"God Willing and Politically Correct"

I remembered something about my childhood the other day. It happens now and again. I was standing in a tailor shop with my mum. This was Pakistan where I grew up. Mum was setting the tailor a deadline by which time the dress needed to be finished. The tailor said “Insh’Allah”. “Insh’Allah” is an Arabic phrase which means “in the will of Allah”. It is used by devout Moslems. It is used by not-so-devout Moslems. It’s used by tailors in Pakistan as an excuse for procrastination on little girls dresses. My mum replied: “No, not insh’Allah! You will have it done by this date!”. The weedy little man twisted his hands around and smiled a little nervously, perhaps at my mother’s blasphemy, or maybe this white woman was a little too authoritative for a female.

 

This memory came to me the other day. I was signing off a letter “See you soon”, as an after-thought, I added “God-willing”. I thought better of it: It was a Non-Christian I was writing to, and deleted the words. The phrase God-willing isn’t PC.

 

In Pakistan it was used everywhere. Sometimes for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I presume it’s just habit. Our foreign friends over there used to joke about the uses of it. People there drive recklessly, and when questioned, they shrug and say “Insh’Allah”, if it is his will for us to live, we live. It is used fatalistically in many situations. But I think as well as that, there is a real sense of God’s will in day to day events in Islam.

 

There used to be in Christianity. I say used to be. I guess there still is. In some ways we have watered that down a bit though. Book titles are an indicator: “Forty Days of Purpose”, “Ten Steps To Finding God’s Will For Your Life”, “Three Promises of God For Your Life”…… phrases like “unravel the exciting things that God has in store for you”, “discover the mystery of God’s purpose for you”…you see them everywhere in Christian literature. They like to put God’s will in a pretty box, a present to us, something exciting and pleasant, and …manageable? There is less of a day to day sense of God’s will.

 

I am sixteen. When my cousins and me are sitting around the dinner table having a Mick-take of people we really shouldn’t be taking the Mickey out of, we say “God-willing” with very solemn pious expressions. The phrase is quite old-fashioned. Dated. But the more I have thought about the meaning of the words, the more I have come to realise their importance.

 

The modern day equivalent, now that people have shaken off the shackles of organised religion (“Thank God!”), might be “If I can”, “I’ll try”, or “I’ll do my best”. These phrases are often slipped in, like the tailor’s “Insh’Allah”, to lay the real responsibility onto fate. They say “I will do what is in my power” with the footnote “but you know, circumstance may not allow it, etc”.

 

Taking a look from the spiritual side of what these replacements of “God-willing” entail, they have a profound meaning. Men, the new gods. We stopped acknowledging God’s will as the deciding factor in our futures. We have shifted to acknowledging our own wills as the pivotal thing.

 

The book of James in the Bible is full of really practical advice about living as Christians. This is what it says:

 

 

James talks a lot about the importance of words. He says we are really bound by what we say. It matters. “I will…” is denying God’s right to give or take away. “God-willing” is submitting what we want to a recognition of what God wants.

 

So why don’t we say it anymore? Politically Correctness is one reason. After all, a large part of our conversation is taken up discussing future events. Saying things like “God-willing” in secular society is perhaps seen to be shoving religion down people’s throats. We don’t want people to think Christians are out of date either.

 

Partly, the thought James expressed is a little bit scary to consider also. In third world countries and also in older times, people realised dependence on God a bit more. Sudden death, crop failure and the occurrence of war and other disasters contributed to a continual sense that if people were alive and not to hungry, God was providing for them.  In our comfortable, reasonably safe and reasonably predictable Western world, it is easy, quite easy to feel a false sense of control. We feel that we are doing fairly well on our own thankyou very much. Very few of the gifts God gives daily, are, even among Christians, acknowledged to be from Him. We seldom think of God lifting our “daily Hovis” off the bread rack. We are reluctant to admit that our lives on a day to day basis are really God-given, and God-sustained, and that He has the right (and the power) to take them from us at any moment. Perhaps our phrasing reflects that reluctance. Easier to push those thoughts aside.

 

But if words are really binding, it’s worth those very thoughts. Although the purely habitual use of “God-willing”, (or worse, the strategic use of the phrase for procrastination purposes!), are by no means good things, perhaps our lives could reflect more of a daily dependence on God. So if, by the grace of God, you are alive tomorrow, consider using the phrase…

 

By Sonya Lewthwaite