Let's Argue it Out

Caveat: The approaching election is obviously getting to me, so don't take this one too seriously, and definitely not too literally...

The Lectionary Page that I use to review the upcoming Lessons for each Sunday uses the New Revised Standard Version. I notice that for Oct 31 the Isaiah chapter 1 passage is translated not "Come, let us reason together," like I grew up hearing, but "Come, let us argue it out, says the Lord." I feel a lot more like arguing it out with God today than I feel like reasoning, and so am very glad to see this invitation.

I've had a bone (or a whole spinal column of bones, actually) to pick with God for a long time. I have a severe case of juvenile idiopathic scoliosis, the kind that would have killed me given half a chance, and the kind that, no matter how well they corrected it when I was a kid, still leaves me as a "hunchback," a "cripple," or, as Leviticus 21 calls it in good Elizabethan English, "crookbackt" -- someone who might "profane the sanctuary."

Why would God create someone who was inherently, through no volition of their own, just by their very nature, fated to "profane the sanctuary" if they were to be accorded the privileges granted to others? Is God perverse? And more to the point for me, can't the God answer for Itself? My grandmother prayed for my healing every day -- made me pray with her -- agonized over her little faith or my little faith being the thing that prevented me from being healed. With all that she put into believing, and as much as I tried to believe for her, you'd think that if God was in the business of healing at all, it would surely have happened. Instead of the joy she anticipated each time she decided I was going to be healed this time, my being me caused her nothing but anguish and brought great doubts about her faith. That's another thing to argue about, God! I really loved her, but it didn't turn out so well, did it?

That bit about God answering for Itself is the rub for me, most of the time. I've actually given up asking this question of other people -- except now I will throw it out into the aether, where I fear my blog electrons perpetually swim in a sea of indifference. At least here I don't expect an answer. But, whenever I ask it of a friend, however close, I have come to expect yet another defense of God. Is God so weak that It must have men (and women) to defend It at every turn?

I asked myself the other day what kind of an answer I have been looking for, what is it that I continue to seek, and continue to set myself up to be denied yet again every time I broach this subject? I guess just a hug; an "I understand"; maybe someone to add a voice to mine and also question, "Hey God, what IS up with that?" This disagreement seems pretty lopsided -- would it be too much to ask to have a few on my side? I don't think God really needs all those defenders.

So OK God, step up to the plate -- without your cast of thousands. Just you and me, let's argue it out!

--AnnBarbie