What We Talk About When We Talk About God (11 page)

I tell you about my friend sitting there at dinner sharing that story about praying because when we talk about the God who is
for
us, we first have to talk about our deep-down, intuitive awareness that we need help.

I realize that this sort of talk is out of sync with many of the dominant voices that have been working on us for a number of years now, insisting that we are the answer to our problems, that there is no one else out there, and that if we don't fix things ourselves, there are no other options. While this sounds empowering and reasonable and free from all that primitive religious superstition, what we actually run into in the course of our everyday lives are endless struggles that (if we're honest) we need help with if we're going to survive, much less prevail, because on our own we know that we are powerless.

From lying to explosive anger to addiction to the inability to forgive to overwhelming helplessness in the face of tragedy to the constant, gnawing anxiety that won't go away to the haunting sense that you're not good enough no matter how hard you work and what you achieve, when we're talking about God, we're talking about the very real sense we have that we do not, on our own, have everything we need and we are not, on our own, everything we could be.

It's there, in that place—naming it and owning it and facing it and going around the room admitting our powerlessness—that we discover the God who has been
for us
the whole time.

Which takes us to the dusty, messy, bloody, and unexpected stories about Jesus,

who

touches lepers, whom no one else would touch,

and

hears the cry of blind people, who had been told to be quiet,

and

dines with tax collectors, whom everybody hated,

and

talks with thirsty, loose Samaritan women he wasn't supposed to talk with—

over and over again we see him going to the edges, to the margins, to those in trouble, those despised, those no one else would touch, those who were ignored, the weak, the blind, the lame, the lost, the losers.

He moves toward them;

he extends himself to them;

he reaches out to them;

he meets them in their place of pain, helplessness, abandonment, and failure.

He is living, breathing evidence that God wants everybody,
everyone,
to be rescued, renewed, and reconciled to ourselves, our neighbors, our world, and God.

There are, of course, consequences to his

teaching

and

touching

and

talking

and

dining

and

healing

and

helping.

In his insistence that God is for everybody, Jesus challenged the conventional wisdom of his day that God is only for some.

In his standing in solidarity with the poor, he confronted the system that created those kinds of conditions.

In his declarations that God can't fit in any one temple, he provoked those who controlled and profited from that very temple.

All of which led to his arrest, trial, and execution on a cross. You cannot bring a fresh, new word about human flourishing and expect the old, established systems of oppression and power to stand by passively. Or, as Jesus put it, “You can't put new wine into old wineskins.”

Have you experienced this? You tried to do some new work, project, initiative—maybe it was in a school or a hospital or a neighborhood or a faith community—and you kept running into a brick wall of resistance. You saw a need and you did your best to meet it, only to encounter and be beaten down by those with a vested interest in things remaining exactly as they are.

I ask you about your own experiences of resistance to human flourishing because there's a moment when Jesus first tells his followers that he's going to be killed. They don't get it: they push back, they resist his prediction, because they assume that he's come to win, not lose. To prevail, not surrender. To conquer, not hang on a cross.

They say no because they've come to believe that he is in some way
God-among-them,
and what kind of God
fails
?

It's all upside down,

backward,

not how it was supposed to be.

And that, we learn, is the point.

 

On the cross, suffering the worst a person can suffer, Jesus asked, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It's a question,

but it's also a window into a whole new way of understanding God.

What we learn from Jesus, what we see in his pain, abandonment, and agony, is that God is there, too.

God is in the best,

and also in the worst.

God is in the presence,

and also in the absence.

God is in the power,

and also in the powerlessness.

God is there, too.

God is there in the tears, the questions, the despair, the blood, the lament—God is there, sitting with us in the ashes, when we shake our fists at the sky and declare that there is no God.

This is the unexpected subversion of the cross, turning so many of our ideas about God on their heads, insisting that God is so
for
us that God is willing to take on the worst the world can bring and suffer it, absorb it, and feel it, right down to the last breath.

We are free—

Free to make choices and exert our will and inflict all kinds of pain and abuse on ourselves, each other, and the environment.

Which is what we've done.

In Jesus we see the God who bears the full brunt of our freedom, entering into the human story, carrying our pain and sorrow and sin and despair and denials of God, and then,

as the story goes,

being resurrected three days later.

For the first Christians,

that was the compelling part,

the unexpected twist on Jesus's life,

the ending that's really a beginning.

They saw in Jesus's resurrection a new era in human consciousness, a new way to see the world being birthed, a way in which even death does not have the last word.

This is why we are moved by soul music, with its ache and tremor and naked vulnerability. This is why we cheer for underdogs, misfits, and black sheep.

This is why we love to hear stories about people who were rejected and forgotten and abandoned, only to rise up and do something grand and daring and magnificent.

Those songs and stories and underdogs speak to our need to be constantly reminded that it isn't over, the last word hasn't been spoken—a savior dying on a cross isn't the end, it's just the start.

And so when I talk about God, I'm talking about the Jesus who invites us to embrace our weakness and doubt and anger and whatever other pain and helplessness we're carrying around, offering it up in all of its mystery, strangeness, pain, and unresolved tension to God, trusting that in the same way that Jesus's offering of his body and blood brings us new life, this present pain and brokenness can also be turned into something new.

The peace we are offered is not a peace that is free from tragedy,

illness,

bankruptcy,

divorce,

depression, or

heartache.

It is peace rooted in the trust that the life Jesus gives us is deeper, wider, stronger, and more enduring than whatever our current circumstances are, because all we see is
not
all there is and the last word about us and our struggle has
not
yet been spoken.

There is great mystery in these realities,

the one in which we are strong when we are weak, the one in which we come to the end of ourselves, only to discover that God has been there the whole time, the God who is
for
us.

 

So, having talked about the God who is for us, a few thoughts to wrap this chapter up.

I'm continually shocked, even though I shouldn't be by now, by how many people I interact with who see the Christian faith as something

over and against

and even

in opposition to

human flourishing.

How did the message about the Jesus who comes among us to heal us and free us and bless us and teach us how to be more generous and forgiving and less judgmental and more compassionate ever turn into something other than a clear and compelling message about God's desire for us to flourish in God's good world?

It's complete madness how the Jesus story has been so thoroughly warped and distorted in our world.

Let's start there, then, with the obvious truth that God is
for
our flourishing and thriving and well-being, so much so that Jesus came among us to give us what we need, to forgive and rescue and empower us to experience new life as God always intended it.

Which leads me to a point about that word
experience
.

When Jesus talked about faith, he talked about fruit: results, change, transformation. You tasting, seeing, encountering, and experiencing the full life of God and never being the same again—that's transformation. You hearing
gospel
and having it change the way you see yourself. You gaining a living, breathing awareness of the love of God and then sharing that love with others.

I began this chapter by talking about the Christmas story, because when we talk about God we're talking about
embodied faith
—faith in which the divine takes on flesh and blood, lies in a manger, touches lepers, rubs mud on people's eyes, and offers people bread and wine. Jesus shows us that ultimate truth and mystery are located in bodies and matter and lips and arms and music and grass and water and eyes and relationships.

That's the movement,

the arc,

the story.

That's what Jesus was talking about.

There is knowledge
about
something, and then there is knowledge that comes from your
experiences
of that something. It's one thing to stand there in a lab coat with a clipboard, recording data about lips.

It's another thing to be kissed.

To elevate abstract doctrines and dogmas over living, breathing, embodied experiences of God's love and grace, then, is going the wrong direction. It's taking flesh and turning it back into words. The first Christians talked about the fullness of God residing in Jesus because the movement of that embodiment goes in a particular direction, that direction being from

idea to skin and bones,

from abstraction to concrete being,

from word to flesh.

Imagine that, after you've read a review of an album, someone asks you questions about that album—asks what the songs sounded like and what the lyrics were about. There's a chance you could answer all the questions about that album

without ever actually hearing the songs.

Jesus comes to help us hear the songs.

Which leads us to another truth about the God who is for us.

In one of his first sermons, Jesus taught his disciples to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them, because God

causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Jesus said this in an agricultural setting, one in which people were acutely aware of their need for sun and rain to grow their crops so they wouldn't starve. And everybody had their own personal list of who was good and who was evil, who was right and who was wrong, who was righteous and who was wicked.

(Kind of like now.)

Jesus does a shocking thing here, insisting that God shows no favoritism, that God has been blessing and sustaining and giving to
all
people, even those who are opposed to God, from the very beginning.

I point this out because at the heart of Jesus's message is the call to become the kind of person who is for everybody. Especially people who aren't Christians. This is why Jesus talked so much about loving our enemies. To love God is to love those whom God loves, and God blesses and loves and gives and is generous with everybody.

Once again, this is terribly obvious and straightforward. And yet thoroughly radical.

And desperately needed.

And then one more thought about the God who is for us. We're all, in one way or another, addicts, aren't we?

Some are addicted to the praise of others,

some to working all the time,

some to winning,

others to worrying,

some to perfection,

some to being right, strong, beautiful, thin . . .

perhaps you are enslaved to your own self-sufficiency,

or drugs

or alcohol

or sex

or money

or food.

I assume you're like me and you have hang-ups,

habits,

tendencies,

sins,

and regrets

that plague you.

Whatever it is,

we all need recovery.

I say this because I believe Jesus comes to set us free and forgive us, to liberate us from shame and guilt and judgment and all that holds us back. And the way that he does this liberating, empowering work in our lives is by announcing who we truly are and then reminding us of this over and over and over again.

It is a radical word about our true selves, a word so fresh and unsettling and surprising that it requires us to trust that it is actually true, that God is indeed
for
us.

CHAPTER 6

AHEAD

So now, after talking about the God who is
with
us and
for
us, I want to explore with you the God who I believe is
ahead
of us, pulling us forward.

Is this how you've heard God described?

Ahead?

Pulling us
forward
?

Is God progressive, with a better, more inspiring vision for our future than we could ever imagine,

or is God behind,

back there,

in the past,

endlessly trying to get us to return to how it used to be?

In many ways this is one of the central questions of our time about
everything:
Is the best future a return to an imagined pristine era when things were ideal, or is our best future actually in the future?

In the spring of 2008 I was in Seattle, speaking at an event with the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu and a number of other spiritual leaders. The purpose of the gathering was to talk about how we can teach compassion to younger generations so that the world will be more and more a peaceful, less violent place.

It was incredibly inspiring to be there. I clearly remember sitting there, taking it all in, looking around the room at all of the extraordinary people from all over the world from every religion—all of us there out of a shared desire for a better tomorrow. And then somebody leaned over and told me there were protesters out in front of the building.

Protesters?

Who could possibly think
this
was a bad idea?

What sort of people got up that morning and thought that the best possible use of their energies and talents and time was to make signs and then go downtown to demonstrate in opposition to a peacemaking event?

Who's
against
peace?

That's like being against puppies, or flowers, or Taylor Swift.

I asked who was protesting and was told it was a group of Christians.

(Sigh.)

I tell you about that event because God was there, at that event, as God has always been, present with all of humanity, leading and calling and inviting and drawing and pulling all of humanity into greater and greater love and joy and justice and equality and peace. It is possible, then, to be very religious and very committed, as I'm sure those protesters were, and yet be working against the new thing that God is doing.

On the sidewalk, in front of the building,

missing out on what God was up to inside.

Sometimes religions are in harmony with this pulling and drawing and calling and inviting, helping people move forward toward their best selves and a better future for all of us, and sometimes religions work against this pulling and drawing and calling and inviting, resisting the very real work of God's
ruach
in the world.

So where did I get this idea that God is ahead of us?

I got it from the Bible.

Which I've learned, over the years, is surprising for most people to hear. For many in the modern world, the Bible is one of the central reasons for the backwardness of religion.

God is ahead?

And I found that in the Bible?

Yes, and to talk about that, I'll first take you to several of those violent old testament passages, the kind that are generally used as evidence for God being behind. So stay with me, because I want to show you something else at work in those stories, something surprising and compelling that I hope changes the way you understand God.

 

We'll start with a phrase that I'm certain you've read or heard quoted somewhere along the way. It's found in the second book of the Bible, called Exodus, and it reads,

But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life,
        eye for eye, tooth for tooth . . .

You've heard this phrase before, right—
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
? We usually hear it quoted when someone's talking about revenge.

You get hit; you hit back.

They bomb us; we bomb them back.

They spread an ugly rumor about us; we ask, “Have you heard what they did last summer?”

It's become a euphemism of sorts, a way of justifying the right to get even and settle the score.

There is, however, another way to read this verse.

The chapter this verse is found in deals with issues surrounding personal injury and property damage. It includes instructions about what to do when someone is kidnapped, the importance of making a distinction between whether personal injury was intentional or not, what happens if there's a fistfight and one person doesn't kill the other but injures him enough that he's confined to bed, what the proper procedure is when someone digs a hole and someone else's animal falls into it. There are even specific instructions on what to do if a person's bull gores someone to death, the key question being: Did the bull have a habit of goring and had the owner been warned?

(And we all know how awkward
that
conversation can be: “Hey Phil? Yeah, Bob here. Am I catching you at a bad time? No? Great. Listen, this will take just a minute, and I don't mean any disrespect and I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but—folks have been talking, and I didn't know if you were aware of it or not, but your bull has been goring some of the neighbor kids lately, and I just thought you should know . . .”)

Dead animals and digging holes and pregnant women getting punched and slaves getting their teeth knocked out—it can all seem quite distant, chaotic, and foreign . . . unless, of course, you turn on the television any time of the day, where you'll find a number of shows in which cameras follow police as they—wait for it—break up fights and settle property disputes and calm down neighbors who are quarreling over damaged goods. And then there are those courtroom shows where people argue their case for why the other person owes them money for—wait for it again—property damage and personal injury! It all sounds quite familiar after all. But I'm getting ahead of myself—we're still dealing with
back then
. . .

In the midst of all these rules about fistfights and bull gorings is the line about “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” which meant that if someone killed your cow, he owed you
a
cow, not two cows, not a cow and a horse, and not a chicken. If you dug a hole and his donkey fell in it and was injured, you owed him proper compensation for the injury to that donkey—nothing more, nothing less.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was another way of saying that the punishment must fit the crime. It was a law given to
lessen
violence, and it demonstrates a profound insight into human nature and the character of revenge.

Revenge always escalates.

When someone wrongs us, we rarely (if ever) want to do the same thing back. Why? Because we want to do something
more
harmful. Likewise, when someone insults us, our instinct is to search for words that will be
more
insulting.

Revenge always escalates.

In the ancient world, this truth about human nature had serious consequences. Someone kills your cow—what's to stop you from killing two or three or four of his cows?

Someone injures your wife—what's to stop you from paying him back with something far more lethal?

“An eye for an eye” was a succinct way of creating a legal barrier to prevent the escalation of violence and injury.

When
we
read this passage in our present context, the wisdom of it is often lost on us because it's in among all that talk of slaves and bulls and people getting teeth knocked out and digging holes in the ground. At first glance it can easily appear to be another example of primitive, regressive culture. But at the time this regulation was given, it was a significant advance in the creation of a less volatile, more civil society.

(I assume some of you are thinking at this point: “Hey wait, we in the modern world aren't that much farther ahead; we're just violent and barbaric in
other
ways.” Excellent point. We'll get to that in a moment. And others of you may be thinking, “Actually, ‘eye for eye' is reflected in the Latin concept of
lex
talionis,
which is the basis of our modern legal system. It's not the least bit dated.” Again, good point. You're tracking with me. Well done.)

What sounds like a primitive, barbaric, violent phrase was actually, for its time and place, a step forward.

What we see is God meeting real people in a real place at a real time in history and drawing them forward, calling them to greater and greater
shalom,
the Hebrew word for peace and wholeness and well-being.

Did they still have a long way to go?

Of course.

But in Exodus we see a step forward.

Now let's fast-forward hundreds of years to the time of Jesus, because by his day something destructive had happened to the way this command was understood and interpreted. People would have some violence or injustice done to them, and they would justify their desire for revenge by quoting, you guessed it, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In other words: “I'm just doing to them what they did to me!” (Sound familiar?)

The same verse that was intended to create a fair and just legal system,
lessening
violence and revenge, was by Jesus's day being used to
justify
violence and revenge.

Which leads us to a crucial insight: these were very religious people, deeply committed to the scriptures, who were quoting the scriptures in such a way that those people were actually working against God's purposes in the world.

Imagine that—religious people quoting the Bible to defend actions that were the exact opposite of the intent and purpose of those very same scriptures!

It's possible, then, to be quoting the Bible out of the conviction that you're defending God's way when in fact you're in that exact moment working against how God wants to continue drawing and pulling and calling humanity forward.

And then, to put a finer point on it, it's possible to take something that was a step forward at one point and still be clinging to it later on in the story, to the point where it becomes a step
backward
.

With that said, let's move from the “eye for eye” passage to another passage, this one from the book of Deuteronomy. I'll let you read it through before we go any further:

When you go to war against your enemies and the L
ORD
your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails, and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.

Where do we even start? Brutal, isn't it?

What a primitive, barbaric, sexist, demeaning, and degrading passage. How could anyone with an ounce of respect for women find this passage anything but offensive, repulsive, and a giant step backward?

Good point.

Let's break it down a bit.

This is a passage about the spoils of war, a common occurrence in the ancient Near East, where people were constantly going into battle, which meant people were constantly winning, which meant people were also losing, which meant being killed. It was customary that whoever won a battle took whatever had belonged to their (now-dead) adversaries for themselves. Animals, jewelry, tents, food, slaves, and of course wives. According to the conventional wisdom of the day, you were free to do whatever you wanted with the spoils of war because those spoils were all seen as your property. And property was seen as
less
than human, to be used or sold or discarded or abused as you saw fit.

That was how things were done.

It's into
that
world that this passage comes, which lists rules for the spoils of war.

First, taking the woman you found attractive into your home meant you were providing for her. She would have a roof, protection, food, clothes, whatever else she needed.

Second, having her shave her head and trim her nails and change her clothes was to allow her to take on the marks of mourning. She had suffered a horrific loss, and so she was to be given time to properly grieve. Grief is a human emotion, and possessions don't have emotions; spoils of war don't have feelings. To give her time to grieve was to treat her as a
person,
not as a
possession
.

Third, to make her your wife meant she was now a fully functioning member of the household, with responsibilities and rights and position.

And then fourth, when a man in that day was not pleased with a woman, he was free to send her away, into a culture in which she had no rights, no standing, and no form of protection against exploitation. As a result, women who had been sent away often had no option but prostitution. This passage forbids sending a rejected woman away without rights and honor and dignity—a significant deviation from the cultural norms regarding spoils of war, because at the center of it was the simple affirmation that women are people, not possessions.

An obvious truth to us, but a revolutionary one at the time—one that went against conventional wisdom regarding the spoils of war, one that significantly improved the treatment of women.

What is a shocking and offensive cultural practice to us was a groundbreaking advancement at that time.

We look back on this passage and it's clearly a number of steps
backward
for us, but for the original audience, at that time, it was a step
forward
.