Is God a bigot? If I listen to the culture’s message today, I should think so. I think this because my faith journey leads me to a whole other truth counter to what the culture is telling me. Most would say the culture says “yes” and God says “no” but listening to God I hear Him say “this way.” The closer God calls me, the more I desire to follow, the less I wish to elevate my earthly desires above His will, the less I seek permission for those natural desires.
My conversion informs me to which I liken to a boy who was told to eat his supper because the vegetables on the plate were good for him. Each would make him strong and healthy but his greater desire was to skip the nutrient and eat the sweet dessert he craved more. But when the boy became a man, by self-evidence he knew the vegetables were the better choice and he best skip the dessert. And yet, he still ate dessert from time to time. And when age and clarity exacted its form, he strangely desired the vegetable and not at all the dessert. Time and God are great awakeners.
I write as one who remembers his last chance. On that day, I stood on eternity’s precipice, one heart beat from the finality of my choices. Standing there, I saw two horizons. To the one, I peered into an abyss, cold and dark, absent all light, one slip from eternal aloneness. To the other, I stood and gazed at an unchanging. I felt a longing to journey there, and in my contemplation I discovered the unchanging for which I longed had traveled to the precipice upon which I stood. God is unchanging in His love for us. He comes.
And when God appeared, Christ called me closer against which all my unworthiness came to bear, a calling to love Christ more than my own natural desire. I came to believe in the upward call of Christ leading me to desire the upward call to obedience to God, to not just believe in Him but to believe Him when he says, “Go and sin no more.” With His help, I am doing my best. I cannot be equal to Christ; I cannot live in Him and apart from Him at the same time. My cause, any cause, cannot be greater than Christ. God is calling me to a deeper faith, not a different one.
As I make my way, I hear among the thrum of voices a determined sloth, a rather sophisticated substitutionary avoidance, one where good people are not just asleep and unaware but some are active in adopting the whims and whispers of our age, the permissions they seek. Is God a bigot? Satan cares not for what strategy he chooses. He digs in when we choose God.
I keep walking weighted with these thoughts but also with a heart of faith joyfully waiting for what God has prepared. I walk into His future and not my past.