Who is Your God?

I have found on my short journey through life that, while I believe there is properly only one true God, there are many versions of him (see, I said him...) in people's individual understandings. By typing that sentence, I have already disclosed that I refer to God as a male, though of course there is no gender associated with the supreme one. I'll go further and admit that the idea of God being a Father is also part of my picture of God, but this is not so helpful for other people.

My purpose in raising this issue here is to simply "shake up the dust", if you will. I want to issue a challenging question to all who may read this. The question is this:

Who is Your God?

Now, you may be wondering why I would ask something so basic and ambiguous to Christians (as that is my audience). My purpose is to spur you on to press in a little and find out if the picture of God that you have in mind actually looks like Christ; more poignantly, does the image of God in your mind look like Jesus of Nazareth, being tortured by Romans for no obvious reason? If not, I hope that you will consider the possibility that you may have a less-than-accurate picture of who God is and, thus, what he is like.

Why is this important?

  I feel I should explain why I think that it is important to evaluate and, periodically in life, re-evaluate our picture of God. For those that believe in God (any God really), it is found that the picture that they have of God will always dictate their actions to one degree or another. The most obvious manifestations of this effect is in worship. So, for example, if my picture of God is the "buddy God" which is often resultant of over-emphasizing the Abrahamic claim to be a "friend of God", then one might be less inclined to view our relationship to God with reverence and humility; after all, if God is my pal, then I can drop the formalities.

Another example might be the EMS or Butler God. This is when people only turn to the divine when things go wrong in their lives. A loved one is sick, the bills aren't getting paid, a new boat sounds nice...then and only then do they call upon God. The Bible is full of examples of Israel doing this; they would start to live like every other people group around them but when things went wrong, they would call upon God for help. The big issue here is that it becomes an abusive relationship where we want all of the benefits of the relationship without any of the sacrifice.

The final lacking picture of God that I want to point out is what some who conducted a study on youth between 2003 and 2005 termed "Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism". If we break this term down we see a picture of God that I'm afraid we find all-too familiar. This picture of God is moralistic in the sense that all that we derive from this picture is concerned with our morals; specifically if we're behaving in such a way that it deems appropriate. It is therapeutic in the sense that it makes us feel good and is always concerned that we live comfortable lives and is thus there to get us out of tough spots and comfort us. Finally, it is Deistic in the sense that it assumes that God is more or less uninvolved unless he necessarily must be. I don't have to go on much further to point out that this is not the passionate, paradigm-breaking, challenging and personable God that Jesus shows us by calling us to the cross of Christianity. 

Concluding Thoughts

In all fairness, there is usually some room for each of the ideas we have about God in small amounts; that is, it's ok to seek help from God, he does love us; it is ok to see him as our friend to the extent that we can confide in him and discover companionship in that relationship. Also, it is true that God does care about our righteousness and wants good things for us. Where things go wrong is when we try and take any one facet of God and build our whole image of him on that small revelation which leads us to a picture that looks different than Christ on Calvary.

 

We must always keep the centrality of Jesus' sacrifice for us in our hearts. To hold another picture leads us to a misconstrued relationship which will have rippling effects in our lives and the lives of those that follow us. So, spend some time reflecting on how you understand God; if it is anything other than Jesus, I encourage you to press yourself to discover why and perhaps search out clarity in this matter. Your picture of God will dictate your relationships, your worship and your life so we must ensure that it is a picture of as much clarity as possible. 

Peace,

C.M.

"When Christians realize that we have an intrinsically Jesus-looking God, what follows next is a deep-seated longing for an intrinsically Jesus-looking Church. This alone has the power to yield and intrinsically Jesus-looking world and that can only be a good thing."

Love Your God: with Your Mind

Part 3 is here! I encourage you to go back and read parts 1 & 2 about loving God with your heart and soul. I have been systematically walking through the passage in Mark in which Jesus says that "the most important commandment is...you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength (Mark 12:29-30, NLT)." So we find ourselves ready to evaluate how to love God with your mind; let's begin.

The first thing we ought to do is define terms:

What is the mind?

The mind is a person's intellect, capacities to reason and memory. As I said in the previous post, I believe that the mind is a facet of the soul and thus not necessarily located in the brain (I won't get into it, but I will say that all that science can say definitively is that if there is a connection between the soul and the body, it is likely in the brain/nervous system). In this post I would like to expand on this idea and add that I think the mind is the guide to the soul; that is, it is the part that directs the soul where it would go and what it would evolve into. This is why we're told through Scripture that it is by the reforming of our mind that we are transformed into Christ's likeness. If you renew your mind -- the conductor of your "soul train" -- you necessarily impact the rest of the person.

So how do we love God with this mind?

I think, while there are many specific ways which we can love God with our mind, there are also general categories. My purpose here is to draw out these broad categories.

First, our mind can be made to love God by expanding it. Learning is one of the most primary ways that we honor God. Any time creation is as it is intended to be, God is honored; by learning, the mind is most fundamentally acting as it should according to it's purpose. In this way, we utilize our mind in humble submission (and thus love) to God's will and intention for that piece of our being. Again, there are specific ways that we can do this and most people learn by different means. So, whether you are a visual, auditory, a reading or a doing learner, you can love God by pushing the margins of your knowledge to new limits. God want's you to; he made you to; he delights in the wise and learned; he blesses seekers of truth.

A second general way that we can love God with our mind is to "meditate on the things of God". We covered this in subtlety in the last post. In lay-terms, think of things that are of God; things that are good, true, honorable, etc. We also do this by thinking about the teachings of Christ, the traditions of the church and things revealed to us by the Spirit. For example, once in a time of transition in my life, I felt the Spirit clearly say to me "eyes forward, hands on the plow". A reference from Scripture recalled and re-worded for my benefit, this message carried me. I spent time thinking about it; if I wanted to be fit for the work of the Kingdom, I needed to be forward looking and have my hands firmly gripping the tasks at hand. It is often true that you become like that which you think about.

A third way that we can love God with our mind is to do what it naturally does: drive the soul. Specifically, we ought to use our powers of intellect and reasoning to form a worldview that reflects the worldview of Christ. This means that we need to take his sermon on the mount seriously; it means that we need to view the world in terms of spiritual warfare; it means that, despite modernity, we ought to realize that the world as we  know it and the governments we submit to are not good enough. In light of this Christ-like worldview, we ought to be driven to action. Our mind drives not only the soul but also the body in this way.

There are probably things that lay outside of these categories, but I'm fairly sure that most uses of the mind and most ways of loving God with it fall into one of these three broad and often inter-related categories.

Things to keep in mind:

While there are many things to note when discussing loving God with our mind, I think that one of the most important is that we ought not fear reason and intellect. There is a subculture within Christianity that would say that unquestioning obedience is what God seeks and that philosophy, doubt and reasoning ought to be held as suspect. This, however, is not truth; Jesus consistently pushes his followers and challengers to think well. I am of the belief that Jesus was the greatest philosopher in the most academic sense of the word. Here is a fantastic book that builds a solid case for the life of the mind in a Christian's walk, here is a book that beautifully demonstrates that Jesus was indeed a philosopher and here is a book that shows you that doubt is not the opposite of faith.

I strongly encourage you to look up those books and even read them. Also, think about what has been said here; learn, think about the things of God and form your worldview to match Jesus'. Join me next time to talk about loving God with our strength. Also, please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section: how else can you love God with your mind? Let us reason together!

peace,
C.M.