Is God Ashamed of Me When I'm PMSing?

I've just emerged from a hormonal fog of teenager-sulks, bitter-resentment, martyr-like acts of self-pity and enraged-selfishness. It's been pretty bad, and I probably owe my family an apology.

I think I have some excuses though. It rained nearly every day this week so I was stuck in a loud crowded house. The children's ipad programs for school haven't been working. The oven broke, and I burned a pizza cooking it in a pan. The deep freezer in the garage died, and I had to dump out rotten meat. Benny pulled his noise machine off the dresser and onto his head, and yes, the machine broke. My older son put his foot through a screen, and we were on the tale end of our week's grocery supply.

It was not a good week to be hormonal.

Several times I thought, gosh, I'm being really bitchy. I hope everyone still loves me after this. I hope they don't resent me for existing like I am them right now. At least God doesn't resent me. Or does he?

Was God disappointed that I had no capacity to love anyone but myself for three days? Was he saddened that I couldn't overcome emotions with right actions? Did God see me as two persons like I was seeing myself: a wicked sinner for part of the month and a fairly descent individual for the rest?

I saw the flaw in my thinking then.

I was being my own moral assessor. I was looking at my words, actions, thoughts, and feelings and deciding which ones God would like and which ones he wouldn't. I was being my own judge.

I'm reminded of that verse in Matthew 7 that talks about not judging others. I think that verse might also be applied to ourselves. We can't objectively view ourselves and weigh our actions against God's standard of goodness.

In fact, when we do engage in self-judgement, we most often deceive ourselves into believing we're much worse or much better than we actually are. Only God can properly value us or our actions. And he has already. Phew!

I think God, being eternal and thus outside of time and space, must see my life completed already and not as instances of crabbiness or stability. I think he sees it as a whole, valued equivalent to his son's death on the cross, judged as righteous according to his definition of goodness, called holy because Christ's blood cleansed it. Forever. Both in and outside of time. Even when I'm PMSing.

I don't think God's attitude towards me is dependent on what I do at all. I think he feels the same way about me all the time.

Think of mankind as milk in a jar. Sin was the adding of arsenic to the milk. Christ's death and resurrection was the adding of activated alumina (an effective, albeit imperfect, arsenic neutralizer, but for the sake of argument, let's pretend it works perfectly.) So God views us as that milk in the jar with both arsenic and activated alumina already added. He viewed us like this even before we were created or accepted Jesus into our hearts.

I believe God sees everyone like this, believer and unbeliever alike. Christ's work on the cross justified everyone.

No, I don't mean everyone is going to heaven or that everyone is saved. The truth of the matter is, some people ingest this truth and others spit it out. Some people see it to be so; others do not. Some stand upon it; others look elsewhere. Some put on Christ; others are completely unaware of what they're wearing.

This means that when we look at others—a dear friend, judgmental Christian, or irksome relative alike—we can see them like we see ourselves: milk with arsenic and activated alumina, that is, okay, good enough, justified, forgiven.

I bet you're wondering about that God in the wilderness whose anger burned against the Israelites when they rebelled. Didn't God's attitude towards the Israelites change then? He was about to destroy them and start over. In fact in Genesis, he did. It says God regretted making mankind and that it grieved him to his heart. This gives quite a different picture of eternal, unchanging God.

I am no bible scholar and I would be foolish to claim I have The Answer, but here's a possibility. Even though God is outside time and space, he interacts with us in time and space. His interactions are all demonstrations of what he's always like: his goodness, justice, faithfulness, graciousness, mercy, etc.

When God interacts with people in the bible, he is expressing himself to them. He is working out his God-ness with them. Thus, he prevents certain things from happening and/or causes certain things to happen all in accordance with who he is. At the time of the flood, people's flippant disregard of justice had reached maximum discord with God's character. It was time to right the scales, to bring the world back into balance.

The same might be said of COVID-19. Perhaps this is God's way of bringing some aspect of the world back into balance. And perhaps it's even true of my PMSing days. Maybe that's a time to bring into balance the view I have of myself.

Comments


"I think God, being eternal and thus outside of time and space, must see my life completed already and not as instances of crabbiness or stability." What a freeing relief!

Abby, your words are not wasted on me. Today seemed like a complete loss except for the latter part of my day writing to a friend to share scriptures with her and some of your writing. Not only will it encourage her, it encouraged me greatly just to read the scriptures I sent her to assure her that God is still in her story; that he sees her story as completed even though she's in a rough patch of it due to her own choices. That thought, along with all His many encouragements: "I will never leave or forsake you, NOTHING shall separate us from his love, and in his sovereign being for us will work all things for our good, even when we are at fault for where we are. Keep sharing your insights. They are never wasted. Their value is never dependent upon comments or the lack of comments.