Why, my Lord, do you put up with us?
It is not Christian, nor displays or represents Evangelical Conviction!
IT IS A SHAM!!
Christianity Today Blasphemy!
Please pass this on. You will be appalled at the defamation of God you are about to hear from the editor of this so-called Christian magazine. Mark Galli sounds just like today's rank atheists. July 2010 CT website 'Dvine Drama Queen'. Look it up! One resposndent actually wrote that "no way any God of mine could be like to Old Testament one. I see not a shred of morality in that guy"! The same person goes on to write " Sometimes the greatest danger for Christians is actually reading the Old Testament".
I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming.
When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I'm not pleased. This God says he "hates" sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It's just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting.
Take his conversation with Hosea. The Lord is disgusted with Israel, and he asks Hosea to enact a parable. He orders Hosea to take a prostitute for a wife; she becomes a symbol of Israel's unfaithfulness to God. This is no down-on-her-luck-but-with-a-heart-of-gold prostitute like those so often portrayed in movies. This is some sleazy woman who, even when given a chance at a decent life, keeps "whoring." [Gee! Here an analogy that rings true with the writer of this most distasteful article!]
God then tells Hosea to have children with this woman. When the children are born, he tells Hosea to call the first Jezreel, explaining, "I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel." The second, God calls No Mercy, because "I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all." The third he calls Not My People, "for you are not my people, and I am not your God" (Hosea 1:1-9).
This God is like the volatile Italian woman who, upon discovering her husband's unfaithfulness, yells and throws dishes, refuses to sleep in the same bed, and doesn't speak to him for 40 days and 40 nights.
We may think this a crude depiction, except that Jesus—God with us—seems to suffer the same emotional imbalance. [!!] He rants about Pharisees and Scribes—or "snakes" and "hypocrites," as he calls them. So upset is he over sacrilege in the Temple, he overturns tables and drives people out with a whip. And then we find him lamenting, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate!"(Matt. 23:37-38).
This God knows nothing about being a non-anxious presence. This is a very anxious God, indeed.
I'd rather have a God who takes sin in stride. Why can't he relax and recognize that to err is human. I mean, you don't find us flawed humans freaking out about one another's sins. You don't see us wrathful, indignant, and pouting. Why can't God almighty just chill out and realize we're just human? [Really? Gee, this totally contradicts what this fool just wrote a few paragraphs above, about that "volatile Italian woman who, upon discovering her husband's unfaithfulness, yells and throws dishes, etc.!" Pay attention, fool, to what you write!]
It's that little phrase, "we're just human," that may be the rub with God.
Sin seems to be a big deal to God because apparently we're a big deal to him. That little phrase, "we're just human," signals that we may not be as big a deal to ourselves. We're more like the woman who thought she was destined to write the great American novel, but after getting a couple of publisher rejections decided to write Harlequin romances instead. Or the runner who had dreams of winning gold in the Olympics, but after placing 15th in the Boston Marathon, decided that weekend golf would have to do for exercise. We live in the land of "just make do," in the valley of lost dreams, and in the endless desert of parched hope.
But we have a God who thinks we can write the great American novel and win Olympic gold. He believes that to be human is to be destined for glory. As Peter put it, he has "called us to his own glory and excellence," that we "may become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:3-4).
That's right: he thinks "just humans" can become nothing less than gods. Not in the sense of beings who should be worshipped, but beings who have become, in the fullest sense, bearers of the image and likeness of their Creator.
He not only thinks this, God has given himself to make it happen. In creating the world, God had a lot of options, and he exercised a number of them. He created things that just grow and "veg" and die, beautiful but without much awareness of the larger reality. He called them plants.
He created beings that had a tad more awareness, but could never aspire to anything grand. They enjoy a simple, physical existence, and then die. He called them animals.
Then he created beings with deep awareness of themselves and their Creator, who could envision the absolute heights they could scale and the perfect love they could enjoy, and who knew they could have all this forever and ever.
It was a gamble, though. For such a creature—one with the very nature of God—could also become a devil. Such a creature—one who could know perfect love—could also learn perfect hate. Such a creature—who could envision a life blessed beyond imagination—could also despair, could begin thinking that to be human is to err, is to be flawed, is to despair of glory.
And yet God gambled. He has thrown everything into this grand enterprise. He made the creation of these beings not a matter of course or compromise, but a matter of life or death. Everything was on the line with this roll of the dice. To win meant for these creatures a bliss that only God knows. To lose meant death and eternal destruction. There was no holding back. God was going to make human glory a winner-take-all proposition, even if it killed him. So when things start going south, we find him throwing dishes and slamming doors.
As Karl Barth says in his exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism, "In entering into a covenant of grace with man, God has come so near to man that he is affected by what man does, so near that he can be hurt by man."
God rants at us as an Olympian curses himself for losing concentration during a crucial part of the race. Or as a novelist chastises herself for lazy writing. For the righteous perfectionist (versus the neurotic perfectionist), every detail matters. God wants nothing less than perfection, because he knows that perfection is the only way for us to become what he created us to become: godlike.
When the stakes are so high, of course, the consequence of failure, even in the smallest detail, spells disaster. It's like a space shuttle—one of the most sophisticated and marvelous of machines—crashing to earth because of a faulty oil ring. [I think you mean "O-ring!" Get your facts straight!]
When God sees the space shuttle hurtling toward its destruction, he weeps, he rants, he pulls his hair out. And something inside him dies. Our God cares about us frail, fickle, weak human beings because he knows something we often forget: we're not "just human." He'll go to any length to get us to grasp and live into our glory, even if it kills him. [It seems He is giving you one chance too many!]
This is why the Bible traffics in such dramatic language. There is nothing cautious, careful, or reasonable about the human enterprise. It's about being lost or saved. Living in darkness or in light. Knowing despair or being filled with hope. Death or life. The Bible is not interested in a religion that merely improves the human condition, or makes life manageable. It's not about success or happiness or helping us all get along. These are paltry aspirations. No, what God wants is to raise the dead and make gods out of sinners.
So what we have, for better or worse, is a melodramatic God. He yells and throws dishes, and walks off in a huff, slamming the door behind him—and then he turns around and gives his life for us. In a foreshadowing of Jesus, he says to Israel through Hosea: "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? … for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath" (Hosea 11:8-9). He's anything but calm and collected, reassuring and reasonable. He's as mercurial as gods go. [!!]
"The being and doing of man touch [God's] heart," continues Barth. "Understood in this way, the word of God's wrath is full of comfort and gospel, full of good news … . A mere overlooking pardon would not be worthy of him, nor would it help man. It would be a lack of mercy, the indifference of a god who in truth is not God."
Still, most days, I secretly wish God were not like this. He's like the crazy uncle in the family. At some point, you have to let your friends know about him, but you'd just as soon avoid having to introduce him.
I much prefer reasonable religion with reasonable expectations, and a God who doesn't get bent out of shape every time his people trip up. But then again, I don't love as God loves. Not God. Not others. Not myself. [Well, fool, God did not give us "religion!" Religion aims to fit us with lenses! God wants us to open our eyes!]
The road to hell is paved with reasonable religion with a non-anxious god. Most days, I'm pretty happy driving down that road. But I keep running into this Crazy Fellow along the way. At every stop light, he jumps up and down to get my attention. He pounds on my window asking me where the heck I think I'm going. He stands on the front bumper, shouting at me to turn around. When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car. [What a fool the driver is!]
He's such a drama queen.
Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He is author of Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God (Baker).
Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Related Elsewhere:
Previous SoulWork columns include:
The God Who Became Blood | What my dysfunctional prostate taught me about Jesus. (June 24, 2010)
The Lord Who Acts Like It | Where did we get the idea that the church should be a place that makes people feel comfortable? (June 10, 2010)
Judgment in the Gulf | Woes and blessings of the oil spill. (June 1, 2010)
Why, my Lord, do you put up with us?
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