Paul says “he was tested by what he suffered”. This is an important phrase, likely a phrase most of us would overlook while reading or immediately bring to mind Jonah or even Job, it certainly did for me. It caught my attention for two reasons, first because I had recently had a conversation, with a former student, about whether God tests us, but also because of my belief that an emerging ministry of mine is the reclaiming of our spiritual heritage as Christians. I want us to reclaim our vocabulary, I want us to stop dumbing down our faith and pretending that being a Christian is simple, that it only requires a passing belief in God, as if generally doing the right thing means we go to heaven when we die or if we follow all the rules as spelled out in the bible, we are good to go. Those versions of Christianity can be likened to our childhood beliefs about various mystical creatures, the ones that bring you presents for being a good little boy or girl. Those versions of Christianity are passive in nature, they are designed for one thing and one thing only, making people feel good!

            What I find strange is that the people who push feel good Christianity also push the idea that God tests us to make sure that we are true believers; my question is: if God is all loving why would they test us? That sounds like an abusive relationship to me, the kind where a partner runs their finger along the top of a door jamb to make sure they are clean and if not, look out. That’s not love, it’s control and it is the same as telling the faithful that they need to follow the rules or God will smite them. God does not test us; God does not cause us to struggle; God only creates and loves, and any story, any rule, any interpretation that indicates otherwise is just wrong. 

             You might be thinking that your deacon has gone off the deep end, but let me give you some context. Many Americans, many of our neighbors, are scared right now. Many are wondering if we are being tested by God, and you of course already know how I feel about that idea. So, if God is not testing us, then why does it feel like so many things are going wrong and how can we rely on God if they never seem do anything? Or for that matter, why should we? In short, God is never the source of anything that harms. In the story of Jonah, the classic God tests the faithful story, God simply asked Jonah to be his prophet and Jonah runs away. The way it is written it makes it sound like God then punishes Jonah until he repents, but that doesn’t make any sense. No one repents because they are punished, they repent because they genuinely feel sorry for what they did. What really happened is Jonah realized his error and then trusted that God would help. God did not trick Jonah into doing this, God did not send a storm to threaten Jonah’s life so he would repent, the storm just happened and it was Jonah’s realization that he had been rejected God that saved him. To put it another way, like Jesus, Jonah was tested by what he suffered. Jonah was afraid of what God asked him to do, so he ran away and in running away bad things happened to him, but in the end, God remained with him and saved him.

            The other classic story of testing is the story of Job. Job had bad things happen to him, and he remained faithful to God throughout and in the end, because of his patience and trust in God, all that he lost was returned to him. Jesus didn’t run away and very bad things happened to him, and in the end, God remained with him and not only saved him, but gave him new life.

            My takeaway from all of these contradictory stories is that whether we follow all the rules or not, bad things are going to happen and while it may feel like a test at times, I can promise you that it is not God who is administering the test, it is you. In the story of Job, it is the devil or Satan who is behind the horrible things affecting Job, and in the letter to the Hebrews Paul says that Jesus became flesh so that he could destroy the one who controls death, namely the devil. I am assuming that upon hearing the term devil or Satan we have all conjured an image of a red skinned pyromaniac with horns and furry legs, but that is not at all what Paul or the author of Job is referring to. The term devil comes from the Greek word diabolos, which means accuser or slanderer. To me, this changes things considerably, it means that in the story of Job it is slander and accusations that lead to his suffering and it is God who restores him and ends his suffering. It means that it was Jonah’s fear of doing what God asked that causes him to almost perish in a storm and it was God who saved him. It means that Jesus was tested by the accusations and slander of people who refused to accept what he was saying that led to his death, and it was God who restored him to life.

            You see, what this means is that we are the devils. We are the ones who accuse each other and slander each other. We are the ones who test each other, by making up rules, rules we know full well are impossible to follow and that truly have nothing to do with God. It is our need for a sense of control that causes us to be devils, we think that if we can point out the flaws in other people it somehow shows that we are more faithful, that we are in the right; but that is a fallacy my friends. The only test we have to pass is the one where we refuse to take the test, which is what Jesus did. He didn’t fight the accusers, he didn’t correct the slanderers, he let them have their say, he let them cast their stones, he even let them kill him. Why? Because he trusted God. He had faith that God would not betray him, even in death, and he was right. Which is why Paul tells us that “because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” We’re the ones being tested now, we are the ones who have been asked to love our neighbor unconditionally, whether we like them is an entirely different story. We are the ones who need to have mercy on the people who harm us and our loved ones, not because it is “the right things to do”, but because it is what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus. The test is simple, will we continue to fall into the trap of playing by human rules or will follow Jesus’s lead and refuse to play, trusting that God is on our side?

            I am by no means implying that this is easy. It is not easy to watch others hate, or demean, or dismiss entire groups of people. It is not easy to listen as countless people, people who claim to be Christians, throw insults at anyone and anything that dares to think or act differently than they do. It is not easy to admit that we do the same, we do the same every time we dismiss them, every time we dismiss their beliefs.

            I am sure several of you are asking yourself, right now, but how can I not dismiss or refute hatred when I hear it? To that I say, I never said don’t. We should absolutely reject hatred, misinformation, and cruelty. What we can’t do, is dismiss the people spreading those things, because if we dismiss them, if we assume that their beliefs are all that they are, then we have failed our own test. We have failed to follow the path Jesus laid before us, the path of peace and love.

            “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” But he can only help us if we are willing to accept the help.