I tend to think it's our understanding of God that changes, as we grow more mature and realize ever more clearly that we can't ever fully define or understand God. So I tend to think, when I read a story in which God is doing something that seems very ugly or manipulative, that the author is anthropomorphizing, making God be more "like us."

Not to say God doesn't play tricks. I am very comfortable with the Native American god Coyote, who is a trickster. In a way - this is a stretch, but stay with me - he's a bit like Jesus. He punctures arrogance; he deflates people who are puffed up; he prods the good to better deeds...sometimes not entirely with their cooperation.

Now, I remember a certain time, about four years ago. A friend had just died, and I'd attended his burial, and I didn't have a chance to get to anything else at the monastery all summer. I read a description of a retreat that I thought would be really great, held over Labor Day weekend; so I signed up.

It turned out to be an entirely silent insight meditation weekend - three days of sitting zazen. My first visit back to the monastery after the burial of my friend was going to be three days of sitting absolutely as still as possible and breathing.

I am very sure that the description I read was not the description everyone else read. I am also very sure that I was supposed to be at that retreat, to discover that the absolute homeopathic remedy for my inability to focus for longer than ten seconds at a time is exactly this practice of stillness and silence. And God knew that if I read the description everyone else read, I would not go. But I needed to go. So...God tricked me.

I suspect that happens as we open ourselves more to being led, to not needing to know the "why" of everything but simply going where we're led, trusting the leader. I'd had great experience the year before in doing just that, and I think that openness gives God a way in, a means of getting our attention that otherwise wouldn't work.

After all, whacking people upside the head with a cosmic clue-by-four when they aren't really open to what you have to say in the first place is just being mean. And it doesn't really effectively get their attention. They just feel picked on, and it doesn't really improve their listening skills any.

Which I guess is my way of explaining why God doesn't just "fix it" all the time. Just fixing it without our cooperation (however reluctant) would be forcing the issue, and it wouldn't really solve whatever the fundamental problem is.

Which is also probably entirely off-topic, by now...