Words by Al Blanton | Image by Ryan McGill
Back when I was a student of history, I would read about this belief called “Deism” that was prevalent during the colonial age of America. The premise was this: God created the heavens and the earth and then abandoned his creation. He did not interact with the things of earth and sat in his heavenly perch with no regard for humankind and its travails. Essentially, he was the god that modern-day atheists would characterize as the “big sky daddy.”
While any Bible-believing person would consider this notion to be both silly and erroneous, there is an equally destructive and dangerous view of God in today’s world that I believe many Christians have adopted. Why do I believe this? Because this was a dynamic in my life for many years.
Let’s go back to 1993. I was a sixteen-year-old, pimply high school student. To any casual observer, I was a confident kid. I guess I would say I was “popular” in school—whatever that means. I could be the class cut up, but I was also a multisport athlete and a good student. I gave off the appearance of self-assurance. But on the inside, a war raged. On the inside, there was tumult.
Throughout my middle and high school years, my biggest fear was humiliation. Because I had to perform in front of others on the athletic fields and in the classroom, I developed a phobia of messing up and everyone laughing at me. Athletically, I developed the dreaded “yips”—an odd condition where you can’t throw the baseball or shoot a free throw without thinking about it (Note: Yips sufferers are hyper-focused on negative circumstances and failure, and often the fear can be so consuming that it begins to affect a person physically). Anyone who has ever experienced this knows how horrible it is and how difficult it is to overcome once it gets into your head. Layer on top of that a tremendous fear of public speaking, and you’ve got a scared boy.
This fear tended to bear out anytime I faced challenges. Throughout high school, I avoided running for student council because one requirement was introducing myself in front of the whole school. Getting up in front of a class of 20 students was frightening enough—but the entire school? Um, that’s a hard pass for me.
Incredibly, I’d gone to church all my life, gone through confirmation class at age 13, knew about God and Jesus, and had no idea God wanted to help me or even cared. It didn’t occur to me that He wanted to come into the situation and walk with me in my struggle. It never registered that I could turn to Him in my troubles and ask for His help. It never struck me that I could seek Him in prayer and ask Him to work through the circumstances to help me develop confidence and overcome fear.
Throughout this time, I remember feeling very alone, like a man on an island. If I was going to overcome this, it was going to be through my own grit and willpower. Indeed, it would be a bootstraps effort. And as I continued to be defeated by fear again and again, I realized my own insufficiency and inadequacy. My troubles seemed insurmountable.
I might have said I was a Christian during this time, but my “faith” was basically a belief in a set of facts. God created the heavens and the earth. His son, Jesus, came to earth and died for our sins so that we can be reconciled with God and one day go to heaven. There’s an entity called the Holy Spirit that’s alive in the world today.
And that’s the dangerous thing: I knew things about God, but I didn’t really know God.
I think this is a condition that plagues many. It’s quite possible that you can sit in a church service Sunday after Sunday, know all the words to Christian creeds and catechisms, sing in the choir, recite Scripture, recall facts and stories in the Bible, and not know Jesus. It’s quite possible you could hold yourself out to the world to be a Christian and live an entirely secular life, save for an hour on Sunday morning. It’s quite possible you can say you’re a believer and adopt a lifestyle of being wise in your own eyes and cobbling together a “faith” that’s essentially whatever you believe to be true. It’s quite possible you could be like me, a human struggler devoid of any thought that the creator of the universe would help me, and therefore relying solely on my own willpower as I walked through the briars and valleys of life.
Before my mom passed away in 2021, she used to say, “God will help you.” While that simple statement wouldn’t “wow” the great theologians of antiquity, I’ve discovered it to be quite profound over time.
Do you believe you can turn to Him for help? Do you believe He cares and wants to get involved in our lives? Do you think He would listen and respond if you turned to Him? Do you think He wants to walk with you through every situation you face in life?
I do. I think He cares about the minutiae—the small, seemingly insignificant things in our lives. I think He cares about whether we get a parking space when we’re running late for a meeting. I think He cares if we’ve got a cough or a headache. I think He cares that we just got in a big fight with our significant other. I think He cares when we feel lonely, sad, or joyful. I think He cares about every aspect of our lives.
Psalm 46:1-2 says, “God is our refuge and strength,
A very ready help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth shakes.”
Is God truly our refuge and strength, or have we become so self-reliant that we do everything on our own?
As we journey through life, we should bring God into our experiences. The Christian life is much more than just knowing facts about Jesus; our faith akin to reading a Wikipedia entry about Him. There is a depth of relationship that should exist, whereby we are walking and talking with Him all day long.
God will help you.
So, let’s invite Him into our experience. Let’s seek Him in our troubles.
You don’t have to walk through this world alone. Thank you, Mom, for reminding me. WL
