Why God Blesses Us With, "No."

I can’t remember if was Michael Jackson or Brittany Spears that my aunt and I were discussing.  It may have been neither.  A growing number of stars-gone-weird is infiltrating our Us Weekly covers.  Aunt Sandi, with advanced degrees in the psychology field, summed it up very well for me, “They don’t have anyone in their lives to tell them, ‘No.’”
She expounded to explain that the more wealthy or popular or influential they get, the more approval they get from the people in their lives.  To contradict them is to risk expulsion from the entourage—no matter friend, agent, or even family.  The yes-men circle cycles stronger and stronger, continually tested by more outlandish whims.  In the end, you have weird bimbos fighting for a chance to have a sexual encounter with a little, ugly dude who wears gigantic clocks around his neck.
I’ve read about this in business magazines, too: how powerful entrepreneurs and executive officers begin to think their smashing success means that all of their ideas deserve acceptance.  I struggle with that sometimes after just my small-pond success.  The leaders who grant authentic freedom to their peers and underlings tend to be more popular with their employees and often that much more successful in the marketplace.
Samson got so used to God using or allowing him to do things that he began—at least internally—to take credit for his exploits.  He began to think he could take God’s strength anywhere to accomplish his whims.  (That catching, tying, and lighting foxes deal is still one of my favorite superhero stories—Bible or otherwise.)
But are we any different?  We get so used to answered prayer, we get frustrated or superstitious when we hit a “dry spell”—as if it had anything to do with our prayer, our effort, our handle on God.  If you’re like me, you’ve seen set backs and trials as something you don’t totally deserve, if at all.  You blame God for not coming through for you—maybe not verbally or in exact words.  But you consider it unfair.  And who ultimately determines what fair is?  Bingo.
Thankfully, God does not need us to validate his plans.  And, thankfully, his plans are better than ours in the long run.  One of those plans prevents us from devolving into the freak show world we’d own if we always got our way.  We’d probably blame God for that little wonderland, too.
So, he might as well save us from ourselves.  And we might as well brace ourselves for the looming, “no” that will require.
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