels started turning in her head, how to work this to her advantage.    

Those dreams must have seemed close enough to touch because once Hagar became pregnant with Abraham's son, she grew quite haughty.  Scripture records, "and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight" (Gen. 16:4).  Down South, we'd say she had grown too big for her britches, vaulting herself before her mistress in her own self-importance.  

In Hagar's mind, she had succeeded where Sarah had failed.  She had provided what Abraham wanted most when Sarah could not.  She was the one who should be pampered and held in high regard, what with the child of promise (or so she believed) growing inside her swelling belly.  

I imagine she began to act the role of the queen bee around camp, perhaps speaking disdainfully to her mistress, perhaps refusing to do her mistress' bidding or grumbling as she did, and perhaps even giving orders, herself.  

If she had hoped Abraham would stand up for her, would exalt her out of her lowliness as a servant now that she carried his heir, she was shaken from this delusion in short order.   Her place in Abraham's "kingdom" hadn't changed.  

Surely to her surprise, when Sarah complained about Hagar's attitude, Abraham refused to intervene in what he likely considered women's troubles.  In one simple sentence, he gave Sarah carte blanche to treat Hagar as she wished, saying "Behold, your maid is in your power; do to her what is good in your sight" (v.6a).

 So, Sarah did what one would expect and knocked her servant down to size: Scripture records that Sarah "treated her harshly, and she [Hagar] fled from her presence" (v. 6b).

Where Hagar expected to go, I'm not sure, but I doubt she had anywhere particular in mind.  Her heightened emotional state brought on by pregnancy combined with the dream-crushing disappointment of her child's father refusing to stand up for her and exalt her above his own wife (that should have been expected)--Hagar had been shoved firmly back into her social place and couldn't deal with what she perceived as a demotion.  So, she just ran into the nowhere of the wilderness.

 Yet, there in her despair is where God found Hagar.  

There, the angel of the Lord met her, saying, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority...I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count....Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because the Lord has given heed to your affliction" (v. 9-11).

These words to return to Sarah and submit must have chafed even while the other part of the angel's message left her feeling vindicated. Her descendants would be too many to count.  

Her.  A woman.  A slave.  A foreigner living in exile from her homeland.  Her descendants would be too many to count.

Then, "she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, 'You are a God who sees'” (v. 13).

Hagar's mistress and even Abraham may have seen her as nothing more than a servant for breeding an heir.   But the God of Abraham saw her. He heard her.  She mattered to Him.

In this instant, she met the God of Abraham.  I believe it was then that Yahweh became her God as well, for Hagar obeyed the angel's command and returned to Sarah where she gave birth to Ishmael.  

Whether Hagar returned with a sincerely submissive spirit (I doubt it), whether the Lord's promise was enough to tuck away in her heart to get her through the daily grind of life as a servant, or whether Sarah and Hagar came to some sort of truce, whether voiced or unspoken--I don't know.  But life moved forward without recorded incident. Scripture swiftly leaps over Ismael's entire childhood, not mentioning Hagar again until Isaac's weaning when her son Ishmael was sixteen or seventeen years old.   

Did Hagar have reason to be disillusioned with a God who not only allowed her to remain a slave but who also instructed her to return to a mistress who mistreated her?  Did she have reason to be disillusioned with a God whose professed chosen people were allowed to afflict their slaves and use them as they wished, seemingly without consequences?

Sure.  Abraham and Sarah didn't act like we would expect God's people to act.  And God didn't miraculously change Hagar's circumstances once she met Him.

Yet, here, she accepted God for who He was, not for who she wanted or even imagined Him to be.  She also accepted God based on her encounter with Him and not because of her encounters with others who professed to be His followers.

And therein lies a lesson for us all in how we should relate to God.  As hard as it may be, we cannot allow others' actions to determine whether we do or don't seek a relationship with God.  Also, when God doesn't act according to our expectations, we must ask ourselves if we are serving the God of Scripture or a God of our making and then choose to turn towards Him and not away from Him.

To do the contrary is the equivalent of walking aimlessly through that wilderness where Hagar first ran, a dry, barren place without the living water to quench our thirst that only can be found in Christ Jesus.

When You Want to Throw in the Towel

I know what it's like to be bitter. I have spent near sleepless nights dreaming of what I would say to the one whose lies have caused my family such pain. I have cried in anger over the unforgivable injustice my husband has suffered, have questioned God's justice, have felt the bile welling up in my soul to choke off any forgiveness I had already offered but would need to extend again and again...and again.

Even so, I also know what it's like to let it go and move on, to serve God and accept His just decision to not act...even when my circumstances don't change.

Although I'm neck-deep in the book of Jude, my head keeps turning to look further down the rabbit trail of Moses' act of defying God, the action that kept him from stepping foot into the Promised Land.

Leading a group of malcontents could not have been the easiest job in the world. In fact, except for the meeting with God face to face part, it sounds pretty miserable. Throughout Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the Israelites were constantly complaining about something--no food, daily manna but no meat. Add 2.5 million "are we there yet's," to the mix, and Moses might have been able to blame them for his prematurely grey hair, had being in God's immediate presence not taken care of that already.

The Israelites' complaints may have started differently, but they always seemed to end the same way--"we might as well have just stayed slaves in Egypt."

This time when Moses finally lost his temper and sinned against God, "There was no water for the congregation" (Num. 20:2). And so, this new generation did what their fathers before them had done 38 years before--come to Moses to complain: "The people thus contended with Moses and spoke, saying, 'If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the LORD! Why then have you brought the LORD’S assembly into this wilderness, for us and our beasts to die here? Why have you made us come up from Egypt, to bring us in to this wretched place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, nor is there water to drink'" (v. 3-5).

My humanity would have felt like calling down a lightening rod to grind them into powder right then and there, but like always, Moses went to bat for the people. In the very next verse, he and Aaron "came in from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting and fell on their faces" (v. 6).

God was clear. Moses was to "speak to the rock" (v. 8). But as we well know, Moses did not. Instead, he "struck the rock" (v. 11). It seems even a man who meets face to face with a holy God on a daily basis still must contend with his own humanity.

But why? What was different after 38 years* to make Moses "not believ[e] Me [God], treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel" (v. 12). Why did Moses' anger at the people's discontent boil over into disobedience? Was it a rash act of anger? Or was it a conscious choice to disobey, to strike versus speak?

Scripture doesn't record Moses' heart. Yet, though man saw only the action, God did see the heart--the heart of both Moses who struck the rock and of Aaron who did not, both hearts which were condemned for lack of faith in God and disrespect for His holiness.

There is one major difference about this people's complaint than the others, something mentioned one verse before the lack of water scene plays out: "Then the sons of Israel, the whole congregation, came to the wilderness of Zin in the first month; and the people stayed at Kadesh. Now Miriam died there and was buried there" (v. 1).

No matter their differences over Moses' choice of a wife or their differences caused by the time Miriam challenged his authority so that he had to pray for God to spare her from leprosy--this was his sister, the one who had helped her mother hide him from Pharaoh's swordsmen, who had watched from the reeds as he floated down the Nile in a basket made of reeds towards a princess. This was his sister, his helper, the "prophetess" who had led the women in worship with "the timbrel in her hand" after Moses held up his rod to part the Red Sea (Ex. 15:20).

Could it be that Moses was still mourning his sister's death when the people started complaining about lack of water? Could his human grief have played a part in his anger against a people with an "It's all about me attitude" lack of sympathy? Or could human grief have even played out as lack of faith in God?

I don't know. But what I do know for certain is that after God chastened Moses, he didn't walk away. Even after Aaron's death at the end of the chapter so that Moses was now without brother or sister, even then, Moses did not abandon this stiff-necked people.

Surely he was lonely to now be one of three remaining aged ones in a group of youngsters. Surely he was more than a little disappointed to not be allowed in the Promised Land after dragging several stadiums worth of people around the wilderness for forty years. A lesser man would have been bitter, would have turned his back on God when He said "No Promised Land for you!"

But Moses continued to follow the Lord, to lead the Israelites all the way around Edom to the Jordan River where they would finally cross over and take possession of the covenant land of promise.

This is what should give us pause--that Moses accepted God's decision as just, that he did not let his disappointment get in the way of his ministry, his divine appointment in God's kingdom plan.

Even with the Holy Spirit residing within us, even meeting with God on a daily basis, it's easy to become disappointed or bitter over circumstances, and leave what God has called us to do, be, or even God, Himself.

Let's strive harder to be like Moses. To not walk away when anyone else would.



*Date per Matthew Henry Complete Commentary