Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Tails. Heads.
Wait. Was that other one tails? Maybe that’s it. OK. We’re not supposed to date.
Tails. Tails. Tails. Tails. Rolls under the bed.
I bet that one was going to be heads. Don’t say it out loud. Remember what you learned in Sunday school: God is omniscient but Satan is not. So, accordingly, God can read your mind but Satan can’t. Neither can demons. And demons want me to make the wrong decision. They want the coin to land on … what did I decide again? Don’t look too certain, they’re watching. The demons are watching. They may not be able to hear my thoughts, but they’ve been around for thousands of years so they can tell by my facial cues what I’m thinking, right? So look very stoic and decide. OK. If it’s heads we’ll date. No. Wait. They expect heads. Everyone chooses heads. I’ll go for tails. Tails it is. If it’s tails, we’ll date.
Flips the coin, bounces off ceiling and strikes right eyeball.
@$*#%&!!!!
—
If you don’t understand what just happened in the above scenario, you make for a far better Christian–alright, a far better human–than I do. When it comes to decisions from dating to jelly, there are days when I wish Holy Ghost and I had the kind of relationship where a flip of the coin was all the sign and wonder I needed. If only Jesus would tell me if I should order a black coffee or a latte, then my day would be a bit more holy.
Scratch that, the way Jesus works, He’d probably have me forego the coffee and the latte and have me give to the poor. Forget that, I’m flipping a coin. A lot. Repeatedly. At least until I get the answer I want enough times out of the flips to feel, if not justified, like I somehow still consulted God and He felt similarly about the whole thing.
Funny, every time I flip a coin to ask Jesus if I should pray for my neighbor or swear at them when they annoy me, He’s always so behind the swearing. At least after I flip the coin enough times to find out what He really thinks.
Because the truth, the scary sort of Truth, is that God gives very little by way of direct instructions for how this whole living thing is supposed to go. Sure, He’s got His big categories like love and justice and mercy, but those don’t really help me decide on that latte.
And I think that’s for the best. It must be, lest God would have been content to not ordain the cosmos as He did.
“Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave Himself up as an offering for sin.”
Walk in love. But not any kind of love, the kind of love that gets you killed. The kind of love that gets you killed by choice.
This post was supposed to be about dating, about how we are silly with how we try and force God to make our relationship decisions for us and pretend our desires are really His. I suppose it’s still about that, in a way, but like all things with our Lord, there is no one category within which He is contained.
© 2011, Preston. All rights reserved.
