God and Life

The Stock Market goes up and down.  My favorite team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, might win the World Series this year.  I love playing with my grandchildren.  A former co-worker referred to me as an "eternal romantic."  A pattern of shooting and killing unarmed African American men has emerged in our time.  A man loses his job after thirty-five years of giving his "blood, sweat, and tears," and now wonders how he will be able to support himself and his family.  The United States government continues to pressure Iran to come up with a satisfactory deal regarding nuclear weapons.
Bruce Jenner decides to go the transgender route.  A major Protestant denomination changes the definition of marriage to a "union between two persons."  The Jewish community just commemorated the Holocaust.  People are uprooted from their living quarters through a process of gentrification.
Medicines that were designed to prevent and treat cancer are found to be cancer-causing agents. And the list goes on, and on, and on.  As someone once said, "And the band played on."

What is the "so what" of all this?  Why make a big deal out of it?  Where does everything lead to?
Where is God in all this? Does God give a damn about the fluctuations of the Stock Market? Is God concerned about who the winner of the World Series will be?

I write this in order to pose the question as to why we compartmentalize between "spirituality" on the one hand, and our ordinary routine life on the other.  I remember a very dear and close relative of mine who criticized the style of worship in our church by saying that the Holy Spirit is someone that people think about only on Sunday morning when they are at church. Very recently, a very good friend of mine posed the question as to what makes people think that God is concerned with what goes on in the privacy of our bed room?

I think that these are all valid questions that merit our consideration.  We need to ask ourselves when does God "step in" and when does God take a "back seat?"  Many of us are more than willing to throw God under the proverbial "bus" when it suits our agenda or when the mere mention or thought of God is considered an interruption in our livelihood.

I remember an experience that I had as a teenager after my parents had separated.  My sister and I had gone to visit our father in Manhattan.  At that time, we were members of a predominantly Puerto Rican Pentecostal church on Staten Island.  Based on certain Scripture passages, our church had a prohibition again eating a meat which we call in Spanish "morcilla," which is a blood sausage.  My father, who had no regard for religious norms, gave us a piece of morcilla, virtually forced us to eat it and said to us "Never mind that religion bull shit."  Quite frankly, I was traumatized.  On the one hand, I couldn't conceive that someone in a parental would impose his norms on us, over and beyond what we at that time considered God's norm.  On the hand, I did not like and still do not like morcilla. It gets me sick to my stomach.

So the question is, do we have an attitude similar to my father's?, i.e. "never mind that religion bull shit?" Do we in essence believe and think "I don't care what God says, I'm going to do my own thing?"  Is God someone that we take into account only on Friday afternoon in the Mosque, Friday evening/Saturday morning in the Synagogue, Sunday morning at Church, etc. Do we "shelve" God when we leave our respective houses of worship and then take God off the shelf when we return the following week? 

Please share your thoughts with us regarding God and life.  Tell us if you think that God is an entity that just "rubber stamps" our decisions in life, or if God really does care what goes on in every area of our lives, including, but not limited to the bedroom.  I look forward to your input.

Grace and peace,

Dr. Juan A. Ayala-Carmona