Does God exist for our benefit? Or do we exist for God’s benefit? I don’t know if you’ve given that much thought.
There’s certainly a strong feeling among many that God is there for us. Or at least, he ought to be. Some folk even get quite cranky with the Almighty when he doesn’t appear to be there for them. They pray earnestly but heaven is silent. Doesn’t God have an obligation to help us? Many would say a very loud ‘yes’ to that question.
It’s a little like a medical doctor. Our GP is there to help us in our times of need. And let me remind you that this isn’t a comparison I made up. Jesus did. He once compared himself to your GP. At that point he was being accused by the religious leaders of his day for associating with the riff raff of society – folk whom they called ‘tax collectors and sinners’. His reply was that those who are healthy don’t need the doctor… but the sick do. That would seem to indicate very strongly that the Lord is there for us.
It’s easy to find supporting arguments from other parts of the Bible too. Take Psalm 107 for example. That song mentions people who wandered in desert wastelands – people who were hungry and thirsty an in need of a home. And then that Psalm says that they cried out to the Lord in their trouble and that he delivered them from their distress. In fact that Psalm pictures three more scenarios where people get to the end of their tether and in despair cry out to God and he hears their prayer delivering them from their troubles… even when those troubles have come about through their own stupidity and rebellion.
So it would seem safe to assume that rather then us being there for God, the Lord is there for us. That’s certainly a great help and comfort in times of need. When we are physically sick it’s great that we can call on our GP. When we’re in more serious trouble that our GP can’t resolve then it’s a wonderful comfort and blessing that our heavenly physician is there for us. As the Psalms tell us over and over: God is our refuge in times of trouble!
But where does that leave us when it comes to what we call ‘unanswered prayers’? What about those emergency prayers? This week I read of a young teenager who was abused by an adult whom she should have been able to trust. When she realised what was going to happen she cried out, ‘O God spare me from this horrible violation of my personality.’ But the Lord didn’t spare her – instead as time went by things got worse.
I don’t have any satisfying answers to that problem. I’ve wept with those who weep because God seemingly ignored their prayers.
There is however another side to the picture. To say that God is there for us is a very one sided picture. The Bible makes abundantly clear that we exist for God’s benefit. Or to put it in a more Biblical way: we were made for God’s glory. God made us as his grand creative achievement so that we might articulate – on behalf of all creation – the praise and the glory of God. God made us to benefit him. Of course God is not dependent on us. He is totally self-sufficient. We are not. The apostle Paul put it well when he said that all we do, our eating and drinking, our work and our play, should all be done to the glory of God.
And that’s where the problem begins. Back in the Garden of Eden we abdicated our responsibility to seek first of all God’s glory and the honour of his name. We made the mistake of thinking that life was all about us when in reality it’s all about him. The result was that the curse was pronounced over creation and we now live in a disordered world. And that’s really the point that Jesus was making when he compared himself to our GP. The first and the most important thing we need him for is to heal us from the disordered state of our lives. We need to invite him in to do a make-over of our lives. And once we have come to Jesus for that then he promises us that all things will work together for our eternal well-being.
John Westendorp