God will take care of you

Be not dismayed whate’er betide,
God will take care of you.
Beneath his wings of love abide,
God will take care of you.

This was the theme song of Uncle Tom’s Choir on Radio 1ZB back in the 1940s. It was at least as familiar as the Coronation Street theme is today. There were actually three Uncle Tom choirs broadcasting on Friday evenings, Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. We all sang:

God will take care of you,
Through every day, o’er all the way.
He will take care of you,
God will take care of you.

Those were war years. There was all manner of anxiety, loss, distress, grief. I as a small boy was only marginally aware of it, but I certainly realise now how comforting it must have been to some when we sang this thing repeatedly.

It was sung the other day at the funeral of 92-year-old Mollie, Uncle Tom’s daughter, whom I clearly remember from those days, well over 60 years ago, in the choir. And a hall full of both her generation and mine joined in fervently.

Through days of toil when heart doth fail,
God will take care of you.
When dangers fierce your path assail,
God will take care of you.

Mollie’s generation and mine, by and large, don’t seem to question this faith. They believe it has been their experience through hardship and toil. God has taken care of them.

But what do they think God has done? God clearly has not shielded them from loss and sorrow. They seem not to ask questions about others along the way who plunged into the abyss of depression or suicide, or whose lives succumbed to poverty, disease, despair or atrocity. Did God take care of them? They mean, I daresay, that God offered them support, strength, comfort... Even so, I have this uncomfortable feeling that their God does not conspicuously comfort people. There are mysteries here, and there are plenty of people not in the church for more or less this reason. A God of love, mercy and comfort seems to others to be a wistful dream.

Lonely or sad, from friends apart,
God will take care of you.
He will give peace to your aching heart,
God will take care of you.

It’s a sad and selective philosophy and it embarrasses me, I have to say. It posits a very western, domesticated God, who pats us on the head and says never mind. Yet it nourishes most of the seniors who remain in the parish culture, and they sing its confident hymns and they live again in days when it all seemed so clear to them.

Others in the parish churches know it’s not like that, and wonder how much longer they can hang on. They are a diminishing number. They strongly suspect God is being misrepresented. They wonder why the minister/pastor/priest/vicar doesn’t identify aspects of popular faith which are manifestly dishonest about God. They wonder about the integrity of prayer which simply asks God for things we want, and assumes that they happened because we asked in prayer, or didn’t because we didn’t... what kind of God is that? A sentimentalist idol.

Not the God Jesus called Father.