How to "Win" the Argument With God

Yesterday was my dad’s funeral. It was a beautiful service with many touching moments. I really did feel surrounded by people who cared about me and supported my whole family and each other through the grief of both this specific loss and the looming, inescapable specter of mortality haunting us all.

There were some challenging moments, to be sure. The fact that it was held in an evangelical church and orchestrated by my evangelical family, it was guaranteed to be . . . well, evangelical in nature. At certain points, I felt (and submitted to) the pull toward that lifelong argument with God and those who claim to be His followers.

The argument, as I saw it playing out before me and have seen it argued similarly my whole life, was this: Hear our voices, feel our emotions, sing our songs, and heed our words. This message is true, our God is supreme, and your options are to praise our Lord or face His wrath.

As the service went on, I found my focus navigating itself toward the things I loved. I didn’t notice what was happening at first, and it didn’t become a conscious decision until the very last segment of the service. But in the end, that guiding rule of turning my focus to what I loved made all the difference in the world.

Some of the songs used to be old favorites. While their messages no longer resonate with me, I still sing a pretty decent bass line in 4-part arrangements, and I could remember those harmonies fairly well. In he focus on those notes and those tunes, I found healing joy. Or joyous healing, I don’t know.

It was more of a challenge to avoid getting lost in the argument when people spoke, sans music, about the will and the Word of God. The analytical, pesky, adversarial part of my brain kicked into high gear to defend against the arguments being slung and arrowed in my general direction and to mount a rhetorical counter attack with even greater intensity. But I didn’t like how that felt, and it didn’t seem appropriate for the venue.

Then I shifted my eyes quite literally in the direction of my father. I looked at the casket. I remembered that only his ashes were inside. His portrait stood in the background with a gorgeous floral spray atop the casket, and I thought about what my dad would have wanted. And, well, he probably would have wanted pretty close to exactly that service, which kinda pissed me off. But then I thought a few seconds more.

What would my dad want now? Is this the service my father needed now? What might he need from me or I from him in this moment?

And in that space, in that love-centered focal point, I found . . . maybe not clarity, and maybe not even hope, but I found purpose. It seemed like maybe my Dad still needed something. And I was right there, six long feet away from his physical remains.

I love you, Dad. If you are still here or near or wandering or wondering, I love you. You are loved. You did good.

I have no idea what was actually going on. A building full of people were doing what they needed to do to get through that moment. There was no reason, no benefit to dedicating my internal monologue to arguing with them. It was silly to elevate their verbal or choral discourse to divine status in my personal appraisal. There was no reason to pick their chosen topic as a battleground. I had better places to be than in that argument.

For me, the best and only place for my focus to be was with my dad. And there, I felt peace. That was the sanctuary the moment offered me. Today and the next I’ll find another, and my presence, my focus will be needed elsewhere.

I didn’t have to resolve the battle with the church. All I had to do was withdraw from the fight. I’ll go ahead and call that a win.