I like to glean from teachers in various streams of Christianity. One of the teachers I drop in on now and then is Arthur Burk, a student of the scriptures who leads a Christian think tank in California. One of his passions is helping people heal and grow into their God-created design. He just wrote an exceptionally life-giving article that I am reposting here.
Some of you are going to find healing in his words.
Blessings,
Gail Ruth
Redeeming Scheming by Arthur Burk
I have a friend who grew up playing the trumpet with skill and uncommon flair. By the time she was an adult, she was winning first and second place trophies in statewide competitions.
It wasn’t just about competition. She loved her trumpet and expressed herself through her music.
When she got saved, someone told her that if she really loved God she would give up her trumpet playing and offer it as a sacrifice to God.
So . . . she did. She got a doctorate in music and became the director of a church choir – until she got tired of the lack of fulfillment.
I have another friend who is the son of two artists. All of his growing up days, he planned to go to the finest school for his particular niche of art and spend his life doing what he loved doing.
When he got saved, someone told him that if he really loved God he would lay down his art and offer it as a sacrifice to God.
So . . . he did. He got a job as a youth leader at the church and went to Bible school to prepare for being in full time Christian ministry – until he got tired of the lack of fulfillment and left the ministry to go to art school.
Is this the God of the Bible? God the kill joy? God who designs us then won’t let us be us? God whose greatest gratification comes from our greatest pain? God who only accepts church work from us?
I fully understand that there are many things that we can love more than God, and this can become a problem. I know that God at times, out of His infinite love, will break our toys if we won’t give them up, in order to draw our hearts to Him.
But all of that overlooks the end of the story. As soon as God has our hearts, it is His delight to give us back the things we were designed (by Him) to do and be.
I love the story of Naomi. She appears to have been a wheeler dealer. A schemer. She had an angle on everything. The evidence is that her controlling ways were an obstacle to her relationship with God.
Because her scheming was a problem, God allowed her to crash and burn in Moab. When she made it back to Bethlehem, she was pretty contrite. She had come to the wrong conclusion.
She thought God was mad at her and that is why He bankrupted her, stripping her of capital leaving her powerless to leverage much of anything.
I take a very different view of things. I see a God who designed her to be a deal maker, to see the available options when others don’t see them and to weave together a stream of variables into a finished product.
I believe God thoroughly enjoyed watching her be herself – because that is what He made her to do.
He set her up in her home town with Ruth as a player in the scenario. Naomi appears to be too broken in health to glean in the fields, but Ruth was willing and able. However, Ruth did not know the Mosaic Law which said such gleaning was permissible to widows and the poor.
Guess who did? Yup. Naomi. So with no financial capital, Naomi leveraged the three things she had: the time of year (harvest time), a willing daughter-in-law and her knowledge of the culture and the Law.
God stepped in and breathed on Naomi’s fragile venture by placing Ruth in the right field to be seen by Boaz. That little bit of help from God was all Naomi needed. She was off and running and worked the deal all the way to the wedding and the grandkids.
God smiled as He watched Naomi being herself.
Can you see that He did not just redeem her? He redeemed her scheming. She was made to see opportunities others didn’t. Granted her pursuit of deals did lead her away from God for awhile. The redemption of her heart began when she went back home where God had placed her. But her redemption was not complete until her design was validated.
Let me press this point. God did not need her involvement. Allow me to rewrite the story of Ruth.
Naomi and Ruth arrive in town. Ruth goes to the store at the same time Boaz does (due to God’s control of timing). He sees Ruth, it is love at first sight, and off they go to make history. So easy for God.
I am convinced God took the long route so He could redeem Naomi’s scheming.
Did my two friends need to give up their trumpet and art? Possibly, if those things were defiantly held as obstacles to obeying God. But that is not the way I heard the story. The advice they got was preventative crushing, just to be sure that nothing they loved could possibly diminish their spiritual walk.
I don’t get it. God made a happy place for Adam and Eve. He is going to make a happy place for His people in the Millennial Kingdom. He is looking forward to some real happy people in heaven.
Who started this goofy theology that experiencing fulfillment by doing what God designed us to do was a sure fire way to ruin our relationship with Him? That is just plain weird, twisted, bizarre . . .
Arthur Burk
March 30, 2011
Arthur Burk Arthur Burk, Sapphire Leadership Group: http://www.theslg.com
Noble Subjects Blog: http://noblesubjects.com
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for sharing this, Gail. Arthur brings up some really good points. Every talent is a gift from God. But given the fact that we have free will, we choose to use it for good or evil, to share with others or hoard it to ourselves, etc.
In answer to that last question, perhaps this stems from our puritanical forebears in the church, who questioned the morality of anything that was considered fun?
Hi Serena, I find strong evidence of this mindset as early as the third century desert fathers. But they were dealing with a harsh and hard world at that point, and the persecution was fierce. Practices valuable in one culture or season of the world don’t always translate well to another culture or season.
Now I’m going to challenge your “puritanical forebears” thoughts. While we certainly have forebears who have what we think of as a puritanical mindset, they weren’t the puritans themselves.
So much of what we commonly know about the puritans comes from a biased secular portrayal of them and from what we know about the twisted people involved in the Salem witch trials. But I found a reputable source that showed the witch trials were brought to an end through intervention of Christians from outside their community.
Actually, the puritans lived in a mindset we, with our individualistic way of being in the world, cannot comprehend. As most older cultures did, they valued the good of the community over the rights of the individual. (Our approach to the world as individuals with a sense of “self” is a relatively modern phenomena). And so when we look at specific behaviors, they seem harsh to us, but they were experienced very differently by the people involved because of their cultural values. I studied this many 25 or more years back and learned some interesting things.
As a whole they were a very joyful people who found great delight in God and walked in intimacy with Him. Far more so than the average Christian today. Christianity wasn’t cognitive assent to them; it was a deeply experienced joy. And that pretty much changes everything as we look at them.
Couldn’t help sharing :-)
Hi, Gail.
I like this article. I have difficulty fathoming why, when we are all so different, that there are people who presume to know how other people should use their gifts. The way I read Genesis, freedom of choice is built into human nature. Adam took Eve’s advice about that tree – and Eve took the serpent’s, for that matter – and where did that get them? It’s a dangerous thing to let other people do our thinking for us.