Submission

John Feinberg speaks of this in his book, The Many Faces of Evil. There he tells of when his wife, Pat, was diagnosed with Huntington’s Chorea – a genetically-transmitted disease that causes deteriation of the brain which leads to the deterioration of physical and psychological abilities. John and Pat were not just concerned for her health, however. They also were quite concerned for the health of their children. If one parent has the gene, then each child has a 50-50 chance of having the disease too. Since this was true, they wondered why they had received no warning that this disease was a possibility for Pat. They should have been warned.

Wanting answers, they looked at Pat’s mother’s medical chart. It turns out that Pat’s mother had been diagnosed five years before he met Pat, but no one had told the family. John was angry. Knowing this information could have changed everything!

But then he stopped himself. Maybe this ignorance was a gift. He writes,

As I wrestled with that question, I began to see his love and concern for us. God kept it hidden because he wanted me to marry Pat, who is a wonderful wife. My life would be impoverished without her, and I would have missed the blessings of being married to her had I known earlier.

God wanted our three sons to be born. Each is a blessing and a treasure, but we would have missed that had we known earlier. And God knew that we needed to be in a community of brothers and sisters in Christ at church and at the seminary who would love us and care for us at this darkest hour.

And so he withheld that information, not because he accidentally overlooked giving it to us, and not because he is an uncaring God who delights in seeing his children suffer. He withheld it as a sign of his great care for us. There is never a good time to receive such news, but God knew that this was exactly the right time.

For this reason, some people walk away from Christianity. They look for other ways to access the supernatural.

In his book Generation Ex-Christian, about younger Christians leaving Christianity, author Drew Dyck relates one interview with a young man who left Christianity to join the Wicca religion.

Morninghawk Apollo (who renamed himself as is common in Wiccan practice) discussed his rejection of Christianity with candor. "Ultimately why I left is that the Christian God demands that you submit to his will. In Wicca, it's just the other way around. Your will is paramount. We believe in gods and goddesses, but the deities we choose to serve are based on our wills."