The battle is ours

I've had Leeland’s “The War” in my Christian music playlist for quite a few months now. There’s a line in there that I now realize can be incredibly deceiving:

“… for the battle is not yours, but God's.”

—2 Chronicles 20:15

The thing is, to interpret this phrase in the way that most people are likely interpreting it—as if God absolved us of all our troubles, and we need not bear the abject suffering involved in life’s struggles—requires reaching such great metaphorical heights if it is to make any sense within the context of the human condition.

Are we really all that naïve? There are two types of people—one that suffers because they have no other choice but to suffer, and one that suffers but decides to make something of that suffering. For the former, when one is subject to a mental prison of their own oppressive thoughts, when one is victim to cruel and miserable circumstances outside their control, I think we can definitively say that they’ve lost whatever battle there was to be won. And for the latter—are we not the authors of our own stories? Are we not the ones that emerge triumphant from a hard-fought war?

What battle is God fighting for us? If he truly plays a role in our battles here on Earth, it is not a role that we can understand or should even attempt to understand. But in the meanwhile, the injustice and misfortune we must tolerate? Those are for us to tolerate. Those moments of pure misery and suffering we must endure? Those are for us to endure. And those harrowing ventures into the darkness and the unknown we must take? Those are for us to take. Why would God fight those battles for us, when precisely, it is in the fighting, that we derive any sense of purpose in this life? He designed this life for us, after all; we shouldn’t pretend as if he doesn’t understand it.