The Terrifying and Necessary Theology of the God Who Gives and Takes Away
“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” James 1:17 NRSVue
Kierkegaard has taught me that God is immutable. No. I’ve known this truth my whole life. Kierkegaard’s morose prose has just chiselled this concept into perfection in my brain.
Every good and perfect gift comes from God.
How do we navigate in a world where we cannot see the Father, nor touch Him? How do we serve as guides when we cannot see, nor do we know where it is we must go, or worse, why we must set sail to begin with? Often, the desire to serve God arises from a desire to serve ourselves. “I will serve the Lord because the Lord is good to me.” “I will worship Him because look at all He has done for me and mine.” “I am at your service, Lord, for I know you can do all things.” The condition in which we are born, namely, that of sin, does not allow us to seek God altruistically because we are parasitic by nature. Our bodies cannot withstand a select number of days without water and food; it cannot endure isolation and social deprivation; we cannot, in our innermost recesses, remain neutral in want and need because we are by nature ever wanting and ever needing. Therefore, in this predicament, more often than not, out of our control and without our increased awareness, we initiate a relationship with God where He is the giver and we are the recipients of God’s giving.
Our worship then becomes more, if not solely, about attaining things from God that which we believe we are owed because we translate our physical, social, psychological, and emotional needs to accept that God MUST be the ever-giver of all gifts. In prayer, we celebrate Him because He has done one thing or another. Our worship demands we lift His name because He is Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Nissi, Jehovah add on what you want.. Always, the relationship depends on God’s benevolence and our inherent acceptance of said benevolence.
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
What happens, then, if the fountain of blessings is turned off? What, then, must we do with our concept of God when God is not only absent in gifts but also absent in presence? When the manna is gone, the water from the rock has dried, and the Shekinah is nowhere to be felt. We no longer make the pilgrimage to Samaria or Jerusalem to worship the Almighty because He can now be found and worshipped in truth and in spirit.
What then must we do when truth is blurry and the spirit quite, well, no where to be found?
We serve the God of Job, the God who gives and takes away.
How horrifying a thought.
We celebrate God not because He takes away, but because He is the One who gives to begin with. The only reason why Job’s story is so widely celebrated, memorialized, and rehashed in numerous cultures to this day is that everything God took away from Job was returned to him at the end of his story. Happy endings, laughter, wine, and festivities. More children, in fact, supposedly Job fathered the most beautiful children after his valley of misery and loss. His wealth returned, as did the meat to his bones, and the peace to his soul. His friends respected him once more, and the community that ostracized him for everything that happened to him welcomed him back. Job was, once more, a respected and revered God fearing man in the eyes of all.
God gave. God took. God gave again.
Is Jobs’ story so infective, so virulent, so widespread merely because God gave… again?
What would we have done to this story and our theology as a consequence if the story ended with, “God gives. God takes.” Close.
What must we do with a Father of Gifts, of good and perfect gifts, who withholds? What must we then do when rain falls on our neighbor’s lawn, prosperity visits our colleagues at work, the lively cries of a child are heard from across the street, and jubilation is experienced all around, yet, in our condition, God has withheld His good and perfect gift?
Let us not presuppose I am speaking merely of theoretics and potentials. No. I am not so dull, although I am facetious.
We live in a world where God has provided millions of people with privileged status. He has increased in number and in wealth the lives and lifestyles of this world’s inhabitants from China to South Africa to Argentina and the United States of America. Local and global markets have swelled, bursting at the seams with the amassing of capital gains, property values, and liquid assets, which will maintain family lines for generations to come, should another proletariat revolution not happen in the next decade or so.
Yet, in this age of financial exuberance, in this world of good and perfect gifts from above, we still witness starving children. We witness cancer-riddled believers. We remember victims of extreme violence and those who have enacted violence on their own bodies because the world was too grim, too harsh, too soulless for them to endure any longer.
Apple indicates it will soon release several software updates for its devices and some new tech gadgets. Other software companies have professed the next step in quantum computing, stating that there now exists a new chip is the most advanced piece of technology produced in the history of computing, ever. Millionaires abound. Billionaires are on the path to becoming trillionaires and only God knows what number will satisfy them.
And in this age of advancement, I also found that an Israeli man has recently committed suicide two years after he witnessed his girlfriend and his brother perish during the Nova community festival at the hands of Hamas militants. He and his girlfriend hid under a vehicle as the assault began. He wanted to shield her from the hail of bullets, but one of those raging projectiles lodged itself in her heart ending her life then and there, in his arms. He held her for hours before being rescued. He lost his brother. He lost the love of his life. And, we can also say that on that day, he, too, died. He was found dead in his vehicle. He burned his vehicle in the process as well. He left a note behind indicating that he was alive and dead. He could no longer go on living as a dead man. Survivor’s guilt. Grief. Whatever the motive.
Every good and perfect gift.
Gives… and takes away.
Must our faith be so vapid?
If God ceases to give, ever again, what then?
What must happen in our hearts if all the fish of the sea die overnight, every fruit from every tree shrivels like that of the fig tree in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, and every source of sustenance we now enjoy molds or rots in an instant? What theology must we form for ourselves if our water, however filtered and cooled, is then turned to dust, and what remains is no longer potable? Where does the praise go when our children die of hunger in our arms? Where does our worship rise from when our bodies begin to shut down as cancer, disease, and psychological pathologies eat away at our very sense of being?
You say such things are extremes; we mustn’t exaggerate. Hyperbole gets us nowhere in the real world. Your postulations are unnecessary.
Are we so sure?
Do we not have stories of just these things happening in the same world of abundance and bliss? Are we so fat with wealth and stability that we are willing to ignore the cries of the fallen, the destitute, the forgotten, the hungry, the sick, and the imprisoned? Do they not matter in our world of “God Gives” and “Good and Perfect Gifts”?
Have blessings rotted our capacity for critical thinking and empathy? Has God’s benevolence stunted our humanity? Are we less human now that we have become hyper-dependent on God’s giving and good and perfect gifts? Does food not taste worse when we consume it with the thought of those starving to death? Does water not taste bitter when we enjoy it with the thought of those languishing in thirst in Palestine? Does our bed not seem spiky and stiff? Our pillows feel like they have rocks and not feathers, when we remember the homeless and those whose homes have been turned to rubble by artillery fire?
The truth is that in our state of want and privileged being, we dismiss these thoughts. Worse yet, we dismiss the possibility that such thoughts might involve the suffering of real people. People who are just like us.
We fast. We pray. We worship. We praise. And we rejoice… all because we worship at the feet of a false god. The god of indulgence and comfort. One who always gives, one who never takes. One whose giving of good and perfect gifts means physical sustenance, financial stability, and social belonging becomes the trifecta of eternal godheadedness.
It is an unholy trinity that banishes us to emotional rot, spiritual decay, and social perpetrator-induced post-traumatic stress disorder.
Pain? We know it not because our god provides comfort. Sadness? We know it not because our god provides gladness. Hunger? We know it not because our god provides sustenance.
We have ceased to worship the Living God and in His place offered sacrifices to a god who MUST give us this or that, or else.
We refuse to acknowledge a God who is silent, absent, and often, one who withholds His blessings, because we do not want to identify with a deity that behaves in such a way. We only acknowledge the story of Job, but no one wants to experience the faith and righteousness of Job. We marvel at the works of God’s hands, but no one wants to be in the place where it is required of us to suffer, possibly unto death, and without a purpose or cause, to our knowledge, for the glory of God.
We idolize knowledge to the point where we MUST find a reason for our sufferings in a world where God gives and a world where all good and perfect gifts come from above.
Because the knowledge of the purpose for our suffering is the god we worship, not God Himself.
I hunger today because tomorrow God will use my testimony! I thirst today because tomorrow, what God has taken from me, God will replenish! I endure this valley, this skirmish, this harm, this hurt, this pain, and this death, because I know God will….
And on… and on… and on.
But what if God provides no purpose, no answer, no knowledge, and no reason? What if, in His silence, you starve to death? What if, in his perceived absence, you receive nothing?
Though He slay you, will you still worship Him?
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. – Proverbs 31:8 NLT
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