Where did God come from?

I’ve not been keeping count, but to my cyphering, I have been retired from pastoring for ten years.  I will be seventy-four (I spelled it out because the symbols are too in my face) at the end of March this year.  What is interesting is that I just accepted the same church staff position I had as a newbie minister, part-time youth minister.  At Trinity Baptist Church in Manchester, Tennessee, I was the part-time “Summer Youth Guy.”  Today I am the part-time unpaid “Interim Youth Guy.”  My first position helped stack a few pennies to get married in the fall and then head to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  This time you couldn’t pay me enough to take this on. There is a back story here, but I will save it for another time.

I have met with the teens three Wednesday nights.  When I asked them what they wanted to know or learn, I was told both nights from different kids, “Where did God come from?”  I was tempted to give them a clear, concise answer, “Bangladesh,” but I didn’t. 

A lot has changed since my 1972 former church position, almost everything.  Yet, woven into our collective human experience are the same ageless root questions.  I don’t think the mysteries of life have changed, but our living with them has taken on generational solutions.  Answers are not as pertinent as the questions.  Not many folks want the right answers; they would rather have a personalized solution to eliminate the problems from their consciousness. 

Solutions are not answers in living life out.  As in liquids, “solutions” are a blending of two different substances to form a new liquid.  It’s the putting of Divinely generated life with humanly generated thought and adapting daily life to thrive in the mess we have created.  To each of our life questions, there are about as many “solutions” as there are humans.  However, because life is Divinely created and accountable, there is only one answer to each of life’s questions.

I am not sure I did an outstanding job of helping people live their lives by the answers.  I was firm in how to motivate people to adjust their behavior to minimize the confusion and negative consequences of trying to live out solutions to life’s difficulties.  I should have been trying to help them clearly identify the real questions and discovering the Divine answers.  Religions’ solutions may change our behavior, but they do not “change” us.  Changing one’s behavior may change the negative intensity of the negative consequences of our demented solutions, but such superficial modifications do not serve to improve the trajectory of one’s life.  Only the answers will change life’s direction.  When we identify the questions and seek the “answer,” our behavior will change to compliment the “answer.”  We will not just behave differently; we will be different.  And that, my dear reader, is what you are really longing for, the Good News.

I believe our lives will be far more peaceful and productive if we give up solely seeking solutions to our problems and give our energy to finding life’s “answer.”

The blog took a turn quickly from the initiating question from the teens.  I will endeavor to relay my answer to them in next week’s blog.

Photo – An apple is now the dwelling for a large bee as observed with my granddaughter, Lucy, on a kindergarten fall field trip to Honeysuckle Farm.