Let go and let God.

Jesus, take the wheel.

It’s in God’s hands now.

At various points in my life, when the chips were down and I was struggling with whatever the seemingly cataclysmic issue or event, I would receive the above advice. Usually delivered lovingly and with a sense of profundity, these platitudes never really helped. With a sigh of long suffering, I would accept that the problem, whatever it was, was not in my control, god knew what he was doing, and I was to renew my focus on staying obedient to him and everything would work out. Whatever the result, it was god’s will. Pray fervently for the strength to endure, and the wisdom to know what to do. Pray for god’s will to be done. Don’t fall into sin, or god will remove his blessing. The outcome may be worse.

Any natural consequence can be explained away as god’s will. He gets credit for the good, and is absolved of the bad. The underlying belief is that god is in control of everything, and he is working all things toward some master plan that we cannot possibly comprehend. Our suffering, in the meantime, is for his glory – our character is being built and shaped. We may not understand what he is doing now, but we will in time, even if that takes until we go home to glory.  When we get to heaven, we’ll finally know why all those children had to die of cancer. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.

There have been times in my life that I trusted and obeyed, as well as I could, given the labyrinth of scriptures, doctrines and commandments one has to navigate in order to pursue holiness. Then there were other times. I got trapped in a cycle that went like this:

1. When things are good, I must be in the Lord’s favor. Rejoice!
2. When things are bad, I must be out of his favor, because of some sinful condition. This phase was accompanied by crushing shame, depression, and hopelessness.

What I started to notice as the years stretched on is that the only tangible result of any given behavior was its natural consequences, whether good or bad, helpful or hurtful. Both good and awful things happened to me regardless of the status of my faithfulness or faithlessness. In fact, I started to see that many of the decisions I had made in the past, out of a sense of duty to obey god’s will and commands, were resulting in unnecessary present day pain and consequences. I made a lot of decisions over the last thirty-nine years based on a sense of duty and obligation; decisions I never would have made had I been true to myself and viewed all the details and considerations rationally, as opposed to seeing them in a Christian funhouse mirror that others had built and put in front of me. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, especially when you take off your blinders.

It took a surprise, high-conflict divorce after fifteen years of marriage, with three children, to realize I didn’t even know who the person closest to me really was. To acknowledge that I was in an abusive and treacherous situation, with a liar and a cheat. I was so wrapped up in what should be, flogging myself for my failures, that I was blind to reality. That is a dangerous place to be. During the divorce, I reviewed how I had felt since year one of my marriage. I felt trapped already, at the outset. I wanted out. I got married for the wrong reasons – I felt a sense of obligation, because my wife and I had become “one flesh” already. The marriage was a mistake. Not all in the Christian community would have counseled us to get married, so it was MY mistake. I believed I had a responsibility to this girl, and to god.

We could have corrected the mistake easily, shortly after we made it. But divorce is biblically forbidden, except in the case of adultery (although some would argue it’s forbidden even then). Being in the marriage wasn’t good for me, and it wasn’t fair to my now-ex-wife, either. But hey, the Bible says we do this no matter what, so let’s hang in there until kids are involved and it gets much worse!

If I had been honest about who I was and what I really wanted – if I sought truth instead of submitting myself to authority and dogma early in life… Things would be much different.  I would have made decisions that were healthier for me and others, and saved a world of hurt. The best thing to come out of all this is my wonderful kids – but they have experienced the pain, too. They continue to experience it. I wish that wasn’t so.

Some things are good to let go of. Bitterness, anger, resentment, control over things you have no control over. Let those things go.

It’s the “let god” part that I have no faith in anymore. There is nobody there to take the wheel. If you trust god to tell you who you are, make your decisions, clean up your messes, bring all the right people into your life and work everything out in the end, you are likely going to be brutally disappointed, and probably highly deluded. You just might waste the only life you’ve got.

I reached a point where I couldn’t stand the cognitive dissonance anymore. I had to become intellectually honest. I had to let go of god, and embrace the responsibility that comes with freedom. I do not regret it for a moment.