Trying To Understand

“We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” Acts 26:14

Masked gunmen opened fire on a convoy near Baghdad. Two were killed. Five were wounded. The convoy was not a military operation. The dead were not soldiers. They were Russian technicians who were traveling to work on a Baghdad power station. An improvised explosive device explodes on another convoy resulting in death and serious injury. Again, the dead and injured are not military soldiers, but multi-national employees of General Electric who were working to restore power to Baghdad and the surrounding area.

Why? Why are these people trying to prevent the restoration of power to their own country? Why are these people trying to kill people who are helping to rebuild their nation? Doesn’t everyone want to see Iraq rebuilt and functioning again? The answer to these questions is a complex one with a mixture of religious, political, and historical components. Since I wonder how much I even understand, I’ll pass on trying to explain what I do know (however, I will say this is not a political statement about what I think we should do in Iraq, rather it is a reflection on our relationship with God and one another).

But as I ponder the actions of these masked gunmen and roadside bombers I begin to recognize a story familiar to many of us. Have you ever tried to help someone only to have them sabotage your efforts? Have you ever worked to help someone deal with their problems and the mess they have made of their life only to have them turn on you and vilify your efforts?

I remember such an experience in ministering to a brother addicted to crack cocaine. I picked him up for Cocaine Anonymous meetings, helped him get his children to the doctor, assisted him in getting financial messes untangled, and arranged for him to receive counseling. Somewhere along the way I began to realize that I wanted him to be clean and sober more than he wanted it. I wanted him to have a normal, healthy relationship with his wife and children more than he did. Like the masked gunmen, he sabotaged my efforts to help him restore normalcy to his life. I concluded that it didn’t matter how much I wanted it for him until he wanted it for himself. So I responded by “giving him over to himself” (see Romans 1:24, 26,and 28).

But this is not just the story of masked gunmen and crack addicts. It is our story, too. Because as difficult as it is for us to understand how people could sabotage our honest efforts to help them, we must understand that we often fight God’s efforts to better our lives. Like the Romans, we know God’s desire for our lives but we turn to ourselves rather than allow him to work. Like Saul (Paul) we “kick against the pricks” when God tries to touch our hearts and “goad” us in the right direction.

So remember the next time an electrical engineer in Iraq is kidnapped, killed, or injured and the next time someone you are genuinely trying to help someone only to have them betray you — God deals with a world full of ingrates everyday. We need to make sure we are not among them.

— Bob Clark

6/22/2004