The Trivialization of God

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from Donald W. McCullough, and is taken from his book, "The Trivialization of God."  It is a perceptive look at the ways that we, or our culture, have "shrunk" God down to make Him more manageable, and comfortable to deal with, or be around.
     This selection has to do with the three popular American deities: The god-of-my-cause, the god-of-my-understanding, and the god-of-my-experience, concluding with the much needed God- beyond-my-view-of-God. By necessity I have tried to shorten one chapter into one page, using the cut and paste method. So, if you get a chance, read it all in his book. It's well worth the time. In fact, it's a must for people who desire to avoid the all-too-easy-trap of trivializing God. Enjoy.

"God Of My Cause

     It's natural to want help... When I was younger, there was a boy named David. He could hit further, pitch harder, and field better than any kid in the neighborhood. We always wanted him on our side; he pretty much assured victory... The challenges may now be greater and the stakes higher, but I haven't grown out of wanting a David on my side. I doubt I am alone in this desire. The bigger the problem, of course, the bigger the help needed, and God is the Biggest Help available.

     So God naturally gets called in to lend almighty support to various causes -- even good causes -- holding the earth with concern, loosing the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, sharing our bread with the hungry, and bringing the poor homeless into our houses.

     What could be more appropriate than seeking God's help with these things? Indeed, this must please the God revealed in Scripture -- so long as a subtle shift does not take place. What can happen, though, is this: instead of serving God by working for a just cause, we serve a just cause by using God. The cause pushes God aside; the divine end becomes simply a useful means, and God gets trivialized. With the best of motives, we throw golden rings and bracelets of passionate concern into the fire, and a calf appears to lead the way to the Promised Land of social righteousness...

     If God is brought in secondarily, after the problem and solution have been defined (oppression and political or economic liberation), that will invariably shape our image of God. We may view God, for example, as simply an aid to fulfilling our human aspirations, or simply Big Help for what is essentially a human struggle for self-improvement... Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, 'Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith' -- faith, I would add, in a God who transcends history, who knows the beginning from the end, who holds the truth of any problem in the context of all truth. Seeing salvation from any other god will come to grief, for a god pressed into the service of a particular cause will be a god too trivial to offer significant help.

God Of My Understanding

     A child at the beach digs a hole in the sand and, with her little bucket, busily sets about transferring the ocean into it. We smile at the grandeur of her ambition, but only because we know she will soon mature beyond such pathetic futility. An ocean cannot be contained in any hole of any size on any continent. And neither can God be fully contained within any theological system.

     Yet well-meaning Christians, in seeking to bear accurate witness to God, often become so attached to their formulations they forget the discontinuity between God and what can be said about God. They forget that only in Christ Jesus has there ever been an exact correspondence between God and humanity. Doctrinal lines are routinely drawn in the dirt, enemies named and challenged, and offending notions bombed in 'jihads' of theological self-assuredness... An honest desire to think and speak accurately about God moves, too easily it seems, to a presumptuous conviction that our affirmations contain the whole truth about God, which has the practical effect of confining God to our truth statements....

     The theological enterprise demands humility as much as critical thinking. The best theologians have known this. Thomas Aquinas, after completing thirty-eight treatises, three thousand articles, and the ten thousand objections in his Summa Theologica -- one of the greatest intellectual achievements of western civilization -- abruptly quit his work on December 6, 1273.  He had a profound experience while celebrating mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas, and he announced to his secretary that he would write no more. 'I can do no more,' he tried to explain, 'such things have been revealed to me that all I have written seems to me as so much straw'...

     Our theological systems may succeed in containing the god-of-my-understanding, but never the holy God.

God Of My Experience 

     The things we experience, naturally, are the things of which we are the most certain. So, my form of worship, and my style of prayer, and my focus in service easily shape the pattern into which I squeeze spiritual reality...

     As a boy I attended a Bible camp run by a Pentecostal denomination... The preaching -- filled with interesting stories, as I recall -- aimed for our conversion and baptism in the Holy Spirit (evidenced by speaking in tongues)... One night I knelt for what seemed like enough time for God to turn me into a certified saint, let alone make me speak in tongues. A counselor did his best to help me: he prayed over me, laid his hands on me, suggested syllables for me to mouth, and held up my arms when they got weary. But he himself got tired, I suppose, and at one point I heard him whisper to someone who walked by, "He really doesn't want it." He really doesn't want it? Imagine what those words did to a boy trying his best to please God! How could I not want it? How could I not want the Holy Spirit?...

     I have no doubt that some people have been given the ability to pray in ecstatic utterance as a sign of the Spirit's presence; the New Testament validates this spiritual gift (I Cor. 14), and I have many friends who testify to its importance in their lives. But there is scant biblical evidence for turning this into a necessary proof of the Spirit-filled life. So little, in fact, that most of the church for most of its history, has seen this manifestation of the Spirit as one of the least important (I Cor. 12:31).

     What has happened, it seems, is that some have been so moved and helped by this gift, they have not only wanted others to share in their experience, but have made it normative for everyone. Those who lack the experience must therefore lack the fullness of the Spirit, which is another way of saying they lack the presence of God. The counselor of my youth assumed that the presence of God would always be shown in a certain experience, and thus without that experience, God could not really be present -- at least not fully.

     Not only does this assumption contradict the fact that the God revealed in Scripture seems to love diversity (I Cor. 12:28-30)... it also has the effect of limiting God, setting boundaries on the way God works in this world....  How easy it is to define authentic spirituality according to my particular experience and expression of it. And when I do, I end up with a very different god from the one revealed in Christ... a god, consequently, too trivial to lift me out of my self and beyond the distortions of my flawed experience.

God Beyond My View of God

     ...Concerns held with passionate conviction, theologies that provide a helpful framework, and formative spiritual experiences are not bad. A healthy Christian will have all these things!  They can be lenses through which we see important aspects of the being of God. The problem arises when we forget the vast difference between our view of God and the reality of God...

     Any god I use to support my latest cause, or who fits comfortably within my understanding or experience, will be a god no larger than I, and thus not able to save me from my sin or inspire my worship or empower my service.  Any god who fits the contours of ME will never really transcend me, never really be God.  Any god who doesn't kick the bars out of the prison of my perceptions will be nothing but a trivial god."

     I have to say that as I was reading that section of his book I thought to myself: guilty, guilty, guilty.  In fact, I had written the word "guilty" next to one of his comments in the book.

     After all, it's hard not to want God to be the way I want Him.  It's hard not to want Him to be on my side of any cause, or not want my experience to define how He is. Thank God, though, that He does not comply with my wishes! He is who He is, and remains true to who He is, even if ALL want Him to be different -- and most do on occasion -- myself included. 

     God help me -- God help us all -- to grow to learn and affirm all that you reveal about yourself in Your Word, remembering the need for humility as we try to do so, since there is so much more of You than our finite and limited minds can ever grasp.

In the service of Him who is loving, beautiful, immense, and holy beyond imagination, Pastor Jeff

Trivializing God into a god-of-my-nation

Greetings All,

As I was on vacation last week it gave me a little more time to read and listen to things I don't usually spend time reading or listening to (like newspapers and talk radio)!

Yet as I did, one thing bothered me. It was the way people politicized Christianity or made God to be the advocate of their particular position, and, of course, by the implied contrast, the opponent of those who disagreed with them (be they people coming from the right or the left). And, yes, I know it's nothing new, but it is always dangerous - both to our own personal spiritual health as well as the unity of Christ's church.

Thus I offer this "thought" as a corrective (coming as I do from the position that the Gospel is far too radical to be held captive by any political party or persuasion, and that the Kingdom of God "is not of this world" and therefore far too glorious, divine and spiritual in nature to even be faintly equated with any earthly kingdom).

Having said that, I know this thought won't be popular. I won't get people writing back and telling me how much it helped them. But that's ok, because it still needs to be said! It comes once again from Donald McCullough's superb book, "The Trivialization of God - The Dangerous Illusion of a Manageable Deity." It isn't meant to inspire, but challange and get you to think. If looked at in that sense I trust it will not disappoint you! Enjoy!

"The oxygen in the bloodstream of the religion devoted to the god-of-my-nation is the myth of a Christian America. How often have we heard exhortations to get this country back to its Christian roots? ...

As with any powerful myth, truth and error comingle here. The colonists who first settled along the eastern shore of North America in the seventeenth century were Puritans convinced of their divinely appointed mission... But by the time of the American Revolution and the establishment of our nation (our official beginning) things had changed dramatically. Thomas Jefferson, the greatest of our "Founding Fathers," was more Deist than Christian... A comparative statistic may set things in perspective: today 62 percent of Americans are involved in a church, but in 1776, only 17 percent were involved. Who would want to take America back to those roots?...

A few years ago, Self magazine polled its readers to determine the most popular personal public heros. Jesus made the list, to be sure, but came in behind Mother Teresa, George Bush, Madonna, Norman Schwartzkopf, and Cher -- tying with Desert Storm Troops and Julia Roberts!... Only 13 percent of Americans believe all the Ten Commandments were binding. The evidence simply does not support the view that we are a "Christian Nation"..."

(It's also necessary, he says, to note the soaring rates for violent crime, infant mortality, homelessness, divorce, abortion, and racism).

"Whatever else we might say about America, we certainly cannot say it is a nation perfectly attuned to the will of a holy God! It never has been.

It's remarkable, therefore, how many seem to enwrap God in a red, white and blue bunting, (and) how many seem convinced that, of all the nations of the world, this is God's most beloved. What's good for America, many seem to believe, must be good for God; there seems little practical difference, for many sincere Christians, between the Kingdom of God and the United States of America.

Do I exaggerate? Let me propose a test: remove from your sanctuary the Christian flag and watch whether anyone even notices; then remove the U.S. flag and watch how quickly your hide gets nailed to the wall. I did this (after 12 years of working up the courage!), and not one person mentioned the loss of the Christian flag. But at the next meeting of elders, we had a pretty heated discussion about the absence of Old Glory. "What happened to the flag?" one elder demanded to know. I explained I had moved it to the narthex, the symbolic border, as it were, between the world and the church, and I reminded them that we are not the Rotary Club but part of a church that pledges allegiance to a very different Commonwealth. They decided they could live with it in the narthex, but had I tried to remove it from the church grounds altogether, they might have decided they could live without me.

Truth is, many in the American church are Americans first and Christians second. They have never consciously prioritized these loyalties, though, because it has never occurred to them there may be a difference, let alone a conflict, between the two. But when American patriotism is blended with Christian spirituality, the former will always bully the latter. Patriotism, if it's anything more than sentimentalism, leads inevitably to politics. And politics has a concrete immediacy: it regulates lives, reaches into pocketbooks, opens doors for some and closes them for others. This practicality exerts a powerful gravitational pull from which our Christian commitments separate us only with great difficulty. The consequent distortion of perspective shapes our view of God.

To put it bluntly, for most evangelicals God is a Republican and for most mainline liberals God is a Democrat. During the last national election, one organization sent out a brochure announcing the "Christian" position on many issues. I was surprised to discover that God was in favor of limiting congressional terms and lowering taxes...

Both deities, the one who rides an elephant and the one who rides a donkey, are trivial gods too limited by narrow interests to do anything but create a psuedo-religious atmosphere that, however handy for political huckstering, has no power to save a nation, let alone a single individual. The holy God of the Bible neither adds a basso profundo to "God Bless America," nor joins the raucous rendering of "Happy Days Are Here Again." The holy God of the Bible has set apart only one nation -- Israel -- and that to be a "light to the nations," witnessing in its history to both the grace and the judgment of God...

Do not misunderstand me. I am grateful for the ways God has blessed America, and I believe we should express our citizenship by helping to order society according to the will of God as we understand it. But letting God define political commitments is one thing; letting political commitments define God is entirely something else. Unfortunately, the powerful pull of politics too often trivializes God into a god-of-my-nation, unable to do much more than offer a misty-eyed sentimentalism."

Just food for thought, sent with the desire that we might all avoid the error of making our majestic and holy God into a "god-of-my-particular-political-agenda."

For the Glory of His name, Pastor Jeff

Untamed God

Greetings All,

Since I didn't have time to send out a thought last week, I thought I'd send one out early this week. They're dedicated to Peter Paysen, who once told me how much he appreciated the one by Annie Dillard.

All the thoughts have to do with something that's been heavy on my heart lately as I was re-reading a book I read a few years back by Donald McCullough called "The Trivialization of God." (Another book that is well worth you reading!)

They are thoughts that have to do with a God who is not as tame as we would like to think. A God whose presence can actually be quite frightening on occasion. A God that is so holy and immense and incomprehensibly great that we are (to use the words of Rudolf Otto in his book "The Idea of the Holy") "submerged and overwhelmed by our own nothingness in contrast to that which is sureme above all... submergence onto nothingness before an overpowering, absolute might." A God who's presence moves us completely outside our comfort zones, and even evokes in us a sense of religious dread (as it did with the Apostle John in Revelation 1:17 or Isaiah in Isaiah 6:5 or 8:12-13).

Our first "thought" comes from the lyrics of a song by Jimmy Needham called "Hurricane."

"I have built a city here. Half with pride and half with fear. Just wanted a safer place to hide. I don't want to be safe tonight...

I need You like a hurricane, thunder crashing, wind and rain, to tear my walls down. I'm only Yours now. I need You like a burning flame, a wild fire untamed, to burn these walls down. I'm only Yours now.

I am Yours and You are mine. You know far better than I. And if destruction's what I need, then I'll receive it Lord from Thee.

And if it's Your eye in the storm watching over me.. And if it's Your eye in the storm wanting only good for me... And if You are the war, let me be the casualty, 'til I'm Yours alone. I am only Yours. I am Yours alone, Lord."

(You can hear it here - click on "hurricane" and also here)

Our second thought is by Annie Dillard in her book "Teaching a Stone to Talk."

After surveying the contemporary church scene she asks the question:

"Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?"

"On the whole, I do not find Christians (outside the catacombs) sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are like children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.

It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake some day and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return."

McCullough (who cites her quote) adds:

"We prefer the illusion of a safer deity, and so we have pared God down to more managable proportions. Our era has no exclusive claim to the trivialization of God. This has always been the temptation and the failure for the people of God. Pagan gods have caused less trouble than the tendency to re-fashion God into a more congenial, serviceable god."

And last, we come to Isaiah. His heart burns for revival. He yearns for the people of God to be what they were meant to be. And so he utters a prayer pleading for God to do the one thing he knows would bring that about:

"Oh, that You would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before You! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil, come down and make you name known..." (Isaiah 64:1-2).

What would remedy the apathy of God's people? If God would simply rend the heavens and pull back the curtain that hides him from our sight, and let us glimpse (if only for a few seconds) what He's really like in all of his glorious holiness and immensity! If He would only "come down" and make His name known. If He would only do that, the "nations would quake" (v.2) and "the mountains would tremble" (v. 3). If we could only catch the slightest glimpse of God, we would all realize the sinfulness that stains even our best or most righteous deeds (v.6), and cry out, "How then can we be saved?" (v. 5) (Full text click here)

Just a little food for thought, Pastor Jeff

Dr. Jeffrey F. Evans