Sunday, July 25, 2010
God Must Be Crazy!
Today, I’m going to start with a proposition. I’m just going to put it out there right from the start. Here it is: God must be crazy!
I know what you’re thinking. You’re slowly moving further from me so you aren’t struck by the same lightning bolt that takes me out. I must be a heretic. I must be arrogant to think that I can make such a statement of the one who created us. Or maybe I’m the one who’s crazy for making such a claim.
But surely God must be crazy!
After all, humanity is a spoiled brat. From infancy humanity has resisted the motherly embrace of God’s steadfast love. God was there cradling and nursing humanity and simply asked for our trust. But we wouldn’t have it. We screamed and we squirmed and we wrestled our way out of God’s arms wanting to take care of ourselves. That is until we were hungry and soiled and couldn’t handle it any more. And there was God to cradle us once more.
So we became toddlers. There was God loving us again. Asking for our trust. Setting guidelines for us to live together in peace. But again we wouldn’t have it. We wanted what we wanted when we wanted it. We kicked God in the shins and told him to go away. Then we found ourselves sick from eating too many cookies. There was God again to pick us up, nurse us back to health, and embrace us once again.
We grew into teenagers. God was there with fatherly advice of how to have the fullest life. Of how to give and receive the most love. But again we wouldn’t have it. We were invincible. We knew what we were doing. When God tried again to give us that advice, we gave God a hearty two-handed shove to the chest and said, “Leave us alone!” and commenced on the greatest freak out ever. Then, we found ourselves beaten down and alone and having just one place to turn. There was God again waiting for us with a firm embrace.
We became young adults. Ready to enter a riskier world on our own. God remained by our side asking for our trust. God claimed to know how to avoid destruction, failure, and emptiness. But we were fiercely independent and shouted, “I don’t need you anymore!” as we punched God in the face. We went off on our home, began to party and live life to the fullest on our terms. But we found ourselves broke, in debt, and homeless. There again was God to give us shelter and a new start.
So we entered full adulthood ready to make a life for ourselves. God was there still attempting to earn our trust and point us down the right path. But we had a better idea. We exclaimed, “Are you still trying to tell us what to do?” as we killed God so we could be once and for all be on our own. That was until humanity found itself ill and dying and on the edge of destruction and thinking it no longer had anywhere to turn. But how shocked were we when God appeared again as we learned that not only does God’s love never die but neither does God.
So is God crazy? Humanity, the spoiled brat keeps pushing God away. And God responds time and again with forgiveness every time we turn back to him. Why doesn’t God save Godself the pain, do away with humanity, and be done with it?
God doesn’t do that because it is not in God’s nature. In the foreward of Miroslav Volf’s book Free of Charge, Rowan Williams explains it is as much in God’s nature to forgive as it is in a duck’s nature to quack.
And does this truth not rehearse itself over and over in Scripture? Even when the ancients were more likely to attribute great suffering to God as punishment for sin, grace always had the last word. Humanity cast out of the garden but not destroyed. Cain cursed for murdering his brother but spared murder at another’s hands. A people delivered from slavery only to stray from God, be forgiven, stray from God, be forgiven, land in exile, be delivered. And it all culminates in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ which makes God appear weak to so many.
So, perhaps, if it is as much God’s nature to forgive as it is a duck’s nature to quack, we can logically make the conclusion that God is, in fact, crazy. I mean humanity, to this point, still hasn’t embraced the forgiveness and love God offers yet God persists.
Or maybe, we need another question. Maybe the question isn’t if God is crazy to continue to forgive. Maybe we should ask if humanity is crazy to not yet embrace its need for forgiveness. Humanity continues to push itself to the brink. Individuals continue to seek their own interests at the cost of the well being of themselves and others. All because humanity stubbornly believes, despite all the history to the contrary, that we can get along in our own strength.
So maybe we’re crazy, but if we’re really going to answer this question, we have to start to ask just what we are doing that requires forgiveness.
Let’s start to answer that question by turning to Psalm 92.
Psalms is a collection of poetry compiled to address a community in crisis. A nation who knew itself as God’s chosen people had rebelled and found themselves in exile. This psalm, in the voice of the musician king David, is a confession. As king, his confession represents the confession of a people who were feeling the effects of rebellion and were now turning back to God after having turned away.
They were a people who had been delivered from oppression in Egypt and now had become the oppressors. Righteousness and justice had escaped them as they sought their own self-interests.
Here, the speaker in the psalm points to three terms in the confession. The first is the most familiar: sin. It speaks to the general idea that we as a people created in God’s image and called to love as God does have missed the mark. We have generally lost sight of our identity and are lost in a wilderness of self worth.
The second term is transgressions which connotes a willful rebellion. It suggests that even though we were aware we missed the mark we continued on forcibly leaning on ourselves and rejecting the Creator’s overtures.
The third term is iniquities and it signifies the enduring, destructive effects of disobedience. This is inclusive both of the effects of our disobedience on ourselves and on others.
As these things mount in our lives, they begin to weigh us down. Spiritually they take a toll on us because we know deep down we were meant for something more and it tears at our soul. Physically and practically they take a toll on us through sins destructive effects and alienation from one another as we have trouble moving beyond what I want. As the psalmist points out, our silence and denial of our need for forgiveness only makes it worse.
Confession, though, results in forgiveness which results in God freeing us of sin and its effects. The psalmist says confession results in the forgiveness that brings us back into God’s presence where we find the shelter, a hiding place, where we will be delivered. It is simply up to us, from that point forth, to follow God’s instruction. In this shelter, our confession and repentance can free not only ourselves but also those hurt by our transgressions.
And here is good news. It is not that we have to be perfect to be in God’s shelter. We simply have to confess and repent. At that point God wipes the slate clean for those who truly fear him. As Psalm 103 tells us, he will remove our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. It is at that point the humble, those who understand they must rely on God rather than themselves, will be filled with the Spirit and live in a much different way.
This gives us a basis for understanding a need for forgiveness, but then we have to understand what it is in our day that may need to be confessed and repented.
Old Testament theologian Walter Bruggemann gives us a hint. He talks of four scripts which seek our worship and seek to control our lives. It is our dependence on these scripts that the gospel, he says, challenges by calling humanity back to a counter script. This is, of course, the true script which we were called to live by.
The first script is the therapeutic. It is that assumption that there is something to take away all discomfort in life. Whether it is drugs, insurance, or financial planning, it is believed we can rely on ourselves to prevent any pain or suffering in our lives.
The second is technological. This is the idea that if something is wrong we can fix it. If we have damaged the earth with the way we live, we’ll just create new ways to live the same lives to fix the problem. If our plans to provide our energy desires destroy an entire region of the Atlantic, we’ll create a new way to get that energy source.
There’s, then, the consumerist script which asserts we can buy whatever we want when we want it with our money. It states we are all individuals responsible for ourselves alone with no concern for how the items we consume are produced and with minimal concern for those who don’t have the same consumer power.
The final script is that of militarism. The script that says our power should be used to protect our interests around the globe or that when in conflict with another group or nation we call on the military so willing to give their all to defend us. But it often becomes like Mark Twain said, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
These scripts work in concert to affect our focus so we miss the mark. Where my life and my comfort and my nation is more important than God and our neighbor. Where our power to buy and to win is relied on rather than the creator who gives us breath.
These are scripts that affect not just out common life as a nation, or a church in a nation and the world, but also our personal lives. We buy, buy, buy. People in our lives, including our children and spouses become mere objects to bring us personal satisfaction. Our technology threatens to undermine our needs for physical presence. Harsh words, a fist, a knife, and a gun are used to get our way rather than relying on love to serve the common good.
Conflict rises. Tensions intensifies. Harm increases. All fueled by the need to rely on our own strength.
But God remains. That thankfully crazy God offering a loving embrace to humanity when we turn to him despite all our mockery of the creator. It is in this moment we can confess our sins. We confess the harshness, self-centeredness, arrogance, addiction and violence of our personal lives and the power-based and supremacist feelings of our common life and seek to lean on God in a new way of life. It is not a life that proclaims we have been perfect. Just that we are choosing to lean on God in this new life. The life of love. Focused outwardly on God and the other. After all, if we embrace the fact that God’s nature is forgiving and we are created in God’s image, it becomes clear we are called to forgive. Something we will discuss in the coming weeks.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re slowly moving further from me so you aren’t struck by the same lightning bolt that takes me out. I must be a heretic. I must be arrogant to think that I can make such a statement of the one who created us. Or maybe I’m the one who’s crazy for making such a claim.
But surely God must be crazy!
After all, humanity is a spoiled brat. From infancy humanity has resisted the motherly embrace of God’s steadfast love. God was there cradling and nursing humanity and simply asked for our trust. But we wouldn’t have it. We screamed and we squirmed and we wrestled our way out of God’s arms wanting to take care of ourselves. That is until we were hungry and soiled and couldn’t handle it any more. And there was God to cradle us once more.
So we became toddlers. There was God loving us again. Asking for our trust. Setting guidelines for us to live together in peace. But again we wouldn’t have it. We wanted what we wanted when we wanted it. We kicked God in the shins and told him to go away. Then we found ourselves sick from eating too many cookies. There was God again to pick us up, nurse us back to health, and embrace us once again.
We grew into teenagers. God was there with fatherly advice of how to have the fullest life. Of how to give and receive the most love. But again we wouldn’t have it. We were invincible. We knew what we were doing. When God tried again to give us that advice, we gave God a hearty two-handed shove to the chest and said, “Leave us alone!” and commenced on the greatest freak out ever. Then, we found ourselves beaten down and alone and having just one place to turn. There was God again waiting for us with a firm embrace.
We became young adults. Ready to enter a riskier world on our own. God remained by our side asking for our trust. God claimed to know how to avoid destruction, failure, and emptiness. But we were fiercely independent and shouted, “I don’t need you anymore!” as we punched God in the face. We went off on our home, began to party and live life to the fullest on our terms. But we found ourselves broke, in debt, and homeless. There again was God to give us shelter and a new start.
So we entered full adulthood ready to make a life for ourselves. God was there still attempting to earn our trust and point us down the right path. But we had a better idea. We exclaimed, “Are you still trying to tell us what to do?” as we killed God so we could be once and for all be on our own. That was until humanity found itself ill and dying and on the edge of destruction and thinking it no longer had anywhere to turn. But how shocked were we when God appeared again as we learned that not only does God’s love never die but neither does God.
So is God crazy? Humanity, the spoiled brat keeps pushing God away. And God responds time and again with forgiveness every time we turn back to him. Why doesn’t God save Godself the pain, do away with humanity, and be done with it?
God doesn’t do that because it is not in God’s nature. In the foreward of Miroslav Volf’s book Free of Charge, Rowan Williams explains it is as much in God’s nature to forgive as it is in a duck’s nature to quack.
And does this truth not rehearse itself over and over in Scripture? Even when the ancients were more likely to attribute great suffering to God as punishment for sin, grace always had the last word. Humanity cast out of the garden but not destroyed. Cain cursed for murdering his brother but spared murder at another’s hands. A people delivered from slavery only to stray from God, be forgiven, stray from God, be forgiven, land in exile, be delivered. And it all culminates in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ which makes God appear weak to so many.
So, perhaps, if it is as much God’s nature to forgive as it is a duck’s nature to quack, we can logically make the conclusion that God is, in fact, crazy. I mean humanity, to this point, still hasn’t embraced the forgiveness and love God offers yet God persists.
Or maybe, we need another question. Maybe the question isn’t if God is crazy to continue to forgive. Maybe we should ask if humanity is crazy to not yet embrace its need for forgiveness. Humanity continues to push itself to the brink. Individuals continue to seek their own interests at the cost of the well being of themselves and others. All because humanity stubbornly believes, despite all the history to the contrary, that we can get along in our own strength.
So maybe we’re crazy, but if we’re really going to answer this question, we have to start to ask just what we are doing that requires forgiveness.
Let’s start to answer that question by turning to Psalm 92.
Psalms is a collection of poetry compiled to address a community in crisis. A nation who knew itself as God’s chosen people had rebelled and found themselves in exile. This psalm, in the voice of the musician king David, is a confession. As king, his confession represents the confession of a people who were feeling the effects of rebellion and were now turning back to God after having turned away.
They were a people who had been delivered from oppression in Egypt and now had become the oppressors. Righteousness and justice had escaped them as they sought their own self-interests.
Here, the speaker in the psalm points to three terms in the confession. The first is the most familiar: sin. It speaks to the general idea that we as a people created in God’s image and called to love as God does have missed the mark. We have generally lost sight of our identity and are lost in a wilderness of self worth.
The second term is transgressions which connotes a willful rebellion. It suggests that even though we were aware we missed the mark we continued on forcibly leaning on ourselves and rejecting the Creator’s overtures.
The third term is iniquities and it signifies the enduring, destructive effects of disobedience. This is inclusive both of the effects of our disobedience on ourselves and on others.
As these things mount in our lives, they begin to weigh us down. Spiritually they take a toll on us because we know deep down we were meant for something more and it tears at our soul. Physically and practically they take a toll on us through sins destructive effects and alienation from one another as we have trouble moving beyond what I want. As the psalmist points out, our silence and denial of our need for forgiveness only makes it worse.
Confession, though, results in forgiveness which results in God freeing us of sin and its effects. The psalmist says confession results in the forgiveness that brings us back into God’s presence where we find the shelter, a hiding place, where we will be delivered. It is simply up to us, from that point forth, to follow God’s instruction. In this shelter, our confession and repentance can free not only ourselves but also those hurt by our transgressions.
And here is good news. It is not that we have to be perfect to be in God’s shelter. We simply have to confess and repent. At that point God wipes the slate clean for those who truly fear him. As Psalm 103 tells us, he will remove our transgressions from us as far as the east is from the west. It is at that point the humble, those who understand they must rely on God rather than themselves, will be filled with the Spirit and live in a much different way.
This gives us a basis for understanding a need for forgiveness, but then we have to understand what it is in our day that may need to be confessed and repented.
Old Testament theologian Walter Bruggemann gives us a hint. He talks of four scripts which seek our worship and seek to control our lives. It is our dependence on these scripts that the gospel, he says, challenges by calling humanity back to a counter script. This is, of course, the true script which we were called to live by.
The first script is the therapeutic. It is that assumption that there is something to take away all discomfort in life. Whether it is drugs, insurance, or financial planning, it is believed we can rely on ourselves to prevent any pain or suffering in our lives.
The second is technological. This is the idea that if something is wrong we can fix it. If we have damaged the earth with the way we live, we’ll just create new ways to live the same lives to fix the problem. If our plans to provide our energy desires destroy an entire region of the Atlantic, we’ll create a new way to get that energy source.
There’s, then, the consumerist script which asserts we can buy whatever we want when we want it with our money. It states we are all individuals responsible for ourselves alone with no concern for how the items we consume are produced and with minimal concern for those who don’t have the same consumer power.
The final script is that of militarism. The script that says our power should be used to protect our interests around the globe or that when in conflict with another group or nation we call on the military so willing to give their all to defend us. But it often becomes like Mark Twain said, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
These scripts work in concert to affect our focus so we miss the mark. Where my life and my comfort and my nation is more important than God and our neighbor. Where our power to buy and to win is relied on rather than the creator who gives us breath.
These are scripts that affect not just out common life as a nation, or a church in a nation and the world, but also our personal lives. We buy, buy, buy. People in our lives, including our children and spouses become mere objects to bring us personal satisfaction. Our technology threatens to undermine our needs for physical presence. Harsh words, a fist, a knife, and a gun are used to get our way rather than relying on love to serve the common good.
Conflict rises. Tensions intensifies. Harm increases. All fueled by the need to rely on our own strength.
But God remains. That thankfully crazy God offering a loving embrace to humanity when we turn to him despite all our mockery of the creator. It is in this moment we can confess our sins. We confess the harshness, self-centeredness, arrogance, addiction and violence of our personal lives and the power-based and supremacist feelings of our common life and seek to lean on God in a new way of life. It is not a life that proclaims we have been perfect. Just that we are choosing to lean on God in this new life. The life of love. Focused outwardly on God and the other. After all, if we embrace the fact that God’s nature is forgiving and we are created in God’s image, it becomes clear we are called to forgive. Something we will discuss in the coming weeks.
