The God I'm seeking.

BY HEiDI PRAHL

Lover of Jesus, my family, really good coffee, and all things Chicago. I’m a living, breathing paradox.

I stopped going to church several years ago. It wasn’t that we’d had a falling out. We just moved several times in as many years and never found a home church like the one we’d left. 

For a while, I listened to sermons online, but even as that fell to the wayside, I never gave up my morning Bible time.

Removing the voice of the church that had supplied me with a weekly sheet of paper for sermon notes left just me, my Bible, and my colorful Sharpie pens. I began to realize that the God I was reading about in my Bible was somewhat different than the one they taught about in church.

It was never said out loud, but it became clear that the God they taught was what I call a “vending machine God.” You deposit your good works, your voting record, your TV watchlist, and your Internet search history, and God doles out favor and blessing based on how well you’ve been able to toe the line. 

Of course, it’s more complex than that, but when I broke it down, that was decidedly the basis of my church experience. 

Those ideas work for a while and if you don’t ask too many questions, but now it was just me and my Bible, and I had questions. 

We’re all familiar with stories about someone who was spared from a terrible accident because of some inconvenience - like they lost their keys - and left late. People share these stories as they talk about God’s protection, and our quick response is to say that God was watching over them.

Something about this line of thinking always bothered me, and as I began to allow my own questions, I wondered out loud things like - what about those who were involved in the accident? The person with the cancer diagnosis? The mother who buried her child? The person lost to addiction? Was God not watching over them? 

I came to realize that my life was one of anxiousness and fear. One of trying to appease a God with my coins of righteousness and sacrifice that I deposited and, in turn, pulled the handle to dispense protection for my children. My marriage. My faith. It was a constant struggle to ensure my account stayed out of the red.

Along with fear came anger. When trouble reared its ugly head, I’d find myself laying my good deeds before God and angrily proclaim, “I thought we had a deal!” 

The church culture I knew subtly affirmed this give and take God.  Never out loud. But the message hid in the shadows and the undertones of wondering out loud if hardships were caused by hidden sin or if miracles happened because of prayer chains. 

Don’t get me wrong - hidden sin is a legitimate concern. And there is power in prayer. But used in this context, it reinforces the idea of a vending machine God. 

The time with just my Bible and me showed me there’s so much more to a relationship with God. He’s not up in the sky just weighing our acts of goodness against His willingness to intervene in our troubles. 

But what did this mean? If my understanding of faith was no longer based on this give and take philosophy, what would it look like? What would I pray for? My prayers used to consist, in large part, of asking God to protect all of the various things that I value.

The answer is, I didn’t know. But part of leaving church culture behind was learning to sit with the unknowns and admit that I no longer needed immediate answers.

I knew I was on to something but didn’t yet have the language for it.

Months later, as I was setting up to do my weekly ironing, I turned on a talk by Father Greg Boyle. I’d read his books and found that despite not having been Catholic since I was a child, I really related to his views on faith. I am fascinated by the way he lives his life and take comfort from hearing his stories again and again. But that day he was saying things I hadn’t heard before. 

He began talking about an email that circulated after 9/11, listing all of the people who, due to minor inconveniences, never made it to work at the World Trade Center that day, thereby sparing their lives. He said the email pointed out how blessed they were. God was watching out for them. But then Fr Greg did what people seldom do. He asked the question, “But what about those who perished? Did God turn a blind eye to them?”

He went on to share that his belief lies in a God who is the center of all things and a God who sustains.

At that moment, I realized this was the language I was searching for. 

The God who sustains.

I looked up the word sustain. It means - to support, hold up, bear the weight of, or keep from giving way under trial or affliction. It also means to supply the necessities of life. 

This was God I knew from the Bible. 

Father Greg says people tell him they fear all of the tragedy he’s seen will somehow shake his faith. He says he sees it more as *shaping* his faith. 

And that’s the thing - when we view God as someone who ultimately watches over some people but not others, it’s easy to feel like perhaps we can persuade him with our acts of goodwill. With that mindset, our faith is up for grabs every time something bad does happen. 

There’s beauty and freedom in this way of faith - that some things are in our control and some things aren’t, but these things don’t shake us. They SHAPE us. Because we serve a God who sustains in all things.

And this is the God I’ve been seeking all along.