Jun
10
Randomness
Random
ran⋅dom
/ˈrændəm/ Show Spelled [ran-duhm] Show IPA
–adjective
1.proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern: the random selection of numbers.
I was in a conversation the other day and a person made the comment, “this is a bit random” and proceeded to say something totally disconnected from what we had previously been discussing. He was almost apologizing for something that in my experience takes place in conversations all the time. We talk about a multitude of things, and some are unrelated. Our brains have become trained by our culture to be random in nature. How can you watch hours of television and not be affected by the randomness of the broadcasts? Take the news for example. You’re watching the news about the death toll in latest natural disaster and then they cut to a Burger King commercial with guy in the king costume doing something stupid. Random, and we don’t think twice about it. I am not saying that the randomness of our culture is good or bad. It could be both. Randomness is a just the way we often experience life and communicate with each other.
But, I’ve noticed that Christians tend to struggle with randomness when it comes to their spiritual life. There seems to be an expectation that our spiritual life should be very different from the random way we experience the rest of life. For example our prayer life should be linear and logical. Our prayers should have structure and patterns. Never mind that our conversations with others rarely have these things. I find many frustrated with their prayers because they start into to them and then their mind wanders to other “random” things. Some are quite distraught by this and have come to me for advice. My advice? Why not talk to God about whatever your mind wanders to? What’s wrong with having a random conversation with God? Do we believe that God is unable to follow our random thoughts? Do we think that we are being disrespectful? Hey, it’s just the way we communicate today. I think God can handle it.
Although there is some value in having structure in your spiritual life, don’t feel bad about relating to God in random ways. Just relate, and God will love it.