A sense of injustice

Sometimes I am appalled by the sense of injustice about me.  Every one seems to scream about their rights and how unfair the world is.  I agree there is injustice in the world, but there always will be as long as people are dishonest and self-serving.    Sometimes the grievance is not even based in personal lack or suffering, but in a suffering of the past that they know was never atoned and is corrupted by a sense that a cause or person has a right for gain based on an injustice that can never be repaid.  And I see another view in which the people screaming for their rights are dishonest and self-serving, but they want more and feel entitled to have everything everyone else has and beyond.  In trying to convince others to get on board, they feel justified in their own evil.  This is totally deluded. 

Years ago, an influential lady in my small community brought a wealthy friend from a large city to visit me.  I was put on display and asked to do tricks.  So I played the piano, brought out some poetry, displayed my needle craft, pointed out personal paintings and revealed works in process for other people.  When we had visited for a time, my guest said “But what’s it all about?  What is your point in doing all this?”

I shared my philosophy which was based in a belief that God gives us all things to do and to serve others with and he blesses us for our effort and our obedience.  So my first call is to obey and the second call is to serve others and lastly to enjoy and express that joy in what is given.  I shared a very short account of how my life was changed by belief in Christ and excepting his salvation.  I was a preacher’s wife, after all, so that was no surprise to my guest.  She smiled an ambiguous smile and we visited a bit longer before she and my friend left.

As she turned to leave, she stopped and with a look of sincere pity she said, “It’s such a shame.  Who knows what you could have become had you not been tied to this ‘god’ and his religion.” 

I was astounded.  I mumbled something about enjoying her visit and watched them go with a hot face and a twisted stomach.  I quickly found a quiet place to cry and talk to my God about her words and how they made me feel.  Was I a needless victim of the stale requirements of a pointless belief?  Was I trapped by my service to an impotent God and his ungrateful people?  Was I doomed to be less that my capabilities because of the restrictions of a life I had chosen?  I cried almost violently for a time, and then I wrote a song, for that’s what I did in those days when I was happy or sad or confused or excited.  It’s how my life played out.

I was raised in a society in which women were considered inferior and subservient to men.  A man could cheat; a woman could not.  An adolescent boy could explore sex and abuse alcohol as long as he grew out of it; a girl could not.  A man served in the church service; a woman could sing a ‘special’ or serve dinner.  A man was a pillar; a woman was an adornment.  If a man hitchhiked across the country, he was brave and adventurous; if a woman hitchhiked at all, she was a tramp, a vagrant.  A man could be abusive, a woman must endure.  If a man had an affair it was the woman’s fault because . . . well, she obviously had failed her husband in some way.  I could go on, but you get the picture. 

Yet in my childhood home, I saw a different principle at work.  My mom and dad were both employed –not really a church endorsed situation.  My dad did housework and taught us to do housework – he actually made it fun when he could.  My dad was a big man and a man’s man, but he had a tender heart and he had no problem with doing laundry well.  He could speak in public, he was a foreman in a rough environment, he could stand his ground and was a decorated soldier from WW2, but he was a gentle soul that could rock a child and sing her to sleep.  He could not stand to see an animal suffer and would raise bunny broods even thought they were destructive and would have to be turned back over to the wild when they could forage.  He was always the one who conceded in a marital argument that got out of hand.  All of these were tied to the life he has once lived that he was not proud of.  He led our family in nightly devotion and prayer, but he cried over a daughter who struggled with things he didn’t understand.  He reasoned and questioned and showed a vulnerability that amazed me.  If my sister’s had made mistakes or misunderstood, that was understandable because his life had been so wrong.  But I was raised in love and righteousness, how could I not be secure and perfect?

I was trained to think theology.  I memorized huge chunks of scripture for the sake of reward and honor.  I was trained to reason between the belief of my church and the error of other churches.  I was trained to convert, defend and debate.  I was taught the structure of a good speech and the techniques of arguing my case.  Why would they do that to a girl and then say “You are a nobody; you are a woman; take your place in the back and be quiet?”  While training me to be an aggressive servant, they expected me to be a dumb blond.  I was one confused cookie!

There are scriptures that were drilled into me that I still respect, and struggle with at the same time.  God and I have had some discussions about that.  While my desire is to listen to him alone, there is the old voice saying “You cannot possibly hear from God, for you are a woman, created to listen to man.”  The theological implications of that statement are greater than any of my mentors would ever endure.  When I tried to use the technique I was taught to arrive at understanding, the reply seemed to be “You are a woman, you can’t possibly understand spiritual truth.”  This has always infuriated me –before salvation and after.

And so I embarked on a journey ‘to know God and his voice without question.’  I say this realizing that a human with their feet suck in the earth cannot ‘know God without question’.  Yet I still believe that pursuit is honoring to him.  I am learning to listen, to accept, to believe and what I experience is amazing, though not always practical to share.  I do not in any way consider myself to have arrived or to be perfected.  The more you learn and the longer you travel down that road, the more you understand the scope of the trip.  Mine is simply one road on the huge map of spiritual understanding.  If it were a super highway, the same would be true, but frankly it is more of a two lane road over hills and around blind curves.

So what has any of this to do with my view of the present sense of injustice?  You must live it out.  If you can shine a light and destroy some darkness, then do it.  But if you are trapped in a soggy, windowless room without comfort, bide your time, look for opportunities and learn.  Yes learn.  Learn to listen, learn to be patient, learn to survive.   Someday perhaps your savior (small ‘s’ in this case) will come and you will be prepared to follow into the world away from your present state.  It may turn out to be a dangerous road that ends in death, but only in this plain.  It may turn into the most challenging, and exhilarating journey you could never have imagined.  It may end quickly in a beautiful eternal place.  Does it really matter if you have faith and know you are following the true God?

I was not called out of freedom; I was called out of bondage.  I have lost nothing by becoming a servant of God and his Christ.