mad at god

If there's one thing you can count on in this life it's that kids will always say what's on their mind. I can't help but wonder why that always happens in a public place when they're commenting about someone they see. For example, when you're standing in line at the grocery store and someone has some type of visible difference, your child will inevitably ask about it...loudly and repeatedly. "Why does that man only have one leg?" "How come that lady has such a big nose?" "Why does that person stink?" "Why does that lady have so many pimples?"

My response to my children usually consists of something like, "I can't believe you said that! Wait until your parents hear about this!" To which, my children normally respond with looks of utter confusion as they fight to hold their heads upright in a futile attempt to avoid whiplash as I whisk them away to another line.

The honesty of children is both beautiful and horrifying. The transparency is beautiful because they share what they are thinking or feeling without fear of rejection, and yet it is horrifying because that kind of transparency can be painful. Pondering the honesty of children makes me think of a story about my oldest nephew, Daniel. When Daniel was only 4 or 5 years old, he was riding in the car with his mom, Debbie. As they were tooling along, Daniel, seemingly out of nowhere, piped up and announced, "I'm mad at God."

Most parents would respond with understandable horror and say something like, "Child! Watch what you say! If God wasn't so merciful you'd be nothing more than a spot on your car seat right now! Now you repent before God kills you!" Fortunately, Debbie was a lot smoother than that. She just played along to see where this conversation would go. She said, "Daniel, why are you mad at God?"

Daniel, with no small measure of irritation, replied, "'Cuz He took my sins away and I wanted to keep them!"

That story still makes me chuckle nearly twenty years later, but then I'm forced to admit that I am a lot like Daniel. There are things inside of me from which I claim to want freedom - sins of anger, sins of unforgiveness, sins of selfishness, sins of pride and arrogance, sins of idolatry (where I want God's stuff more than I want Him). It's all there and I consistently make the claim that I want to be free from those things. But when push comes to shove, when God tries to work on those areas, when He tries to bring the freedom that I claim to want so badly, it's really easy to say, "No thanks. I think I want to keep that one."

I don't think I'm alone. I think most of us have a few things that we're either afraid to surrender or we are simply too stubborn to let go. Maybe it's time to stop getting mad at God for trying to heal us and let Him kill those things in our lives that are killing us. It's just a thought.