Occasionally, I do need a reckless God.
There’s a certain audience that seeing the words ‘reckless love’ will have instantly been transported back 5 years-ish to when the song ‘Reckless Love’ came out and caused much controversy. For those who don’t know what’s going on, ‘Reckless Love’ is a Christian song that has some powerful words and melodies, quickly becoming a favourite song in churches worldwide. However, some of the lyrics upset some people – the idea of God being reckless seemed to be in conflict with the rest of the character of God. Perhaps it was something to do with God being all-knowing and unchanging, meaning surely any action he performs cannot be reckless. Apparently, this potential conflict in the character of God was so wrong that the group who didn’t vibe with the words very quickly made it known that the song shouldn’t be sung at all.
Around this time, I was leading worship for my friendly local Christian Union (yes the ones that hand out doughnuts and keep trying to get you to question why there’s evil in the world). My solution to the reckless love debate was to know in my heart that I enjoyed the song and found it fine, but because other people may have found it unhelpful, we wouldn’t intentionally sing it as part of the worship sets. This seemed to appease the haters as they didn’t complain about it existing if they didn’t have to remember it. I found it mildly funny and would point it out whenever it was played somewhere (on repeat about 50 times at various Christian festivals over that summer).
Fast forward to today, when it was played in the Church I go to. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a formal Christian setting where the song was able to be sung and appreciated without someone starting a debate about it. As I reflected on the words in a way I’d not really been able to do before, it felt kind of healing for my soul to celebrate God’s recklessness. I thought back to other times it may have been helpful to be reminded that God is reckless too, but I’d somehow self-censored myself not to believe that, in case it upset someone else. I wondered, what would my faith have been like if I’d been allowed to believe this earlier. If we’d sung the song anyway and the people who didn’t like it could change the words themselves or choose not to sing.
2022 felt like a particularly reckless year for me. I had a total of 4 jobs over the course of the year (I know, could do more) and made some big moves. I went to Italy for 3 months thinking it might be the beginning of a permanent move and realised pretty quickly that wasn’t what I wanted at all. During my time there, I felt reminded of that recklessness daily and that potentially a little more forethought could’ve saved a lot of stress and discomfort. When I came back, I seemingly made another reckless decision to move again, taking the first job I was offered and heading to a completely new city (although at least in the same country this time).
Thinking of God as reckless means that he’s not shocked, scared, overwhelmed, or unsure in the reckless positions I put myself in. When it works out well, he knows exactly what that’s like, having pulled together some daring and crazy-seeming plans throughout the Bible. I mean, he saves Jonah by getting a big fish to swallow him. There’s a lot that could go wrong there, but that’s the plan he goes with. Another plan he has is to make an army into a brass band and get them to process around the enemy city for a week and somehow the sweet power of jazz is going to bring the walls of the city and the leaders to their knees. His biggest and arguably most reckless plan is to tackle all of humanity’s sins by sending one perfect guy to die and hopefully rise from the dead a couple of days later. Again, not the most foolproof plan he could’ve chosen. The point is, he knows how to pull the reckless off. He knows how to make it work, which is a massive reassurance in taking those leaps that seem like they could go either way.
On the other hand, God being reckless means he’s aware that these plans can go wrong. He shows throughout the Bible how he helps people with their disappointment and failed recklessness. At one point, God tells a bunch of people to leave their slavery and head into the desert. On face value, this isn’t much of a better solution and the people quickly see that their recklessness has meant they’re without food, water, solid homes, and many other things. But God knows what to do with that too. He fulfils the basic needs and time and time again reminds the people why they’re doing this, leading them through to something far better. Elijah is another man God really works with. At one point, he’s on the run from the king and severely depressed at everything, to the point of suicide. Nothing has really worked out for this guy and every reckless move has led further and further into danger. God recognises the exhaustion and burnout of living like this and offers cake, rest, gentle reassurance and a friend to Elijah.
God’s love is reckless. I think I’m moving towards the view that to say it’s not is to deny who God is. It makes bold leaps and refuses to back down to fear or danger. Knowing that allows me to be reckless too, knowing if it works God’s with me. If it doesn’t work, God is also with me. He knows what’s going through my head and maybe has the same wild thoughts when concocting his own plans (although being God I guess he has the benefit of hindsight and foresight simultaneously). He wants me to take risks – maybe not all the ones I take, but certainly some of them.
When I left school, I went to volunteer for Tearfund with the ICS scheme. As I got ready to leave, my Dad passed on some advice that had been given to him – Don’t be safe. Take risks. In my head, it sits next to the Chronicles of Narnia quote which describes Aslan – Of course, he isn’t safe. But he is good. God isn’t safe. He takes risks. And he is good.
If you enjoyed my faith-based throughts, you might also enjoy Cathedrals or How’s God?
Rebekah's Ramblings 
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