This is what my 14-year-old self had to say on a long ago New Year's Eve:
What I’ve learned most this year: God will provide for my every need. All I need and ever will is Him. Since His love is SO great, He’s the only Being I’ll ever need to be content and joyful. He wants what’s best for me, knows what is best, and will supernaturally take care of it. I don’t have to do anything, trying to make my plans work out. If I trust Him, He’ll show His power.
Just a few years earlier, I was an active girl with dreams and goals and ideas for the future. Dad wrote on my 6th grade homeschool report card that my "interest in spiritual things" was limited to "just the facts".
Somewhere between ages 12 and 14, I learned that I was to be passive, that I was to wait, that I was to be guided, led, and provided for by a supernatural being. That I didn't know what was good for me. That I didn't have to do anything.
"That I didn't have to do anything."
ReplyDeleteThis is the part I can't figure out.
Full disclosure: I'm a mild-tempered atheist with a liberal Quaker background (no Heaven, no Hell, no salvation, no clergy, lots of candlelight vigils and vegetarian potlucks), but I don't mean this flippantly, I promise. I can't really picture where the world would be if everyone really took passivity to heart.
A lot of things we take for granted are accomplished pretty much because people are often not passive, even when--and sometimes because--they are sincere and convinced Christians. What would happen if we all, well, checked out and waited for providence? Or sat back and waited for all those kids to go out and do the work (even though the lesson they were taught was that, in turn, they should raise all their kids to do it, etc.) I would feel as though I were passing the buck.
(I guess self-direction is seen as God's hand, but . . . hmm. I'm still working on this.)