“I have heard many such things; miserable comforters are you all!” — Job 16:2 (NKJV)
Many Christians take comfort in common Christianese sayings, but I rarely find much comfort in them, because I do believe that so often, they’re just a bunch of tired old sayings evangelicals say to badly hurting people to shut them up. And they want to shut us up because they don’t REALLY care about us or our pain, and they CERTAINLY don’t want to be bothered with it. They just want to go on about their lives without the inconvenience of badly hurting people who need SO MUCH MORE than trite, overused, unhelpful Christian platitudes. And perhaps one of the most unhelpful Christianese platitudes of all is, “It’s God’s timing, not your timing!” BLECH!!!!!
The reason why that one particular platitude is so hurtful and unhelpful and offensive to me is because it paints a horrific false picture of God in my mind as a coldhearted, distant, detached, unfeeling cosmic JERK who really couldn’t care less that I’m in emotional AGONY down here on earth, who’s just playing games with me. Human beings, Christians in particular, can sometimes be TERRIBLE about not taking emotional pain as seriously as they take physical pain, yet God only knows how many poor souls take their lives every single day because they feel they just can’t stand the emotional agony any longer. I’ll use a physical example to try to put it in perspective.
Say you have stage 4 cancer and you’re in UNIMAGINABLE pain every moment of every day, and you didn’t have any morphine to ease your pain, and you didn’t know WHEN you were going to FINALLY be able to get some more from your doctor for whatever reason. THEN imagine that some cruel, insensitive butthole comes up to you and says, “You’ll get the morphine in God’s timing! It’s God’s timing and not your timing!” Wouldn’t YOU want to punch that CRUEL, INSENSITIVE, UNCARING JERKFACE out for basically crapping all over you emotionally like that????? And not only did that CRUEL and VERY STUPID person crap all over you with that terrible Christianese platitude. They just painted an evil, even SATANIC false picture of God as someone who is COMPLETELY detached from your AGONY. As someone who is DOWNRIGHT COLD. WHAT POSSIBLE REASON COULD THERE BE for a Heavenly Father, who is supposed to love His children with a PERFECT love that far outweighs the imperfect love of humans, to withhold morphine indefinitely from one of His children who is in INDESCRIBABLE AGONY???????? Such a “Father” cares more about “His perfect timing” than about PUTTING A STOP TO THE AGONY OF HIS OWN CHILD????? And someone THIS cold, THIS selfish, THIS detached from his children’s AGONY is supposed to be the person I’m entrusting MY WHOLE ETERNITY WITH?????????? Are you bleeping serious, Christians??????
Far too many STUPID evangelicals JUST DO NOT GET IT. There really are a lot of born-again Christians in this world who are just barely hanging on mentally and emotionally from one day to the next, and I’m one of them. And when I come across messages from evangelicals filled with STUPID, UNHELPFUL Christianese platitudes like, “It’s God’s timing, not your timing!” it just fills me with so much rage. I KNOW that Father God is NOT cold, selfish, or detached from the suffering of His children, but with all the parental betrayal I have ALREADY had to endure in my life, child abuse survivors like me understandably have a VERY HARD TIME not seeing Father God as someone who is as selfish, cold, and detached from our suffering as our own abusive DNA donors when He allows so much suffering in our lives. And when we come across messages that basically say that God cares more about His timing than He does about putting a stop to our inner agony, it paints the most EVIL false picture of God in our minds as this cold cosmic jerk who really cares NOTHING about us AT ALL. “God says it’s not time to get your morphine yet, even though your agony is completely off the charts!” is the basic message. And how can such a hurtful, evil message NOT paint a horrific false picture of God as someone who is VERY cold and VERY detached from our suffering?????? Why am I so worthless in God’s eyes, why am I such a piece of dung in God’s eyes, that giving me healing and stopping my agony is such a LOW priority on His priority list????????? What makes me worth so much less than so many other healed people in God’s eyes that they get to have healing in their lives and I don’t???????
Even though I know that God is nothing like my earthly parents, I do wish more evangelicals would pull their heads out, stop looking for polyps, and STOP with the pathetic, disgusting platitudes that paint such EVIL false pictures of God as YET ANOTHER abusive, unloving, cold, detached parent who REALLY doesn’t care if we hurt. Child abuse survivors like me have ALREADY had to go one round with selfish, narcissistic DNA donors who cared more about THEMSELVES AND THEIR OWN SELF-SERVING AGENDAS than they did about US and OUR LONG-TERM WELFARE. And when evangelicals go on about how God cares more about His timing than He does about our suffering, they’re making it seem as though Father God is being just as cold, selfish, and abusive as our first “parents” were, who, like our abusers, cares far more about His own agenda than He does about US. We ALREADY had to put up with so-called “parents” who cared more about themselves and their own agendas than they did about us once before. And when foolish evangelicals go on and on about how God cares more about His timing than He does about our suffering, they’re making it seem as though our relationship with Father God is just another DEVASTATING repeat of the relationships we had with our abusers when we were growing up. THAT is why these STUPID Christianese platitudes about God’s timing are not just unhelpful; they are, in fact, VERY harmful in our relationships with God. These dumb platitudes don’t make people like me want to draw near to God. They make us abhor God. They paint evil false pictures of Him in our minds as just another abusive, detached, cold, untrustworthy parent that we want to ESCAPE FROM and NOT as Someone we can respect and trust and want to get close to. They create very real stumbling blocks in our relationships with God, and they make it only that much harder for us to want to trust Him. Whenever foolish, out-of-touch evangelicals answer our pain and agony with disgusting platitudes about God caring more about His timing than He does about us and our suffering, they’re not being any better than Job’s friends were to him in the midst of his deep and intense suffering. Very often, the only thing these platitudes do is drive a wedge between those of us who are hurting the most and the perfect Heavenly Father that we desperately need in our lives. And THAT, evangelicals, is why these trite, overused, hurtful, unhelpful Christianese platitudes about God’s timing need to stop ASAP, because YOU ALL KNOW what Jesus had to say about those who would offend His little ones who believe in Him and cause them to stumble.
Job’s friends were the most helpful to him when they just stayed with him AND KEPT THEIR FOOLISH MOUTHS SHUT. And for everyone who is trying to counsel those of us who are in the most INTENSE agony, be it physical OR emotional, ESPECIALLY those who are in such great pain that they are considering suicide, instead of using STUPID Christianese platitudes to try and shut us up, YOU shut up instead, and just be there with us in our suffering and pray for us and love on us like never before!
Please keep everyone struggling with suicidal thoughts in your prayers, and if you’re in the U.S. and you know someone who is suicidal, please share this vital number with them of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 or simply dial 988.
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