Confidence in His Kindness
The parish where I worship hosts morning prayers on some weekdays and I occasionally participate.
Those who gather are an encouragement to me, and the practice itself, while sometimes feeling like a chore, is more often than not a comfort.
Image by of Anna Svets.
Besides offering up prayers to praise God and ask for help, we also read Scripture and discuss the impression it leaves on us that morning.
Earlier this week, two of the passages intersected in a way that struck me deeply… and I’m still puzzling through how to respond.
Parting Ways
In Genesis 13:2-18, the Hebrew patriarch Abram runs into a problem. He’s on his journey following God’s direction and his nephew Lot is along for the trip. Awkwardly, both men have grown in wealth and flocks and their hired hands begin to quarrel. The land cannot sustain both estates at once.
Abram gives Lot the choice: “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives. Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.” (Gen. 13:8-9 NIV)
To the east, Lot sees a verdant, hospitable plain. It is home to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and it promises a reliable, supportive environment for his flocks and herds. To the west, the land of the Canaan was not bad, but didn’t paint nearly as optimistic odds for flourishing.
Lot picks the lush land to the east and they part. Abram then receives this repetition of God’s covenant promise:
“Look around from where you are, to the north and south, to the east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.” (Genesis 13:14-17 NIV)
Abram deferred to his nephew, trusting that God would honour His promise of provision. Lot, by contrast, sees what appears best to him and takes it for himself.
Discussing these passages, our minister commented that the most honourable choice Lot could have made would be to defer to his uncle. Virtue and faith would have had him respond, “I will go where you send me,” trusting his uncle and their God to be good to him.
But instead, he took what appeared best to him in an effort to ensure his survival.
How Much More?
The Gospel reading for that morning was from Matthew 7:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11 ESV)
These words are Jesus teaching his disciples and all those following to hear him.
The contrast is easy to grasp; If God is infinite and perfectly good, the good we see from weak and imperfect parents is but a shadow and dim reflection of God’s boundless generosity!
A Point of Intersection
In the instance of Abram and Lot parting ways, it appears Abram behaves with faith that God would be there and be good to him while Lot more cynically takes matters into his own hands.
One may call Abram’s attitude faith, or an abundance mindset, or the law of attraction; but it’s all resting on a confidence that God has everything to give us and all the love in world to incline Him to give it.
Here’s where I feel the need to remind myself of a few words of caution:
Abram is only inconsistently a paragon of this kind of faith. Certainly he lived with enough faith to have it credited to him as righteousness (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3), but he also repeatedly took matters into his own hands, temporarily losing confidence in God’s confidence (Gen 12; 14; 16).
Lot’s choice is not proven wrong based on the eventual outcome of his losing nearly everything in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Virtuous choices result in unfortunate outcomes as often as not (Mt. 5:44-45)
For the same reason, it is probably also reductionistic to see Lot’s losses in the Sodom and Gomorrah fiasco as punishment for his self-serving choice. There is correlation in that Lot may not have been there if he’d deferred to Abram, but Abram may have still given him the verdant plain. In any case, the destruction of the cities is due to the wickedness of the cities; Lot is spared because he is not lumped in with their wickedness (Gen 18:20-21; 19:29).
Having said all that, the text of the story does portray Lot’s choice as short-sighted and self-serving and Abram’s as displaying faith in God.
Wise as Serpents? Innocent as Doves?
Jesus’s words in Matthew 7 explicitly invite me to live with that same confidence in God’s benevolence. And that is a comforting invitation when considering the way God did follow through on His word. He did make Abram a nation that blessed the nations. He has given Jesus through whom the world is blessed.
At the same time… what does that confidence actually mean? What do I do with it?
To be frank, one might see Lot’s choice a wise one; he exercised agency to position himself favourably. He accepted his uncle’s invitation to select the east or the west. Who can begrudge him the freedom to make that choice when it was offered?
How do I navigate confidence in God and the need for me to take responsibility for what I do?
I strongly resist characterizing faith as sitting back and awaiting divine generosity. Both Scripture and common sense gesture at a call for us to take action, to live with wisdom, courage, and prudence.
Simultaneously, an overdeveloped sense of personal agency can get me spinning in circles and tangled in my own schemes. I can find myself lurching towards ‘the land in the east’ like Lot.
So what do I do?
As I puzzle through a possible rule of thumb, I take some comfort in a few things:
Abram was not perfect. This instance of his faith is a model to follow situated within a life of fumbling and being shown grace in the face of imperfection.
Lot was still called righteous and rescued from Sodom. He grasped at control and self-preservation in this case, but still honoured God to a degree that was recognized.
The very disciples that Jesus taught were imperfect in the way they followed him. Still, they were beneficiaries of God’s boundless generosity and lovingkindness.
In every instance, the positive outcome of faith always rests on the reliability of an infinitely good, powerful, loving, and justice Creator God. My frailty is in no way a threat. Even the tiniest measure of faith is welcome and beneficial (Mt. 17:20).
What kind of action does faith prompt? Ongoing discernment will be necessary in every circumstance.
But if I keep in mind the comparison of good, weak, human parents and a good, all-powerful, divine Father, I can deepen my confidence that my Maker is able and inclined towards treating me kindly.
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7-11 ESV)