Spiritual snootiness

I hope I'm not engaging in some of that myself, with this post. This is actually a response to a thread on a blend's blog, but parts of it might feel a little chastising there and, not wishing to hijack that blog, I figured I'd post this here:

There is a tendency among some Christian circles (maybe others, as well, but these are the ones I've noticed it in) to proclaim a message that goes something like this:

"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit - fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name." (Jn 15, 16) So, if our prayers are not answered as we wish - and usually in the way that spares us or our loved ones the most pain - it must be because of a shortcoming in our lives, that we haven't borne the fruit that we have been appointed to bear. We're not living rightly, or asking rightly, or our faith is insufficient (i.e. smaller than a mustard seed; Mt 17, 19-20), or there's something else wrong with us.

I think this is a dangerous and inaccurate message that takes our life in this world out of the context of our life for eternity, the only context in which this life - and all of Christianity - really makes any sense.

Whether our prayers have been answered or if they've seemed ignored, I believe this: God loves us deeply, more deeply than we can ever know in this world. God's great desire for us is to know perfect Love, which will take all of eternity. God isn't some tyrant who only bestows blessings if we've sufficiently toed the line; rather, our openness to God is the only way we can be disposed to receiving all that God dreams for us. God knows what we cannot even imagine, and God's vision for us surpasses our analysis of our need, our loved ones' need. The greatest agony of this life is as nothing compared to the joy and love we will live in for eternity. And when we're not in a space to receive this message, God doesn't love us any less because of that, nor forsake us. God continues to wrap loving arms around us, to be at work spiritually in our lives to draw us into perfect Love, so long as we earnestly seek the Truth.

When we watch someone we love go through something awful, we wonder why God doesn't do something about it, if He's real. But He is doing something about it: loving them, even through us, and loving us as we love them. God did not spare His own Son the vastly-underestimated pain of the Passion, yet loved Him through it and brought Him to glory. Why do we suppose our own path through this fallen world to glory, and that of those we love, should not also include unspeakable pain, but also the grace to bear it and be transformed through it?