Is God Confusing?

"God is not a god of confusion" or so I have often heard friends say or pray in reference to me or others who are going through a hard time. Well, while this may be the case with God, Himself, I have often found it is far from true with His followers. So, I decided to track down the actual scriptural reference used here. The verse, as found in the fourteenth chapter of Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Church, verse 33, reads as follows: "for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints." It is part of a larger discussion of church conduct and is speaking specifically about sharing prophesies. It seems that in the Corinthian church, the common practice had been for everyone to share what God had revealed to them all at once and leave the sorting to the individual listeners. Paul, however, advises them to prophesy one person at a time and with an interpreter present, if necessary. Sounds like good advice to me.

However, while I have heard this verse used in the context of church conduct, I have also heard it used in the context of people's lives, my own included. It seems, at least according to using it in this context, that those who are confused in their lives are not in sync with God. For if they were, then their lives would make sense, both to themselves and to those looking in. However, there are plenty of people in the Bible whose lives did not make sense those around them, nor did it at times make sense to them. Do you think Abraham totally understood what was going on when God said Sarah would have a child? Come on, man, the guy was one hundred years old and Sarah was in her nineties. If that happened today, we would all blame it on fertility drugs and wonder about the suitability of the parents. Or how about Peter, leaving his thriving fishing business to go and follow Jesus. Did that make sense?

When did following God and making sense become inseparable? When did logic and order become tools required for discerning God's will? Maybe I'm going a bit too far, but sometimes I wonder. In trying to make such sense of God and His Will for our lives, are we not merely just trying to put God within the box of our own understanding? Are we replacing the God of mystery with the God we can understand? If so, are we not committing idolatry of a sort? Okay, I think that's enough for now. Maybe I better think more about this and come back. Feel free to comment in the mean time.