A
common phrase in our vocabulary is to wish good upon someone by saying “Good
luck.” It is likely that throughout this
very week we have all wished someone “luck” at least once and that makes me wonder
whether we are just being polite or do we really believe in luck? What is luck?
The concept of luck is ancient. I
assume it derives from the ancient Greek beliefs in fate or fortune. Both of these assume that there are specific
gods who determine the outcome or destiny of human life. The Fates were a set of three Greek goddess
sisters who determined the events of human life. Fortune is how that plays out in one’s life. To wish someone good luck is to invoke the
power of the gods to look favorably upon that person’s efforts; thus, good
fortune or luck.
In this system of
belief, which in essence is faith in fate, for something to have gone wrong in
a person’s life they must either have been cursed, have done something to
offend the gods, or just plane are not in line with fate. One needs religion or superstition to get
fate on one’s side. You must do
something that will please the gods usually this involves bargaining with fate
by giving something up or saying something using the right words. Also, you must come up with some sort of way
of determining when you are in good fortune or as gambler’s put it, “on a run” and
when you’re not.
Life in the world of
fate is pretty miserable. The pursuit is
usually for material or some other personal gain. You have an ideal that you “feel” to be in
the cards or in your fate and you begin to pursue it. Unfortunately, the selfish motivation is entirely
wrong. It’s for the stuff you think you
need to make you happy. What often gets
compromised in the end is character or integrity. It becomes a very capricious life full of
highs and lows the anxiety of always wondering whether or not you are in with
your fate. The costs of this foolishness
accumulate and sooner or later you find your life is in the control of
something or someone whose power over you is fear.
Many Christians get
caught in the “fate game” even while thinking they are pursuing God’s will for
their lives. It is Christian teaching to
say that since God is almighty and all-knowing he knows what’s going to happen
in every event and has determined the end of everything. Since there is free choice what happens may
not be in his will, but he permits it and uses it. People pray and discern trying to figure out
what it is God wants them to do with their lives so that they will have his
blessing.
I’ve often questioned
this teaching and mostly on the basis that it works out in practice more to
resemble faith in the three Fates than trust in the God of the Bible. God has a will for our lives. It is for us to become like Christ, to be
changed to be like him by participating in his life as we walk by the Holy
Spirit through the relationships and situations of our lives. The Bible doesn’t promise a blessed outcome
of material wealth and happiness. Rather,
we are promised a most blessed outcome in the greater wealth of knowing
God. Jesus taught us not to worry about
our material needs and I would even add emotional needs for our Father in
heaven knows what they are and will provide.
We need not pursue those things or bargain with God for those things. They are a given. Rather, it is God’s will that we pursue
Christ-likeness whole-heartedly. Fate
pursues a life unchallenged by suffering.
It seeks to escape to an unchallenged bliss. Christian faith says that God will make us to
be as he is even through suffering. The Christian pursuit is God-likeness not
comfort. It is to know and to be come
like God in character.
The beginning of
Christian faith is to confess trust in God not to try to get God to do
something for us. The Nicene Creed
begins: “We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things seen and unseen.” We
believe in one God who is Creator, Ruler, and Sustainer of everything and this
God we call our Father and we call him this because this is how he has revealed
himself to us through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit. The meaning behind calling God Father is that
we know God, by his personal involvement and working in our lives, has brought
us into existence and called us forth as his people. It means we know also by his personal
involvement and working in our lives that he will provide for us in life now
and with an inheritance in the day to come, an inheritance which we have begun
to experience through the presence and working of the Holy Spirit in our lives
now to make us like Christ.
To call God Father is
to know that he is faithful not fateful.
God’s faithfulness means that he will work all things to the good of
those who love God, who are called according to his purpose as it says in
Romans 8:28. To love God is the purpose
we are called to. John Calvin writes on
the significance of knowing that God has created us: “There remains the second
part of the rule, more closely related to faith. It is to recognize that God has destined all
things for our good and salvation but at the same time to feel his power and
grace in ourselves and in the great benefits he has conferred upon us, and so
bestir ourselves to trust, invoke, praise, and love him… (Institutes
I.xiv.22).” Basically, God has destined
all things for our good and salvation.
Moreover, he works powerfully and graciously in us to make this good and
our salvation a reality in us personally and in the events of our lives. This working moves us to trust and love him,
to pray to him, and to worship him.
God’s work in us is
as a Father rearing his children according to the utmost of love for us. As God’s children we know and experience life
in its totality as a lesson to learn deep in our hearts the nature and the ways
of God’s family. He rears us to shine
forth his self-emptying nature as his children in Christ in the way we relate
to each other and to all of his creation.
We learn to love and respect God for this work.
For God to be our
Father also means that he has provided the way for us to be rightly related to
himself spiritually speaking, which is in union with him through Christ by the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit which is his gracious gift to us. The Word of God by which he spoke the Creation
into existence has become human and has passed through death taking our
humanity back into God. This New
Creation, this new humanity, God graciously gives to us through the Holy
Spirit. What defines this new humanity is
a new heart, a will that desires and welcomes the true and real presence of God
in our lives no matter how painful it might be as he goes about his work of
rearing, shaping and molding us to be like him.
Through the spoken Word of Jesus Christ God has saved us from an
existence driven by the pursuit of fate.
By the gift of his Spirit we now have the free choice to desire God and
his working in our lives where before we were oblivious to it. We can now pray and worship freely in
gratitude not having to worry about getting on God’s good side to get fate to
work in our favor. We already are on
God’s good side and he destines all things for our good and salvation. We just have to learn to live with this new
reality. We can now whole-heartedly
trust God and love God for he is the unseen but present loving presence working
in our lives for good, to save us from our false hopes, desires, and
addictions.
We are children of
the Maker of heaven and earth and all things seen and unseen. We belong to the Almighty who is our heavenly
Father. This should be a great comfort
for us in that all things that happen are his workings in our lives to create
the nature of his Son in us. Our Father
who sees to it that even every little sparrow is fed and clothed the fields in
beauty has as Jesus said numbered every hair on our heads that none should fall
without him knowing of it. All we’ve got
to do is to learn to call on him in prayer, praise him, and enjoy him for there
in lies our purpose.
I will close with a
prayer from St. Augustine who lived back in the 400’s CE. It is the opening to his classic work Confessions.
“Grant me, Lord, to know and to understand which of these is most important, to
call on you or to praise. Or again, to
know you or to call on you. For who can
call on you without knowing you? For he
who does not know you may call on you as other than you are…Let me seek you
Lord by calling on you, and call on you believing in you as you have been
proclaimed to us. My faith calls on you,
the faith you have given me.” Amen.
