No Divine Speed Trap--January 12, 2022

No Divine Speed Trap--January 12, 2022

"No one, when tempted, should say, 'I am being tempted by God;' for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one." [James 1:13]

So here's something that probably needs to be said: God is not rooting for you to fail.

God is not trying to trick you, entrap you, get you to stumble, or lure you into disaster.  God is neither the "good cop" from the standard movie trope, trying to lull you into a false sense of security to let your defenses down, nor the "bad cop" trying to intimidate you into revealing some terrible crime.  God is not seeking your downfall.

In fact, God isn't seeking anybody's downfall.  Not even the person you like least.

On the days when we are feeling the most threadbare, it's worth remembering that:  God isn't plotting against you.  God isn't your enemy.  And to hear James tell it, God isn't sitting up in some heavenly loge seat like at a spectator sport betting on your defeat.  

Sometimes we tell ourselves things like that. We imagine that the rotten things that happen in our lives, our communities, or our world are sent from God against us (or against the people we don't like), and that God's intention is to bait us into some kind of crime or sin or infraction for which we can then be zapped.  Honestly, I think sometimes our pictures of God are very much like that: as some kind of Celestial Highway Patrol speed trap, sitting camouflaged at the side of the road, just lying in wait for us to go a hair over the speed limit in order to emerge with righteous punishment for doing 56 in a 55. We assume God's top concern is smiting sinners in the name of preserving some kind of retributive, punitive sense of "justice," like God has a certain number of tickets to write each month.  

And once we fool ourselves into that kind of thinking, we'll constantly be in fear of messing up... fear of being caught... fear of being God zapping or smiting or damning us. And that does terrible things to our souls, honestly.  When I'm constantly looking over my shoulder in fear of a divine lightning bolt, rather than trusting that God is committed to being our ally and advocate rather than our adversary.  When I'm constantly worried about being punished for bad behavior, I'm always going to be trying to make others look worse in the hopes of being graded on a curve, so I'll be constantly pointing fingers at the people I want to look down on.  When I'm convinced that God is more interested in racking up convictions than restoring us when we've messed up, I'll operate with the same warped understanding of "justice" in my own life toward other people.  I'll only be interested in seeing people punished, not mending what is broken and restoring what needs to be set right.

Here's a case in point: in a lot of cities, it has become common to install arm-rest-like dividers on park benches and sharp spikes under bridges, explicitly for the purpose of preventing the homeless from being able to sleep in these places at night.  In the name of keeping public space neat and tidy, the problem of being without shelter has now become something to be punished for.  And rather than asking, "How can we make sure nobody who needs shelter has to resort to bridges or benches?" it has become easier to ask, "How can wait make it painful for people to try to sleep in these places?"  It's an approach that seems more interested in punishing what is called "illegal" rather than restoring what is wrong in a situation and setting it right again.  

So let's be clear about it now: there is no divine speed trap, and there are no self-righteous spikes under the bridge.

James tells us here that's not how God works, because that's not really what "justice" is, either.  God isn't setting us up for failure or luring us into a trap, because God isn't merely looking to meet some quota of sins punished.  God doesn't have any need to look "tough on bad guys" to get political support or to puff up the divine ego, either.  So God isn't out to get you.  When we find that we have stumbled in life and messed up, James invites us to see that God is the One holding a hand out to us to grab onto to help us back up, not that God had stuck out a foot to make us trip in the first place.

Knowing that means we don't have to be constantly afraid of messing up, or covering up our failures, or looking to make others seem worse by comparison.  We can own our mess-ups, seek to set things right again, and trust that God is more interested in restoring us and mending what is broken than in condemning us.

So maybe we need to say more than just "God isn't rooting for you to fail."  Maybe it needs to be said even more clearly and strongly:  "God is seeking to lift you back up when you, and to see you thrive... along with everybody else."

With that assurance, we don't have keep looking over our shoulders--we can look straight ahead with hope.

Lord God, give us the confidence to trust your goodness for us, and for all.