Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller.
an excerpt:
The very scary thing about religion to me is that people actually believe God is who they think he is. By that I mean they have him all figured out, mapped out, and as my pastor, Rick says, "dissected and put into jars on the shelf". You've got a bunch of Catholics in Rome who think one way about God, and a bunch of Baptists in Texas who think another, and that isn't even the beginning. It goes on and on and on like this, and it makes me wonder if God created us in his image or if we created him in ours. And it isn't just religion, either. I met a guy not long ago who was very conservative and had opinions all over him, and he was saying why God agreed with his political ideas and why that made his political ideas right, the whole time he was talking to me I was thinking about those guys in Africa, and I was feeling like this guy with the opinions was presenting a kind of Jesus who didn't even exist. His Jesus was just an invention of his imagination, someone who more or less justified his position concerning a lot of different political opinions. Sitting there listening to him made me feel tired. People like that should have an island.
3 comments:
It reminds me of the notion that (and I don't remember who said this first) We don't see things how they are rather we see them how we are.
I've always felt that it's rather humerous that any human could even fathom believing they understand a supreme being the created the universe. C'mon, let's not give ourselves that much credit, folks. We forget where we put our car keys some days, and yet claim to know the divine answers to life? yeah, right.
Hamel,
Excellent point. I haven't seen my cell phone for a week! Your perspective is completely compatible with classical Christianity. Indeed, that is the entire point. No human being could ever comprehend an infinite Creator, nor could we know him in a relational way. Unless that is, he were to condescend and reveal himself to us in ways we can understand. Christians have always believed that this is exactly what happens. Thus the emphasis on "revelation". As Christians we humbly believe we do know the divine answers of life, but not because of anything good in us. Rather we know some divine answers of life because the Divinity has revealed them to us. Christians have always held that God has revealed himself to us some in nature, more in the holy writings (the Old and New Testaments) and then in the ultimate revelation of God, Jesus himself- fully God, fully man. This God-man solves the problem you speak of in your post. How can we know the divine when we can't even find our car keys? The Divine has come to us as one of us. There is much more to be said of course and I realize many won't agree with this perspective. This is just to say sometimes things aren't as simple (or simple-minded) as they first appear.
Each Sunday we begin our worhsip service with something called a "Call to Worship", where verses are read from scripture calling people to worship God. After the reading I usually say something like this "What you've just heard is a call to worship. God is always the one to initiate the relationship with people and it is never the other way around". So that is indeed the point.
Thanks for reading. I welcome your continued interaction.
Peace,
Greg (funky presb)
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