May 16 • God Thoughts
Day 677 I listened this week as a sex addict talked about how mad he was at God, or god, or that higher power thing. It didn't sound like he was angry at God for making him a sex addict, but more on general principle for creating a world where shit like this happens. Yet there he was, in a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting, extolling the virtues of the 12-Step program in helping him control his addiction.
Self-centered as I am, I was first struck by my ability to sit quietly and not rush to the rescue of my Higher Power, whose name was being slandered by a ne'er-do-well. My evangelical friends would probably be disappointed in me for not jumping in, but there is a time and a place, and this wasn't it. So I'm patting myself on the back for gaining serenity when I eventually grasp what's going on, or at least one possibility.
God doesn't need us to understand His ways, to agree with them, or even to like Him in the fog of whatever battle He is helping us fight. What I do does not change what He does. He does what He wants for whom He wants when He wants to do it. That's kind of the definition of a being with the power to do what we think He has the power to do.
Does God care what we think? I think so. It seems reasonable. But if the highest power in the universe is reliant on my feelings for living out His preferences, how powerful is He?
I had to smile at the idiot who rants about God's decisions as if he could possibly have the insights needed for running a world, much less creating one. And then I came back into the present. I stopped thinking about me and started listening to my blessed friend in the meeting just in time to hear him acknowledge that he needed all of this that God has made available to him.
My words, not his. –JR