Shaping Our Faith: Discovering God 2

Where did the "omnis" go…or for that matter where did they come from?

God is omnipotent (all powerful). God is omniscient (all knowing). God is omnipresent (all present). God is omnibenevolent (all loving).

These are the attributes of God that most of learned in Sunday school and church. They were drilled into our heads in order to insure that we were aware that God was not like us but was completely different. God was other. In his Creeds of the Church (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1973) John Leith (one of my former professors) quotes the 1646 Westminster Confession. "There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory." This God is certainly "other" but is this really the God we encounter in the scriptures.

I ask that question because the God we encounter in the scriptures hardly looks like the God of the Westminster Confession. The God we find in scripture barters with Abraham (Genesis 18:16-33), argues with Moses (Exodus 4), gets really angry (Exodus 32:7-10), changes "his" mind (Exodus 32:14), forgives (II Samuel 12:13-14), calls prophets (Isaiah 6:1-13), loves the world (John 3:16) and comes enfleshed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (John 1). The God of the scriptures appears to be a very different kind of God; a God who is willing to get down in the muck and mire of creation, to listen to and be impacted by human prayers and even to suffer and die for creation itself.

    This being the case, how then did we move from a God who was intimately involved in human relationships to a God who is seen as completely other and who moves human beings like pieces on a chess board according to "his own immutable counsel"? The simple answer…the Greeks. The more complex answer…that as Christianity moved from a Hebraic centered world into a Greek centered world, the God views of the church changed. The very "earthy" God of the Jews had to give way to a very "transcendent" God because an earthy God was a scandal to the Greeks. Greek gods were "timeless, immutable, impassible, incapable of being affected…in all, (and) not merely in some respects." (Williamson, Way of Blessing, Way of Life, St. Louis: Chalice Press, 104)

This view of God was an outcome of Plato's philosophical views which argued (and this is a very simplistic rendering of his philosophy) that the physical world was an imperfect copy of the perfect transcendent world (in a sense the spiritual is perfect, the physical is imperfect). Thus for the Greeks it was necessary to remove God from the daily grind of human existence and elevate God into the philosophical stratosphere. Only by so doing would God be worth worshipping. This Greek view of God then became the norm for the church early on and continues to dominate our thinking even today.

    Unfortunately this reworking of God gutted any thought or discussion of God as relational. God became distant and remote, unable to feel or experience anything. Thus even Jesus' death on the cross became a mere transaction on God's behalf rather than an experience of God's own suffering for humanity. One of my goals then as I said last week is to return us to understanding God as the one who is creative, interactive, personal, loving, purposeful, judging, and forgiving; in other words the God of the scriptures. By so doing I believe we will not only return to our Biblical roots but we will enrich our own relationship with God.

    Next week: God as creative.

Shaping Our Faith: Discovering God 1

Who is this God and how do we know what we think we know about God?

In their 1971 album "Aqualung" the group Jethro Tull (I know that this is probably the first time in a while anyone has talked about Jethro Tull in church) focused the second side of the record entirely to an examination of how the church and society talk about God. In the song "My God" the lyrics read, "People -- what have you done -- locked Him in His golden cage. Made Him bend to your religion --Him resurrected from the grave. He is the god of nothing -- if that's all that you can see." In more recent times Alanis Morissette in her song "What if God were One of Us" sung "What if god was one of us? Just a slob like one of us just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home."

Last week we looked at monotheism as one of the defining characteristics of our faith. As the lyrics noted above show us however simply believing in one God as opposed to many gods still leaves a very wide open playing field in terms of who is this one God? Is this one God the one who wants to welcome everyone into heaven? Is this one God the one who gives us permission to kill our enemies? Is this one God a distant and remote power who has little interaction with humanity? Is this one God a tyrant who punishes those who do not perfectly obey? I ask these questions because they each describe how God has been interpreted by the church across time. So who is this God and how do we know what we know about God?

For those of us in the Reformed Tradition (meaning Presbyterians and Reformed churches) the answer to how we know about this God we worship is scripture. Though tradition, culture and experience always play a part in how we understand God, our central focus is to be on mining the Bible for clues to knowing and understanding God. While that might appear to make the task of discovering God easier, in some ways it makes it more difficult. It makes it more difficult because the scriptures, spanning more than a thousand years, written by dozens of different individuals, in dozens of different cultural environments, composed of multiple kinds of literature does not give us a single definitive vision of God. Thus it has been easy for the church and individuals to create God in their own image. We can pick and choose the images we like while discarding those we do not appreciate. As Ian Anderson put it, we lock God in his golden cage (a cage of our own making).

So who is this God? As I said a few weeks ago I am going to argue that the Biblical story while offering a variety of perspectives on God gives us, in the end, a cohesive image from which to work. That cohesive image is of a God who wants to bless humanity and creation. From the opening words of Genesis (God makes a good creation), to the prophets (God desires to restore that creation), to the life and work of Jesus (proclaiming the new Kingdom in which relationships with God and neighbor are restored) to the final words of Revelation (where there is a new heaven and earth in which pain and death have been destroyed) we are shown a picture of a God who desires humans to live in right relationship with God, with one another and with the creation that God has made.

This vision of a God who desires to bless humanity (and has come personally to bless us…more about that later) helps us see that God is: interactive, personal, loving, purposeful, judging, forgiving and creative. Realizing that this language is not the traditional language we have used to speak of God (omnipresent, etc.) I will spend some time next week discussing why I believe the language I will use is closer to the Biblical vision than the traditional descriptions many of us were taught.

Next week: where did the Omnis go?

Shaping Our Faith: One God

Monotheism: The Heart of Judeo-Christian-Islamic faith

God. This is a word we often use without thinking. We talk about God. We pray to God. We refer to God's will. We use "God" in curses (I suppose not the best example). The word God is so much a part of our language that we seldom stop to consider what a profound theological statement we are making when we use the term.

Monotheism, the belief that there is one God (and not many gods) is a remarkable concept. For much of the history of God's people (see there I go using God) monotheism was not even on the theological horizon. For at least a thousand years God's people were henotheists (those who worship one god but accept the presence of other gods). We see this in the Exodus 20:3, "You shall have no other gods before me." In other words while the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob may have believed that other gods existed they were to worship one God alone; the God who had called Abraham and through Moses had liberated the people from the power of Pharaoh.

This belief in the presence of other gods was to be expected in the ancient world. Except for very rare instances nations and peoples had a plethora of gods in which one god would be dominant but not exclusive. Speculation exists that the present understanding of monotheism developed during the Babylonian captivity (597-538 BC). We see this development expressed in Isaiah 44:06, "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god" and it's further developed in Isaiah 44:09-20, a satire on the making and worship of idols. This new concept not only clearly set Judaism off from all other religions but it became the backbone of the Hebraic faith.

Christianity, as an offshoot of Judaism, continued the tradition of monotheism. This absolute adherence to monotheism proved to be a difficulty however as the church tried to discern the nature and work of Jesus of Nazareth (we will deal with this struggle of who Jesus was and is in future articles). In other words, how could Jesus be both a human being and God, especially if God is one and cannot be divided? As the church spread throughout the Roman Empire it would have been very easy for Christians to return to a polytheistic stance in order to deal with this quandary. They refused to do so however and were clear that while Jesus is mysteriously God with us, God is still one.

Ultimately then this adherence to monotheism shaped and shapes our faith in several critical ways. First monotheism allows us to focus our devotion and worship on the one, true living God. If, as we believe, there is but one God then this one God is deserving of our worship and devotion for all of the blessings of life we have received. Second, monotheism reminds us that our primary allegiance is to be offered to God and to God alone. Scripture tells us that we are to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, thus giving God "first dibs" on our lives. This orientation allows us to be guided by God as we seek to bless others. Finally monotheism allows us to orient our lives to God who is the very source of life and blessing itself. Since God is the creator and giver of life, then by aligning ourselves with God we encounter the one who is able to help us become fully human; meaning becoming capable of living in right relationship with Gods-self, neighbor and creation so that we can both be blessed and can bless others. Monotheism thus forms the very foundation of our faith, allowing us to not only talk about God, but to discover who this God is.

Next week: Who is this God?

Shaping Our Faith: A Foundational Idea

We are busy people. It doesn't seem to matter which stage of life we are in (young and single, coupled up, re-singled, parenting, empty nest, retired, older married or single) there always appears to be more to do than we have time do. In the midst of this busyness we seldom take the time to ask deep theological questions…such as "What ought to be the foundational idea upon which I build my concept of God and the creation?" Between working, taking care of the children or grandchildren, volunteering in the community and the church, going out with friends, traveling or a host of other activities those kind of God questions simply don't seem all that important. They are better left to professional theological types who have the time to ponder such things.

The problem with such an answer is that, as I said last week, whether we want to believe it or not, each of us does theology every day. We make conscious and unconscious decisions about how to treat people, whether or not to fudge our taxes, how much truth we will tell, what we will give to the church or charity, for whom we will vote, or how we will rear and discipline our children among a host of daily decisions. On a more irregular basis we may have to come to grips with the pain and suffering of the world (why is Haiti hurting so much? Why did my best friend get cancer?) and ultimately our own deaths. How we make those daily decisions and the answers we come to about the hurt of the world and death itself are going to be based in some way (again even unconsciously) on how we understand God and God's relationship with us and with the world.

It would seem to me then (and hopefully to most of you) that it makes sense to spend some time trying to organize what we believe (our personal theological perspective) in order that the choices we make and the answers we derive have some congruence and are not simply emotional responses to the moment. In addition such a coordination of belief and action allows us to be more fully integrated and confident human beings. It also allows us, when faced with difficult decisions and personal tragedies, to have the theological and personal resources to deal with them. We are not left adrift wondering what we ought to do and believe.

Given all of this what ought the foundation of our theological world view be (assuming you are on board with all of this)? Again, as I said last week, there are many foundations upon which Christians and the church have organized their world views. What I want to offer to you this morning is one that has stuck with me ever since reading Way of Blessing, Way of Life; A Christian Theology, by Clark Williamson (Chalice Press, 1999). Williamson is a retired professor of Christian Thought at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. In Way of Blessing, Way of Life, Williamson argues that the Biblical story (which we spent the last year reviewing) is a single story in which God works to bring blessing to creation. In other words from the beginning of humanities relationship with God, God wanted people to live fully human lives; lives lived in loving relationship with God, neighbor and creation.

This way of blessing and life is ultimately and decisively demonstrated in and made possible through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus we see the possibilities of grace, love, forgiveness and reconciliation which enable blessed life. We see the possibilities for blessed communities in the life of the early church as they followed the Jesus' way. Revelation itself (though a tough book to get through) finishes the Biblical story with a vision of what blessed life looks like. So as we move forward with our theological trek the foundation upon which I will be building a theological world view will be that of a God's way of blessing and God's way of life. I hope you will join me on this journey. Next Week: Monotheism: The Heart of Judeo-Christian faith.

Shaping Our Faith: How do we begin?

So how do we begin? How do we figure out, in an organized way, what we as Jesus followers ought to believe and do? How do we know if we are on the right track or have totally missed the direction in which Jesus would have us go (such as when the church endorsed slavery and the oppression of women)? While some people may not think the questions are important, in the end they are because how we answer them will dictate the shape and form of both our church and our lives…two things that matter a great deal to God.

The first way in which people often begin to answer these questions is to simply read the Bible and assume the answers will become clear. In other words we read the scriptures while attempting to draw certain beliefs and moral imperatives out of the words before us (similar to what we do on Sunday mornings in worship). Though all good Christian theology begins with the Bible the trouble is that the Bible is not organized as a systematic theological treatise about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and their relationship with humanity and creation. As I have said before, the Bible is a composition of history, theological reflection, poetry and prophecy; all of which are rooted in ancient cultures whose world views (scientific, philosophical, and relational) are very different from our own.

That Biblical reality thus requires any individual Christian or theologian wishing to have a coherent faith and life to choose at least one foundational idea or concept upon which to organize how they read the Bible and upon which they build their set of beliefs (theology) about who God is, how God acts and how we are to live in response. For example we could base our beliefs about God and ourselves upon the foundation that "God is love." Everything we believe and do would then be shaped by that core belief (we would feel loved and want to share that love with others). Or we could base our beliefs about God and ourselves upon the foundation that "God is a God of wrath"; how we lived out our lives of faith would be very different if this were our foundational Biblical principle (we would live fearful lives and want others to be afraid as well).

Our historic foundational principle as Presbyterians has been that God has all power and does not share it. In theological speak we call this the Sovereignty of God. This was the guiding principle for John Calvin (1509-1564) as he tried to work out a theology for the Protestant churches that were breaking away from the church in Rome. Calvin (and those who have followed him over the centuries) believed that God controlled everything, including our own actions and our eternal destinies. Nothing happened (in any sphere of creation) that was not ordained "from all eternity" by God. While this may seem a bit controlling to us 21^st Century believers, it was of great comfort to people living it the 1500s. Rather than worrying if they were good enough to be saved (an issue in Catholicism of the time) they had assurance that they were indeed members of Gods saved elect and heaven was their destination.

    Over the years this fairly rigid view of God and God's sovereignty has continued to evolve. As science, philosophy and psychology helped us better understand the human condition, and as we were better able to read scripture in its original contexts, believers have offered a wide variety of organizing principles upon which to base their understandings of God and self. Next week I will offer the organizing principle upon which I will be building the theological perspective that will guide our discussions about who we are and how we ought to live as Jesus followers. Next week: The Life of Blessing