Are We Failing God’s “Tests?”

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When I was in the seminary studying theology, our Scripture professor, Fr. Ignatius Hunt, on Mondays would choose a student in class - I presume arbitrarily - to answer a question or two about what we had learned the week before.

One of my friends, Tom R, sweated bullets on Mondays, dreading the calling of his name. The class had three or four “Toms” and Fr. Ignatius, a scripture scholar but a kind man (and one of the best teachers I had in all of my formal education), would call the name, “Tom,” then pause, looking over the student roster in his hands, before calling a last name. This would cause Tom R, to squirm in his seat, much to the amusement us so-called friends.

Most of us will remember the anxiety we felt in school on the eve of a big exam, or even a quick quiz such as those of Fr. Ignatius. We might have prepared well, but there was always a chance of “trick” questions or ones for which we were unprepared.

Constantly Testing Us?

Many people evidently believe in a God who is constantly testing us, sort of a Fr. Ignatius in the sky. But is that actually the case?

Perhaps the most famous case in the Bible of God testing people is in the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, said to be written 500 to 600 years before the birth of Jesus. It’s the story of Abraham and his son, Isaac, in which the author of that part of Genesis says that “God put Abraham to the test.”

The story depicts God telling Abraham – considered by Christians and Jews to be “the father of faith”- to offer his beloved son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, a “burnt offering,” to be exact. Abraham intended to first slay Isaac with a knife but just as he was about to do so, God “called to him from heaven” and stopped him.

But I and many people who study the Bible – including Jewish scholars - believe this story says more about the culture and faith of Abraham’s time than it does about God and how he acts in the world.

Mary McGlone
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Writes Mary McGlone, a religious sister and spiritual writer, in the National Catholic Reporter: “Many Jewish theologians interpret the story of Abraham’s test not as God’s demand for sacrifice, but as an account of the call to metanoia (A Greek term, denoting a change of heart) and a divine declaration that the God of life would never require human sacrifice.”

God, after all, stopped Isaac’s execution, according to the story, and from what we hear from Jesus in the gospels, God doesn’t try to manipulate us but is a loving parent who wants the best for us.

If that’s the case, you may ask, why is there so much suffering in the world. Why do people get sick, and fall victim to natural disasters and epidemics? Why do we kill and maim each other. Why didn’t God make US more loving, of him and each other?

All good questions, and the stock answers may not be entirely satisfactory. But that’s true of most everything I know from science or the “liberal arts.” Fact is, if you’re insisting on certainty in this world, you’re out of luck.

Short Answers

Religiously speaking, short answers about suffering have to do with suffering’s salutary effects; and regarding our own lack of virtue, about freedom to accept or reject God.  

Given the apparent contradictions in the Bible, I understand why it’s hard to see God as a loving parent who would refrain from testing us. What is needed, I believe, is a faith that remains firm despite doubts, just as agnostics undoubtedly have to overcome doubts about their nonbelief. But those seeking God in the Christian tradition have antidotes to fear of God’s “tests.”

“Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life,” says Jesus in Matthew’s gospel, “what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

This doesn’t sound like a God who is concerned about testing us.