When it Seems Like God Doesn’t Care
One
“Lord, do You not care?”
Do you remember when Jesus and His apostles were in the boat and a great storm began to rage?
Jesus was sleeping in the hold. He seemed to be totally oblivious. And Peter ran to Him, and he asked Him for help. Well, no actually, that’s not what Peter does. What Peter does is express the deep fear that is at the root of all our distrust of God. He cries out, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?”
There it is. The anxiety that’s deep in each one of us. The fear that actually, at the end of the day, God doesn’t care. There are things that we care so deeply about, things that we want with all our heart, things that we’re terrified of losing, and we’re fighting the storm, frantically trying to acquire those things or preserve those things which are so important to us. And God doesn’t care. And if God doesn’t care, how can you trust Him to come through for you when you need Him to?
Two
When you and God care about different things
Jesus has promised us to ask, and it will be given to us. He’s said, “Whatever you ask the Father in My Name, He will give you.”
But that doesn’t seem to happen in practice, does it? You can ask God for all sorts of stuff, financial help, marital help, physical healing, and you won’t get it.
St. James knew this was true. Listen to what he wrote to the early Christians, “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? You covet but do not possess. You kill and envy but you cannot obtain. You fight and wage war. You do not possess because you do not ask. You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.” Then James goes on to say: “Do you not know that to be a lover of the world means enmity with God?” (James 4:1-4).
What does all that mean? It means that very often, we and God care about very different things. We want us to have things of this world. God wants us to have the things of heaven. And so, of course, He often doesn’t answer our prayers for worldly goods. And then we feel distrustful of God. We say, “Lord, do you not care?” And we know, deep down, that God’s answer is, “No, I don’t really care very much about that. And neither should you.”
Three
Trying to Get us to Care about Different Things
Jesus was constantly trying to get His listeners to care about different things. When the Samaritan woman came to the well to fill her bucket with water, Jesus said, “You should ask me for living water, which will quench your thirst forever.” When the crowds followed Jesus so he could fill their bellies with bread, He told them, “Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life.” He said, “Do not set your hearts on the things of earth, but seek rather the things of heaven.”
He didn’t come to give us the things we think we want. He came to give us the things that will actually make us happy. Until we want the things that He wishes to give us, we are going to be working at cross-purposes with Jesus Himself.
We’ll say, “Fine, Lord, if you won’t help me, I’ll just have to get what I want by myself.” And then we will begin to walk down the lonely, disappointing road of worldly attachments. That’s a road that simply takes us deeper and deeper into the heart of hell for all eternity.
Four
What do We Care About? What does God Care About?
Trust in God and the eternal happiness it brings depends on trying to get our desires, our priorities, in line with the Lord’s. So whenever there’s something we want, we should imagine Christ reminding us to shoot higher. If we say, “Lord, please help me get this job,” we should hear Christ saying, “Seek rather the will of my Father.”
If we say, “Lord, please take away this pain, this problem,” we should hear Christ saying, “If anyone would be my disciple, he must take up his cross and follow Me.” If we say, “Please, Lord, make this project I’m working on a success,” we should hear Christ saying, “For the one who is the least among all of you is the one who is greatest.” If we say, “Jesus, my life is going off the rails financially,” we should hear Christ saying, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”
Christ may help us get a job, give us physical healing, or grant us success or financial stability. He did, after all, calm the storm when Peter woke him in the boat. But we will never be able to trust God and pray to Him with peace and confidence unless we ultimately desire the things Jesus ultimately desires to give us.
Five
Christ does Care
God does care. But what He cares about is our happiness. We care way too much about things that won’t make us happy.
We want good things of this world more than we want God. Things like achievements so that we have a greater personal value and identity. Or we want relationships. Or we want good health. All good things, but since we want these more than God, they become an obstacle to the source of true and lasting happiness, transforming union with Him.
God isn’t jealous. But knows that only He can truly satisfy us. And if we have perfect union with him, we get all good things as well, the hundredfold that He spoke of, we get the greatest identity of being sons and daughters of God, we get all the relationships in Heaven and we get perfect health forever in the Resurrection.
Here’s the catch: to purify us of our disordered attachments to good things and to increase our capacity to receive God’s life, He must allow us to suffer the loss of earthly good things. That is why it seems as if God doesn’t care about what we care about.
So what do we do? Ask God to give us a greater desire for Him. Then when we experience the fear or anxiety remember this: God is my Father and He is Almighty. Nothing can happen that is beyond His control. With God as my Father no matter what happens it will be the best. So, surrender to God and go forth fearlessly with trust because that is what will lead you to perfect union with Him.
With God as my Father, I am safe.