Disappointment with God
Learning to live with disappointment is a lifelong skill. For people of faith or for those who hold a high value for altruism, it is especially important to deal with disappointment. As a Christian, I have found it critical to address disappointment with God, disappointment with the Church and disappointment with myself. Confronting and addressing these experiences has been important for my mental health. I’ll deal with each of these disappointments in separate posts.
An Emotional Quest, not a Theological One
In my experience good theology is not a remedy in facing my disappointment with God. Sure, I’ve made my theological peace with the existence of evil, unanswered prayer, why bad things happen to good people, and stuff. But that’s not the same as dealing with my disappointment with God over such things.
Grief and sorrow is the body’s way of acknowledging that something is not as it should be. Those of us who believe in God as revealed in the life of Jesus, in the beauty of creation and in the reading of scripture have a picture of what goodness and justice and harmony should look like. We also hold convictions about the transcendence and power of the Creator. But these things do not salve our disappointments. Disappointment is an emotion, not a theological conundrum.
Speaking of Jesus, Paul says, “… in him all things hold together.” (Col. 1:17a). Well … it doesn’t always feel like Jesus is doing a very good job at holding all things together. I may be able to work through the existence of chaos and evil theologically – free will, the fallen nature of humans, and all that – but there is still an emotional aftertaste to watching our lives or the lives of our loved ones unravel.
Honesty
In my deepest parts I’m not really looking for an explanation, I’m looking for comfort. I’ve found being honest before God about my disappointment is helpful. It forces me to confront my finitude. After all, I’m only 59 years old (I know how this must sound to my friends in their 20s and 30s). I’ve not lived nearly long enough, nor read enough, nor benefited from the wisdom of millennia of thinking on such things. I see such a small fraction of the universe. I know only a tiny sliver of the Divine. Disappointment with God means embracing my limitations. It’s allowing God into my mortality and limitation granting access to the tender spot in my soul. I can welcome the cradling of God when I am honest about my infancy and shallowness of my own understanding.
Depth
My disappointment with an omniscient, all powerful, good God in a world of suffering, chaos and evil has never been enough to push me into atheism. That would be too easy, too superficial, adolescent. I’ve found admitting my disappointments and holding them up to God makes space for a deeper, more nuanced faith. Disappointment with God is not reason enough to cancel God, but rather it is an invitation into an intimacy that has substance.
Disappointment becomes a gateway to maturity. It is not to be washed over with easy answers nor ought it lead to rejection of the Divine, but rather it is an opportunity to experience raw, child-like honesty as we move toward a mature, grown-up faith.