God isn’t about fuflilling wishes or looking to help people grow in power. Our purpose is more than selfish desire.
But eager to say yes.
Bernard | John 15:7–11
“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
These words are at once a comforting and troubling path. The reasons are quite obvious and eternal. We often hear the caution in the adage: be careful what you wish for.
Wishes themselves are powerful. Wishes amplified by the power of God are next level.
Most of our attention turns to God and the suitability of the wish—but not on the wisher herself. Unless, of course, the wish is grotesque. Even then, however, we reason the worst human is nothing next to the enormity of God. A good God is not subject to a grotesque human wish. But then again, Jesus kinda makes it sound like that isn’t true. If we wish it, God has to grant it.
This mindset—that God grants wishes—even the bad ones—to people of “true faith” is a dangerous idea for people and limiting one for God. It turns God into a divine butler, coming at our beck and call. A butler whose only purpose is to serve his master. The very idea of wish fulfillment transforms God, not into a monster, but a weak genie. But worse; one bound to unlimited wishes to all of humanity.
A theology built on divine wish fulfillment is always bound to be an unmitigated disaster. Both philosophically and practically.
What happens when you abide in Jesus and read your Bible every day, soaking it all in, and then ask for a pony and you never get one? Are you the failure? Is God? Or is the Bible?
Granting every wish would make God a terrible father.
I don’t give my kids everything they ask for.
1) We don’t have enough money to buy everything they want.
2) We don’t have enough room to stable the ponies, shelter the livestock, and store the Lego.
3) They also ask for mythical creatures.
Even if I could, it would be bad for them. People who get everything they want tend to have small imaginations or selfish ambitions.
When my daughter was young, I tried a different approach. She heard no so often, to so many things, I worried that she’d stop wishing, not just for mythical pets, but good things. Thoughtful or joyful things. Things for us. I worried that she would stop asking all together because we always seemed to be saying no.
I wanted to teach her to live in a world of God’s abundance, not human scarcity.
So I wondered what it would be like to say yes to as much as I possibly could.
Can we do this?
I’d run it through the filter of good, useful, generous, thoughtful, fun. And I tried to say yes as much as possible.
My son, on the other hand, asks for tons of stuff. So I’m not worried about him because he makes us say no.
What if our imagination about wishes, ambitions, and what’s good for us is too small, too narrow? What if God is trying to help us hear more yeses?
The Fiery Defender
Holy Women Holy Men describes Bernard as a “fiery defender of the Church,” a description as appropriate as it is troubling. He was a figure as towering and consequential as any during the Middle Ages. He revived Benedictine spirituality and sparked the Second Crusade–marvels as tremendous as they were different.
Bernard, the peerless intellect and preacher, was respected throughout the western church. His leadership was measured by the heights of his accomplishments. Perhaps his faith was rewarded?
It seems just as inconceivable that one man could create an army from the civilians of two whole countries. Just by preaching a couple of times. Nobody is that good. Clearly he had help.
What they took for granted was the idea that God was with him, empowering him. We’re too skeptical to believe that. Even so, why would God do that? Recruit an army of Christians only to see them defeated?
And if God isn’t there, empowering Bernard, then what is God doing? It is all weird and messy. The wish-fulfilling God isn’t a good God. And neither is the one who ignores our cries. AND I’m not terribly interested in a God that isn’t present for any of it.
Bernard is a troubling figure.
But notice how his story ends. They take it for granted that God spurred the people to join in the Second Crusade. They put God’s fingerprints over all of that. When it failed, it was Bernard’s fault.
I can’t speak for God’s intentions, but it takes a crazy twist of theology to make God empower a people and then blame Bernard when they don’t kill enough neighbors. The church that trusted Bernard in everything, convinced him to mount a crusade, then abandoned him when things went south. All of this tells me way more about people than about God.
This is really a question of power.
Bernard dutifully tried to “win the Holy Land for Christ” an idea which springs to mind the human love of power more than it does a reflection of honor to our humble God. A quest that wasn’t Bernard’s alone, but one spawned from the Pope himself. And eagerly celebrated by the thousands Bernard preached to.
They wanted to take back their country from the outside invaders. No matter that none of them were actually from there.
Consider this against Bernard’s great triumph. He protected the church from schism: another reflection of exercising human power on behalf of God. The human will to divide, like the will to kill, is always about us. And our unquenchable wish for power.
Perhaps the tragedy at the end of Bernard’s life was built of the zeal he reflected and championed. His was unparalleled conviction and true duty to God that lifted the vision of humanity to the divine. Is it not just as likely that he would lose sight as any?
I have personally known many good people of faith who have made terrible messes of their own lives. I for one never pretend to be terribly good at either. But our tradition is full of saints and sinners, knowing that each of us is a bit of both.
Even so, some of what we wish for is truly good. And generous. And full of humility and grace.
I like to think God is eager for the good and then just as eager to say yes.