Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Associated Baptist Press Foundation
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Donate Subscribe
Search Search this site

The year clichés stopped making sense

OpinionWesley Spears-Newsome  |  August 23, 2016

Wesley Spears-NewsomeThere is something wrong with 2016.

That may be the most self-evident and non-controversial statement to come up in your Facebook newsfeed in quite a while. In fact, it has become an almost universally acknowledged truth. So many of us would rather do without 2016 that it has spawned memes. These Internet icons of our current season have called 2016 a veritable “dumpster fire” of a year. 2016 is a burning pile of garbage you are not sure what to do with because there is so much rubbish involved that you do not know which conventional fire extinguishing technique will resolve the situation and which would just ignite the whole city block. If that image did not connect, consider this one, more elegant in its simplicity: “2016, go home, you’re drunk.”

dumpster fire2016 is not close to over and for many of us it has been a pretty terrible year. Pick your poison: mass shootings, police brutality, hate crimes, humanitarian crises, terrorist attacks or even presidential elections. But 2016 has been uniquely terrible for me and mine. I will not divulge all the gory details, but let’s just say the litany of tragedies followed by colossal disappointments assisted by prolonged reasons for sadness have been far from a walk in the park. I also do not need to supply you all the details because some of you know all too well what I mean because 2016 has not been kind to you either. 2016 has swung for the fences when it comes to routinized sadness in your life. You do not need to divulge all the gory details. Trust me, I know exactly what you mean.

If your 2016 has been anything like mine, you have heard a lot of things that have started to ring as hollow as a politician’s promise. People tell you, “God is in control.” Folks say, “God has a plan. This is all part of his plan.” They try, “God is going to use it for good.” Or they return to the tried and true, “Everything happens for a reason.” I do not know what 2016 has been for you. Maybe you are unemployed and people keep telling you that God has the perfect job out there for you. Maybe you are single and just feeling a little lonelier this year than most, and people keep telling you that God has “the one” out there for you. Maybe you have been trying to have a child to no avail, and people keep telling you that God will bring some good out of this pain. Maybe you lost a loved one and people keep telling you that God simply needed another angel. Maybe you are sick and people keep saying God has a plan for your disease.

Chances are, if you have heard any of these truisms (and there may be bits of truth in some of them) and they had any power for you before, 2016 may have rendered them bankrupt. You may be having the kind of year where clichés stop making sense. You may have had the urge to smack someone across the head when they say these things. You may want to grab them by the collar and shake them if they say it one more time. The trite aphorisms that keep Hallmark in business may now be the object of your ire. Or maybe this is just a cathartic exercise for this pastor, but I do not think that is the case. I know I am not the only one, and I know you are not alone in your pain.

Our pain and our suffering — and even these clichés — can keep some of us up at night wondering about God’s faithfulness. That is what all these well-meaning sayings are trying to talk about. They are wrestling (albeit poorly) with a core biblical teaching: God is faithful. But how do we talk about God’s faithfulness when we or someone we love is in a great deal of pain?

Part of the problem is we try to be too specific. We try to know too much. We think we can name the inner-workings of God’s sovereignty and that will at least make meaning of the suffering we see. But these propositions allow us to avoid uncomfortable things like blame, responsibility, presence, and solidarity by hanging our hats on the fact that “everything happens for a reason.” Most attempts to answer our suffering (what theologians call “theodicy”) is really an attempt to “solve” suffering with some understanding of God’s mechanisms. We try to look under the Trinitarian hood, so to speak, and tease out how it works. Then we do not have to deal with the suffering of others or ourselves.

A dear friend and mentor of mine who has endured more than his fair share of suffering once told me that in all his reading on theodicy, he had finally come to a conclusion. All attempts at theodicy were attempts to “save the phenomena.” That is a phrase historians of science may recognize. They often use it to describe the behavior of astronomy when it engaged in herculean intellectual gymnastics rather than confronting the truth that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the other way around. The scientists of that day invented elaborate theories of planetary motion to avoid the prospect of a heliocentric universe. They wanted to “save the phenomenon” of a geocentric universe.

We often try to say more than we know about God.

We try to save the particular phenomenon of a mechanistic God we can control – or at least one we can fairly well predict. We try to save the picture of a God who responds to the levers we pull or the puppet strings we tug. We do not always have bad motivations for doing that, let’s be clear. No, sometimes that is the only image of God that we believe will get us through our pain. But that is not necessarily the Christian God.

The God we encounter in the Bible is not a God we can grasp in this way. We cannot take ahold of this God and master the divine. This God is unpredictable and under no one’s control. This God is in burning bushes, whispers, whirlwinds, pillars of fire and smoke, and even in a manger. This is not a mechanistic God we can reliably predict or control. For all we say we know about what God does and what God will do, how God works or what God controls, the Bible chooses a different path most of the time. Instead of explaining what or how God controls, Scripture tells us where God is.

Where we strive for certainty and predictability, God always seems to settle on presence. Christian talk about God is not so much about what God controls, but about where God is. That is not to say we do not know anything about the God we worship. Far from it. Instead, it is to admit with humility, as many great Christians have confessed, “If you can understand it, it’s not God.” God does not assure us with knowledge of some divine machinery but God reassured us with presence.

That’s part of what this whole thing with Jesus is all about.

In Jesus, we are reassured of God’s presence with us. Jesus was fully God but also fully human, a body vulnerable like ours. Jesus, a body vulnerable, is wracked with grief, sickness, pain, sadness, despair, and loss. And there is no God hiding behind Jesus, completely different from Christ. There is not some God out there that contradicts the God we know in Jesus. God knows intimately and deeply our pain and our suffering. God knows it in painful flesh. And this God is still God to this day in the midst of our dark times.

That is the God we know. As Christians, we do not confess knowledge of the inner-workings of the breadth and depth of the divine and God’s intentions, involvement or motivations for every little thing. Instead, as Christians, we confess faith in a God who is with us.

We can only adequately speak, then, to the faithfulness of God after the fact. The minute we presume to know what faithfulness must look like, we have stopped talking about God and begun talking about something else. The minute we believe that we can sort out divine causes, culpabilities or motivations (especially for our suffering), we stop talking about God. The truth is, we will not know exactly what to call faithfulness until long after the fact, sometimes impossibly late.

Instead of talking about God that way, we need to talk about the God we know. The God with us. We do not always know what God has in store for us next. We do not always know why things happen. We do not always know what faithfulness looks like. But we know that God is somewhere. We know that God is all over this messed up world being God. We can trust that. We can trust that God is present and working somewhere in this place – even when we cannot definitely say where.

There is a consequence to that belief. That belief demands divine solidarity with the suffering. That could mean helping someone find a job instead of telling them God has one out there for them. That could mean spending some quality time with someone feeling lonely instead of pawning them off to be fabled “one” God has for them. That could mean providing space of grief for those struggling with fertility instead of telling them it is all part of God’s plan. That could mean staying and weeping with someone who lost a loved one long after the funeral instead of mumbling something about angels. That could mean being someone who does more than pity the sick, but still recognizes them as the fully human friend they never stopped being.

But that is a word for the helper. Here is a word for the afflicted from one of your own: God has not abandoned you. You are not alone. We may not know the why, the how, the when or even the what, but we know God. And God is with you, and so am I.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

OPINION: Views expressed in Baptist News Global columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.
Tags:Wesley Spears-Newsomeecho chambersadnesswhere is GodPoliticsfaithsufferingFacebookpaincomfortfaithfulness
More by
Wesley Spears-Newsome
  • Get BNG headlines in your inbox

  • Featured

    • Criticism of Andy Stanley is rooted in father wounds

      Opinion

    • This is why people are leaving the church

      Opinion

    • Ken and Angela Paxton do a little sidestep — while quoting Bible verses

      Opinion

    • Fear of dancing and the courage to be serious

      Opinion


    Curated

    • Riding a wave of converts, one group aims to fuse Orthodoxy with Southern values

      Riding a wave of converts, one group aims to fuse Orthodoxy with Southern values

    • Mormons (And People Of Faith In General) More Likely To Be Fraud Victims

      Mormons (And People Of Faith In General) More Likely To Be Fraud Victims

    • Senator Demands to Know if World Vision Is Funding Terrorism

      Senator Demands to Know if World Vision Is Funding Terrorism

    • Texas teacher reportedly fired after reading from Anne Frank’s diary to students

      Texas teacher reportedly fired after reading from Anne Frank’s diary to students

    Read Next:

    SBC Executive Committee won’t explain McLaurin’s resume lies, and new interim president backs out one day after being announced

    NewsMaina Mwaura and Mark Wingfield

    More Articles

    • All
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Curated
    • SBC expels Oklahoma church over pastor’s racial impersonations

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • The real religious crisis in America

      OpinionMartin Thielen

    • U.S. urged to provide more support for persecuted faith groups in Myanmar

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • North Carolina children’s home trustees release scathing report on longtime president’s misuse of funds

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Fear of dancing and the courage to be serious

      OpinionGreg Jarrell

    • Jen Hatmaker and Tyler Merrit find love and are taking their show on the road next week

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • Ken and Angela Paxton do a little sidestep — while quoting Bible verses

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • This is why people are leaving the church

      OpinionJulia Goldie Day

    • Criticism of Andy Stanley is rooted in father wounds

      OpinionRick Pidcock

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • What do we mean by ‘affirming’?

      OpinionRobert P. Sellers

    • How long before a revolution?

      OpinionJamar A. Boyd II

    • Baylor settles sexual assault lawsuit

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • SBC Executive Committee won’t explain McLaurin’s resume lies, and new interim president backs out one day after being announced

      NewsMaina Mwaura and Mark Wingfield

    • It’s ‘Boycotts R Us’ for American Family Association

      NewsSteve Rabey

    • On death

      OpinionGlen Schmucker

    • Al Mohler vs. Andy Stanley: What’s really going on?

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • More religion in public schools raises concerns about religious liberty

      OpinionBryan Kelley

    • Must we change our language to reach climate change deniers?

      AnalysisRick Pidcock

    • A surprising window into Black Jesus

      AnalysisKristen Thomason

    • In biblical truth-telling, we need to mind the gap between clergy and laity

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • Prior explores the origin of evangelicalism’s ‘empire mentality’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • A ‘sad day’ for America?

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • In the midst of history-engendered pessimism, don’t forget the hope

      OpinionRuss Dean

    • Sometimes, ‘resignation’ isn’t the reason clergy walk away from their ministry callings

      OpinionMary Kate Deal

    • SBC expels Oklahoma church over pastor’s racial impersonations

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • U.S. urged to provide more support for persecuted faith groups in Myanmar

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • North Carolina children’s home trustees release scathing report on longtime president’s misuse of funds

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Jen Hatmaker and Tyler Merrit find love and are taking their show on the road next week

      NewsMaina Mwaura

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Baylor settles sexual assault lawsuit

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • SBC Executive Committee won’t explain McLaurin’s resume lies, and new interim president backs out one day after being announced

      NewsMaina Mwaura and Mark Wingfield

    • It’s ‘Boycotts R Us’ for American Family Association

      NewsSteve Rabey

    • Prior explores the origin of evangelicalism’s ‘empire mentality’

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Upcoming BNG webinar guests: Matt Cook and Bill Wilson, Emily Smith, Amy Butler

      NewsBNG staff

    • Number of countries with blasphemy laws grows by 13%

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • The SBC’s far-far right believes all members of a Cooperation Group should agree with their views

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Judge again rules DACA illegal; humanitarian advocates call for congressional response

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Kansas is latest state to fund anti-abortion groups that encourage women to give birth

      NewsSteve Rabey

    • Growth of Christianity in China may have stalled but no one knows for sure

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Transitions for the week of 9-15-23

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • SBC Executive Committee eliminates 20% of staff due to budget crisis

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • At AWAB lecture, Susan Shaw lays out 10 lies Christians tell about queer people

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Evangelical leaders condemn DeSantis for politicizing state executions

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Fellowship Southwest’s first conference calls for advocacy and action

      NewsJeff Hampton

    • Two other venues also have declined to host Promise Keepers events

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • McRaney to file appeal and keep his case against NAMB alive

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Retired pastor’s book finds Methodist history ‘strangely lukewarm’ on confronting racism

      NewsCynthia Astle

    • What you haven’t been taught about Martin Luther King

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • The real religious crisis in America

      OpinionMartin Thielen

    • Fear of dancing and the courage to be serious

      OpinionGreg Jarrell

    • Ken and Angela Paxton do a little sidestep — while quoting Bible verses

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • This is why people are leaving the church

      OpinionJulia Goldie Day

    • Criticism of Andy Stanley is rooted in father wounds

      OpinionRick Pidcock

    • What do we mean by ‘affirming’?

      OpinionRobert P. Sellers

    • How long before a revolution?

      OpinionJamar A. Boyd II

    • On death

      OpinionGlen Schmucker

    • Al Mohler vs. Andy Stanley: What’s really going on?

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • More religion in public schools raises concerns about religious liberty

      OpinionBryan Kelley

    • In biblical truth-telling, we need to mind the gap between clergy and laity

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • A ‘sad day’ for America?

      OpinionRodney Kennedy

    • In the midst of history-engendered pessimism, don’t forget the hope

      OpinionRuss Dean

    • Sometimes, ‘resignation’ isn’t the reason clergy walk away from their ministry callings

      OpinionMary Kate Deal

    • Life lessons learned while pondering ‘that little man!’

      OpinionBob Newell

    • Reflecting upon a new opportunity to minister to senior adults

      OpinionSara Robb-Scott

    • Confronting our violent culture with an engaged spirituality

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • The Jesus Room

      OpinionErich Bridges

    • Post-evangelical snapshots

      OpinionDavid Gushee, Senior Columnist

    • Do complementarian men do better? A response to Nancy Pearcey

      OpinionSheila Wray Gregoire and Joanna Sawatsky

    • An out-of-the-box lesson from Barbie

      OpinionJeremiah Bullock

    • Anthony, Aldean, Dylan and Guthrie

      OpinionRichard Conville

    • Four things the SBC Executive Committee should do right now to address clergy sex abuse

      OpinionChrista Brown

    • Bruce Springsteen is a fraud, and so are we

      OpinionBrett Younger

    • Women crying out in the wilderness in Tennessee

      OpinionJulia Goldie Day

    • Riding a wave of converts, one group aims to fuse Orthodoxy with Southern values

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Mormons (And People Of Faith In General) More Likely To Be Fraud Victims

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Senator Demands to Know if World Vision Is Funding Terrorism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Texas teacher reportedly fired after reading from Anne Frank’s diary to students

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Trump Says On Rosh Hashanah That ‘Liberal Jews’ Voted To ‘Destroy America’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • African churches urge US Congress to reauthorize PEPFAR

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Lawsuit by Islamic rights group says US terror watchlist woes continue even after names are removed

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Bible debates, ancient and modern: Why did early church choose only four Gospels?

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • March for Our Lives, faith leaders call on Florida lawmakers to ‘cease and desist’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Survivors Of The Birmingham Church Bombing Say GOP Culture War Bills Are Trying To Erase Their History

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Let’s Have A Look At Education And Religious Attendance

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Her plans to play the piano and sing with the choir were interrupted by the news that the nearby 16th Street Baptist Church had been bombed.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are times for soul-searching, but not on your own – community has always been at the heart of the Jewish High Holidays

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Wheaton College Releases Report on Its History of Racism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Catholics in Ukraine struggle as Pope Francis’ approval rating is at an all-time low

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Pope’s visit to France stirs debate over immigration, secularism

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • As Soccer Moses, Jars of Clay guitarist Stephen Mason finds unexpected joy

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Saudi Reforms Soften Islam’s Role, But Kingdom Takes Hard Line Against Dissent

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Security experts urge Jewish communities to prepare for possible High Holidays bomb threats

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Pope Francis and Bill Clinton set discussion on climate change at Clinton Global Initiative

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • At Rosh Hashanah reception, Doug Emhoff and Kamala Harris talk about putting antisemitism plan ‘into action’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Christian lawmakers push battle over church and state after Roe

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • California school district must reinstate Christian club, court rules

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • New Yorkers Watch as Their Only Evangelical Colleges Close

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Saints Linebacker Demario Davis Places Spotlight On The Power Of Prayer After Daughter Suffers Seizure

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    Conversations that Matter.

    © 2023 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

    Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS