Chaplain's Column --Oct 1 2022

Seeking God's Will or Willing God's will?

 

"What does God want me to do about this, Chaplain?"

 

That's a question I've been asked repeatedly over the years I've served as a military or healthcare chaplain.

 

An Army sniper sought my counsel wondering if God approved of him killing enemy combatants. Unhappy couples questioned if God was OK with divorce. The aging sought God's will on disconnecting life-support machines. And in my present role as hospice chaplain, patients seek wisdom related to life-ending medications.

 

From the lovelorn to the life-torn, many of them simply wanted to distinguish the difference between God's will and their personal, sometimes selfish, choices.

 

To help them discover the difference, I gave them the following five questions to ask themselves:

 

1. How does my faith inform me?

 

By this, I mean the principles of your faith – not just a single text for proof. I once wrote about getting a tattoo to celebrate my running accomplishments. It remains my first and only ink, but a reader still chided me with a single Bible verse he thought forbade tattoos.

 

"Doesn't work that way," I told him. "The Bible isn't a rulebook; it's a handbook."

 

If the first question doesn't illuminate your choices, then ask yourself a few more:

 

2. "What do I want to do?"

 

If you're honestly seeking God's will, then I don't think God will require you to do what you don't want to do. "But what about Jonah?" you wonder. "I know God sent a whale to get his attention." Well, for the most part, God wasn't the enemy Jonah had to confront, Jonah was.

 

3. What do your friends say?

 

Job's friends misled him. Friends don't always help you find God's will, but on the other hand, all my friends affirm that God didn't call me to dance.

 

However, when several high school classmates were impressed with my speaking ability, I declared a religion major. By the way, my wife says that God made me a minister because I can't sit still in a pew.

 

4. What role are my addictions or desires playing in the issue?

 

Are you considering moving to Las Vegas? Don't do it if you're addicted to money, power or sex.

 

That's not to say God can't tame addictions. A friend of mine served as a chaplain on the Vegas strip and was often required to work backstage around topless women. He had no issues with it, but my wife has assured me that it wasn't God's calling for me.

 

5. How will this decision help others?

 

God's will isn't about us. It's about helping people. If a divorce helps children out of an abusive home, then it might be God's will. If divorce is about finding a more attractive mate, then it's NOT.

 

At the end of the day, there are some things I don't ask God. I wanted to buy a home, so I bought one. Materialism doesn't interest God. He is more concerned with what owns us, not what we own. He's concerned about our unhealthy attachment to things and our unhealthy detachment from those we love. 

 

Finally, my father-in-law, a serious Bible student and pastor for 50 years, has always said that the most certain way you will know God's will is when you experience the misery of being out of it.

 

I suppose that's what Phil Vischer, the creator of Veggie Tales and voice of Bob the Tomato meant when he said, "There is no happier place than the intersection of God's will and your giftedness."

 

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Please read past columns on my website, www.thechaplain.net Send comments to comment@thechaplain.net or 10556 Combie Rd. Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602 or via voicemail (843) 608-9715.

 

 

 

 

Chaplain's Column --Sept 23

It's Enough to Make a Preacher Cuss

 

If you can imagine how frustrated a preacher would have to be to swear a blue streak, then you might understand the old expression, "It's enough to make a preacher cuss."

 

I grew up in a Baptist church, so it's safe to say that I'd never heard a preacher cuss. But that all changed when I began my Air Force chaplain's career at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, California.

 

The base is now closed, but I spent three years there as a 1^st Lieutenant under the mentoring of five active-duty chaplains.

 

While each chaplain enjoyed a well-apportioned office, the biggest office was occupied by our senior chaplain. We called him "Father Z."

 

At the time, I was only a reservist working a few days each month. My "office" was comprised of a few chairs surrounded by a five-foot fabric cubical – all under the watchful eye of Father Z.

 

One day, Father Z scheduled me to counsel a young Air Force couple who wanted to be married in our chapel. The potential groom was a timid airman, a clerk from the military personnel section. His fiancée was a 19-year-old civilian, still unsure of what military life had in store for her.

 

At the appointed hour, our chapel receptionist led the couple past Chaplain Z's closed door and into my cubicle.

 

I greeted the engaged couple warmly and began asking them typical premarital questions. "Are you planning a family? Do you practice a faith together?"

 

The couple gave answers with a nervous edge, using a varied volume of two-syllable yes-sirs and no-sirs. However, as they began sharing their heart-story, they relaxed into easy smiles and comfortable chuckles.

 

Then, just as I asked the couple how they deal with anger in their relationship, we heard a loud crash in the office across from my cubicle. Father Z's office door flew open, igniting the air with expletives.

 

Instinctively we ducked our heads. The couple remained in their seats, but like a soldier in a World War I trench, I peeked over the partition to find our profane sniper.

 

When I returned my attention to the couple, the wide-eyed woman asked in whispered tones, "Doesn't that man know he's in a chapel?"

 

"Oh, I'm afraid he knows," I said.

 

"Why?" the airman asked. "Who is he?"

 

"That's Father Z and I suppose something got him mad enough to make a preacher cuss," I said, deadpanning the old expression.

 

"He's really a nice guy," I added, which was my way of telling the shocked couple what the Wizard of Oz said about himself – "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain," or in this case, behind our partition.

 

The incident highlights questions about integrity that I've often asked my own parishioners over the years: "Who are you when no one is watching?" "Who are you when it doesn't seem as though it matters?"

 

The answers to these questions will determine your integrity. Integrity is gauged by measuring the difference between who you are in public and who you are in private. 

 

Integrity means you remain the same person no matter who benefits.

 

Honestly, Fr. Z could be one of the kindest men you'd want to know. He was often respectful, thoughtful and compassionate. Unfortunately, his anger issues put up a smoke screen that hid his goodness from the impressionable couple.

 

I never did get a bigger office at Mather, and I never found out what made Father Z so mad.

 

However, my time there did give me a bigger sense of a compelling fact: Being an angry person in private only means that we are rehearsing the anger that will eventually gain center stage in our public lives.

 

 

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Parts of this column were excerpted from Norris's book, 'Thriving Beyond Surviving." His books are available for purchase on his website, www.thechaplain.net Send comments to comment@thechaplain.net or 10556 Combie Rd. Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602 or via voicemail (843) 608-9715.

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Chaplain's Column --10 Sept 2022

The Hand of God Expressed by the People of God

 

As you read this, my wife, Becky, and I are winging across the Atlantic toward Lisbon, Portugal, where we hope to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary – postponed two years for the pandemic.

 

I have reading material to share with my beloved. She likes it when I do that.

 

Somewhere over the Atlantic, you can imagine our conversation going something like this.

 

"Apparently, Lisbon was a devout religious city in the 1700s, the fourth largest in Europe and a rich port city." I say.

 

She looks out the window, and I continue.

 

"It's a good thing we aren't visiting back then."

 

"Why?" she asks, eyes on the water far below.

 

"Well, for one thing, the inquisition was underway, meaning they'd have burned this spirituality columnist at the stake."

 

"I've seen the email from your readers." she says, "That bonfire might still happen."

 

I ignore her comment.

 

"It gets worse. In the 16^th century, Lisbon was the site of the worst natural disaster in European history."

 

She turns to me. "Where are you getting all this?"

 

I hold up my source book and she reads the title aloud.

 

"The Big Ones – How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us (And What We Can Do About Them)" by Dr. Lucy Jones.

 

Adequately footnoted, I share my abridged version with Becky.

 

"Jones, 67, a science adviser for the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, tells the story in the book's second chapter of Lisbon's All-Saints Day earthquake."

 

"On November 1, 1755, the ground began to shake about 9:40 a.m. The tremor transitioned into a violent earthquake, lasting five minutes. Jones quotes numbers estimating that the quake was nearly a 9.0 on the Richter magnitude scale. 

 

"She writes that many victims were sitting in stone churches, where many were crushed to death. If they survived church, they were swept away by the tsunami. If they escaped a watery death, they perished in fires that burned for six days.

 

"The quake killed roughly 60,000 people and destroyed 85% of the buildings."

 

Becky fiddles with the air sickness bag.

 

"Don't worry," I tell her. "They've rebuilt the city. We'll be safe."

 

"That's good," she says, apparently hoping the story is coming to a close.

 

"Unless, that is…"

 

Her glare breaks my dramatic pause.

 

"Unless God is still mad at Lisbon."

 

Becky shivers and reaches for the overhead vent. Or is it the call button to complain about her seat mate?

 

It's hard to tell, so I put on my earphones and listen to the audio version by myself.

 

Jones describes how church leaders immediately declared that the hand of God's punishment had crushed Lisbon.

 

In a city dominated by the Catholic Church, priests asserted the quake to be divine retribution for allowing too many protestants into the city. Their answer for the people was to execute more protestants.

 

Protestant clergy countered by asserting that it was God's reckoning on the Catholic church for their worship of idol statues. Furthermore, it was payback for the many protestant murders by the Catholic Inquisition.

 

Fortunately, reasonable thought prevailed a few weeks later when Voltaire, the famed French writer and Theist philosopher, rejected the idea that a benevolent God caused the suffering. 

 

"What crime or sin had those young hearts conceived?" Voltaire asked. If God was punishing Lisbon, shouldn't he also exact the same price from London, Paris or Madrid for their vice?

 

Jones credits Voltaire's "deep feeling of unfairness for triggering a fundamental shift in Christian thought."

 

From that day forward, people of faith drew a distinction between natural evil, like earthquakes and floods, and moral evil like the holocaust. Reasonable people rejected the idea that God is an angry old man using disaster as divine punishment.

 

The good news is that Lisbon recovered in remarkable fashion. Relief poured in from all over the world. Their government responded with assistance not seen before.

 

Lisbon's survivors turned their hearts and hands toward rebuilding both their city and each other. In that regard, the people of God truly became the hand of God.

 

I heave a sigh at the redemptive conclusion and reach for Becky's hand. She gladly accepts it with some hesitancy, hoping she's heard the last disaster story on this vacation.

 

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Please read past columns on my website, www.thechaplain.net Send comments to comment@thechaplain.net or 10556 Combie Rd. Suite 6643 Auburn, CA 95602 or via voicemail (843) 608-9715.