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
