I recently found this open letter from 2009ish, and my reply to it. God Be Nudging me to share it here and now, so away we go <3

from andie:

>>>I can no longer serve a God who has proved over and over that He does not love me, in His refusal to bring my husband home.

I am searching for the path which works for me, which gives me the power to make whatever I desire manifest.

My love to all…it’s been a good run…when God decides to love me again and bring my husband home and not let the evil people win and steal my happiness, perhaps then I shall be back.

Best,
~A

sally’s reply:

Dear Andie,
My dear sister, I am so sorry to hear about your negative circumstances. This is the first I’ve heard of them (not sure if the group was in on it or not) and since I don’t know the details, I think that attempting to cheer you up with my famed boy-band humour might backfire, so I won’t say anything more… on that note, anyway.

But since you were always kind enough to either listen to my rants “back in the day” and/or offer me some advice (whether it was a fashion thing or yet another serious crush on a teenage Justin Timberlake), I want to throw out some thoughts that I hope are of some value to you in your search for a workable path, whether now or later on. (You may remember that I was once a hard-core occultist, and not in the fluffy “new American teen” interpretation of “Wicca,” which is a watered-down version of the real stuff.)

Basically, I am going by the points that formed the skeleton of your group email just now..

Below each you’ll find a nifty summary of the philosophical assumption, as well as the tiny thing that would keep the assumption from working out for you, or so I think.

1. You can’t serve a God who won’t give you exactly what you want (or think is right).

Assumption: Your commitment to Him is based upon whether He follows your will or not.

Problem: If this is the case, then every god (or goddess) you could possibly worship could theoretically let you down. The whole “an it harm none, do as thou wilt” bit might not be great, because what if you decide that a grand whooping of some evil person is what you will? First, that might not automatically make you feel better, and second, even if it did, there’s a chance that you could end up in jail, which kind of wouldn’t rock.
Some people say “*I* am god!” which might refer to “I am the master of my fate and captain of my soul,” in which case, I’d like to see them will away a freckle or a grey hair without chemical cosmetic intervention, or a tumour without chemo and/or an X-acto knife and lots of vodka. It also might correspond with “There is no will or person to whom I am accountable,” in which case, I bring out the grand whoopage scenario again (unless business is going REALLY well and you can bribe all the judges and the cops and the security officer babes in their little unifo—oh. Sorry. On to the next…!)

2. If God didn’t bring your boi back, then He doesn’t love you anymore.

Assumption: That the level or depth of God’s love for you is tied up with how closely He follows your will.

Problem: Well, there’s more than one, actually.

First, let’s pretend that He DID follow your will, but then something worse happened. Like if your dog ran away, and you finally found him, after paying a 50,000$ reward for him, and once he came back you found out he had rabies, and bit you, and then you got gangrene and lost all 4 limbs! Then could you be cross with God? After all, He WAS following your will. Actually, you might be even more cross with Him, since He knew what could have (or did) happen and didn’t stop it. So in that case, you’re in a no-win situation where God is always the bad guy IF everything doesn’t ALWAYS go your way. Lots of times, what we think is BEASTLY is actually something that protects us from a worse thing! But I agree, going through a bad time is no fun when we can’t see the much worse alternative! (For the record, tho, I certainly don’t think of God as the bad guy or a “cosmic killjoy,” coz He ROCKS, even when life doesn’t. And no, I haven’t had a charmed life, had lots of not-fun things happen, one after another… but God doesn’t promise us that He will shield us from every storm, only that He will hold our hand through every storm. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather hold Jesus’s nail-scarred hand in bad situations than never feel his touch but have “smooth sailing” all the time!)

Second (thought I’d forgotten about this one? Not a chance!) If there is only ONE God, and He does your will, then what if you pray for rain today (your prize petunias need watering!) and next door, I’m praying for no rain (having plotted a non-immoral picnic with a goth babe for the same day)? I know God’s omnipotent and omnipowerful and omnipresent, but if He goes around granting different answers to similar wishes, then the world could be pretty weird and topsy turvy, and there’s no use living in it, since everything would clash!
What if I prayed for my cat (or pet raccoon!) to come home, and you had found my lovely raccoon and said “Oh Lord, please let me always have this lovely creature! He’s so cute and he doesn’t shed, and his lovely face inspires me with the perfect eye makeup to wear every day of my life!”

NOTE: since I don’t know any actual details I didn’t want to use a breakup as an example, coz that would be beastly, and coz I might inadvertently have said something that’s true, which would also be beastly, AND coz sometimes using a real example encourages a pity party, not that they should never happen! And since I’m the last person to say “where does it say that life had to be fair?” or “get over it already” or any of those mean things that feel like being kicked when we’re down, which would also inadvertently encourage a pity party of monumental proportions, then—wait a second, I’ll just get on with the show. And don’t worry, no insipid “I know what it feels like!” (which no one can, technically speaking, since each person is different).

3. You now seek a path that will empower you to do what you will and perhaps actually MAKE it happen.

Assumption: This as-yet indistinct, undiscovered, and shadowy path will free you of the laws binding believers, and, mayhap, give you a power boost so that the quirk of an eyebrow will bring in love that will never leave, and money that will never run out.

Problem: Again, let’s pretend that you could rustle up the power to have millions of dollars or whatever it is. I’m not going to say “well, the thing is that the money could lead to something BAD!” or whatever it is, coz that wouldn’t be sound logic. What I WOULD say, however, is to do with the empowering bit…

Just because a path that’s away from God seems workable for you and conducive to or facilitative of your happiness doesn’t mean that God’s laws don’t still stand.

The best way I can say that is like if you took a pill to make you unable to feel pain; imagine now that you put your hand on a stove and watched the horror show unfold, but felt naught. Would your hand be UNdamaged? Or would you just have not felt the pain? Aka, you still broke a natural law and suffered the consequences, even if it didn’t hurt. (But it SHO will in a few hours. Take two and call me in the morning inDEED.)
Or here’s another one.. remember how fat I used to be back when xnetgoth was old skool? I always try to hide it in photos, but if you ask Bran, Benny, Dennis, Jared, Chris, or Mikey, they’ll confirm it. Anywhoodle, after all sorts of fun no-carb hell, I’m now down 100 lbs. (yay!); the first thing I learned was, even if something said on the label “only 1 net carb” but actually had like 22 net carbs (like those evil EVIL Atkins bars) I could say “this is Atkins approved! Go me!” and chow down on it. BUT the ketosis strips (and scale) can attest to the fact that even if Atkins approved it, my body wouldn’t tolerate it (without taking my diet back a step… or 3). So my point is, even if my conscience was ok with something, that doesn’t mean that the real world agreed.

So what I’m really trying to say is, trying to find a workable path for this life is relativism, like saying “all paths lead to heaven,” and since you’re saying “God hates me” instead of “there is no God” I’m assuming you still acknowledge that He’s around, even if you’re not happy with what you think He’s done to your life.

But if all paths DID lead to heaven, then there’d be no actual path to heaven (coz everyone would eventually get there), and there would be no need to follow rules. Of any sort. And while it’s a beautiful thought to say “people are basically good, and everyone thinks murder, rape, and child abuse are horrible,” trust me, there are LOTS of people in the world who have no problem with marrying 6-year olds and killing or hurting those in their way. (I’m sure you remember my family’s from Egypt, and on the other side of the world, things ain’t always so… hmm. You get my drift, anyway…)

4. God’s love is tied to whooping the evil people and not letting them win, so that our happiness isn’t stolen
First, only the devil can steal someone’s joy; those evil people (ok, now I’m very curious how several people could steal a husband, but I won’t pry).

Sometimes God allows us to go through beastly things in order to learn stuff, like patience, depending more on Him, etc.

Other times, the bad guys do seem to win, and keep on winning, while the good people seem to get trampled, or to have more than their fair share of “rotten luck.”

That shouldn’t matter, though. We’re not Christians just coz God magically changed everything to be shining and wonderful, but because we trust Him to be with us and hold our hand when the hellish and/or beastly things happen (and even just when nothing particularly wonderful happens).

I know that in America, it’s a common thing to say “I lost my faith when God let my ___ die” or “the day I left God is when I found out I was terminal” or whatever. In other parts of the world, they accept that “life happens.” There’s no expectation or even dream of perfect health, having all your family members till 100 years old, having no family feuds, always having plenty of money to pay for school, rent, clothing, shoes, a car, and dinner every night.
Some physicians in the Middle East, for example, can’t afford to eat more than one meal a day *and* buy a new pair of reading glasses. Also, very few people in certain other lands say “I’ve had a hard life,” or “life isn’t fair” or whatever (I hear that lots here in the states, sorry for the tangent).

I guess what I’m trying to say is that in some places, life is hard but people don’t correlate a hard life with God’s affection for them. The biggest testimony of that comes from a dear lady who was my professor. Whilst working in Africa, she lost both daughters in unrelated accidents. Upon coming back here, her husband died in a freak sports accident. She was very upset, of course, and her entire life was turned upside down. But even with those horrible tragedies, she looked us all in the eye and said ‘you know, even though these things have happened, I still have it better than more than half the world.’ I never forgot her words, and they’re what have informed this point #4 (so thanks to her!).

5. If God is a good boy, I might come back to Him.
Assumption: God is sitting there depressed and biting His nails waiting for you to take Him back into your good graces.

Problem: First, we’re nothing. Humans are literally nothing next to God. I know lots of modern people don’t like to hear that. Atheists especially don’t like to hear that, what with “the triumph of the will” and “human achievement” and all that. But if we came from amoebas and tadpoles then surely we aren’t that far away from nothing, are we? Either way, IF there is a God (or a god for that matter), then it’s like we really can’t be much on the food chain if there’s 8 billion people NOW and maybe another 8 over the past whatever years. Aka, lots of us. And just One of Him.

So, if He’s all that and we ain’t, then why should He sit around like a scout schlepper waiting for a date that may or may not ever show?

Second of all, how dyou know He even WOULD take a person back if that person was a fair-weather friend to Him? He already sent His Son to die. Jesus already died. Our salvation was already secured by the sacrifice. Aka, God’s done His part, now it’s up to us.

He is always faithful to forgive us, His mercies are new every morning, but can we say the same of ourselves to Him? (Do we forgive ourselves and others, do we follow His laws, do we pray without ceasing, etc.  I know I don’t pray half as much as I’d like to and 1/10000000th as much as I NEED to to stay sane.)

THOSE things aren’t enough to grieve the Holy Spirit, but once we do that—blaspheme against the Holy Spirit—it’s too late. We are a ticking time bomb headed for eternal separation from The Truest Love of All—the One who would never cheat on us (even though others might).

All in all, my friend, I am hoping and praying that your email was typed hurriedly in anger and hurt that has since cooled, or mayhap, the “heat” of a swine flu fever.

I’m not telling you that you should come back to the group that loves you so much, coz I know that sometimes we need a break even from the things we love best (or just “don’t hate” even).

But I am telling you “lots of people love you and are praying for your situation,” and wishing you the best of the best.

Blessings,
Sally Sall