Introspection: Who Are You?

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Who Are You?

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?

Tell Me if you know.

Who set its measurements? Surely you know.

Who stretched a measuring tape on it?

On what were its footings sunk;

who laid its cornerstone,

while the morning stars sang in unison

and all the divine beings shouted?

Job 38:4-7 (CEB)

What do I know of You

Who spoke me into motion?

Where have I even stood

But the shore along Your ocean?

Are You fire? Are You fury?

Are You sacred? Are You beautiful?

What do I know?

What do I know of Holy?

From "What Do I Know of Holy" by Addison Road

Last month, I met my friend George for coffee.  At that time, he was the pastor of one of my home church's sister congregations.  He had been appointed to another church, so I wanted to pick his brain before he relocated.  George is also an author¹ who once worked for a Christian publisher, and I wanted to learn more about Christian publishing.  He gave me some helpful information about the industry.  He also encouraged me to keep writing, particularly without an audience in mind.  In other words, he encouraged me to start journaling.  Since he and my own pastor, Laura, had both suggested I do this, I finally decided to give it a shot.

I wanted a subject for my journaling, so I started turning to the daily lectionary readings that accompany the weekly readings used by many churches on Sunday mornings.²  There are three passages listed for each day, but I make it a point to read only one of them.  I would rather mine a single passage for meaning than run the risk of reading numerous passages shallowly.  On an ideal day, I will read the day's passage before leaving for work in the morning, ponder the passage throughout the day, and write something about the passage sometime during the evening.  Of course, I also write about the day's events and other thoughts from the day.  I have even written some things I didn't particularly want to put into writing.

What I like about the daily lectionary is the fact that it limits my choice of Scripture passages to read; otherwise, I might constantly gravitate to my favorite passages, like the Parable of the Prodigal Son or the discussions about the most important commandments.

According to St. James, Scripture is like a mirror.³  Right off the bat, one thing that my practice of daily Scripture reading has shown me about myself is the fact that I carry around a lot of spiritual baggage.  There are a lot of Scripture passages that don't exactly warm my heart but rather give me heartburn.  Sometimes, when I sit down to write about the passage I read earlier in the day, I find myself writing what I dislike about it.

Years ago, I left behind a form of Christianity I now consider toxic, but I find that I still have not yet fully recovered from it.  I still suffer from a very broken perception of God.  Sometimes I wonder if God truly loves all of humanity as Jesus said or if God is just itching to chuck some of us into the fires of hell as certain megachurch pastors like to say.

The reason I have an initial allergic reaction to some of the passages I read is the fact that I initially read the passage through the broken lens of a distorted view of God.  I find that if I continue to study and ponder a passage I initially find troubling, I am able to find love and hope in it.  Still, I wonder if I am reading the Bible correctly or if I am simply reading what I want the Bible to say.

Of course, my distorted image of God creeps into my life at other times.  Last month, after a disgracefully bad game of bowling, I commented to my mom, "Life likes to teach me humility.  I think life should leave me alone and move on to somebody else for a while."  Of course, I wasn't saying what I actually meant.  By "life," I really meant "God," and by "teach me humility," I really meant "viciously and spitefully put me in my place."  Of course, when I come to my senses I remember that God isn't vicious or spiteful and that I tend to attribute to God the qualities of other authority figures.

I delivered my most recent sermon, "A God-Sized Gospel," at two churches, my own and another sister church, and I did so with a great deal of fear and trembling.  In my sermon, I critique a lot of things I had been taught about God, about Christ, and about Salvation, and I feared that I might incur the wrath of people who might hold the very beliefs I criticized.  Looking back, I think that I might have also felt a little guilty that, though I wanted to offer people a message of hope, I wrote what I wrote in my sermon because I had a theological axe to grind.⁴

I wonder if I focus on God's love when I write because I am still trying to convince myself of God's love.

Three years ago, it came to light that some segments of Christianity are extremely protective of the idea that hell is a literal place of unending conscious torment as punishment for sinners.  As I started reading a book by one such thinker, I began to think that, if God would indeed impose such an existence on a person, then maybe we cannot say things like, "For God so loved the world," without crossing our fingers behind our backs.  I began to wonder if maybe God wasn't loving at all, and I came closer to a nervous breakdown than I had ever come in my life.  I converted from Christianity to nihilism.  Trent Reznor's devastating prayer, "I'm all alone in a world You must despise," suddenly rang true to me.⁵

My conversion to nihilism didn't last very long: I snapped out of it after a few days.  I really didn't have too much of a choice if I was going to be a functional member of society.  With all the conflicting images of God out there, I became a lot less certain about God, but, for the sake of my own sanity, I decided that there are some lines of thought within Christianity that I need to avoid like the plague.  I became even more particular about the books I read and the sermon podcasts I follow.

"I pray God to rid me of God."
~ Meister Eckhart

I feel like my beliefs have changed since that time.  Maybe the substance of my beliefs hasn't really changed, but something about my beliefs has changed, perhaps the way I believe them.  In the past month, journaling has given me the chance to locate myself theologically.

I have not become atheist or agnostic, but I have definitely become more apophatic.  In other words, I believe in God, but, instead of trying to define God, I think it best to let God be mysterious.  I spend a lot of time in coffee shops, and, living in the Bible Belt, I often have the opportunity to listen in on conversations about spiritual matters.  I hear people speak with confidence about what God is like and what God wants them to do.  By contrast, when I speak about God, I often use words like maybe or perhaps.

As someone who still identifies himself as a Christian, there are certain things I have chosen to believe about God.  I have chosen to believe that God is somehow revealed in Jesus Christ.  St. Paul calls Jesus "the image of the invisible God."⁶  Brian Zahnd, one of my favorite preachers, likes to say, "God is like Jesus.  God has always been like Jesus.  There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.  We have not always known what God is like - but now we do."⁷  The idea that God can be seen through Jesus, a humble person of love, peace, justice, and mercy, is a great comfort to me.

Even among Christians, there is a lot of disagreement about what God and Jesus are like.  That said, I have also chosen to believe what St. John wrote, that "God is love."⁸  Furthermore, I believe that one should not have to twist the meaning of the word love to make this statement.  One should not have to "balance" God's love with things that are, quite frankly, incompatible with love.  Even the concept of God's judgement against sin should be viewed through the lens of God's love.

The French philosopher Voltaire once mused, "If God has made us in His image, we have returned Him the favor."  I have heard it said more than once that, though we project our own personalities onto God, we paradoxically become more and more like the God we worship.  For example, if a person projects his anger onto God and then devotes his life to worshiping an angry God, he will become more and more angry.  Likewise, a fearful person who makes God the object of her fear will become all the more fearful.⁹  I figure that, conversely, if I choose to believe that God is infinitely more loving than I ever will be and if I worship this loving God, then maybe I'll become more and more loving.

In the 1993 film Rudy, a priest says, "In 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard incontrovertible facts: there is a God, and I'm not Him."  There is only so much we can truly know about God, but what we believe about God matters, because it directly affects who we become as human beings.  If we are truly created in God's image, as the Bible says, then our image of God is extremely important.  I have heard a lot of ideas about God over the years - some that are a great comfort to me and others that make my blood run cold.  There are some ideas I simply cannot believe, and there are others I have to believe.  The truth is that all of these things, in some way, keep me chasing after a God I'll never truly catch.

"Who are you, O God, and who am I?"
~ St. Francis of Assisi

Notes:

1. My friend George is the author of the book A World Worth Saving: Lenten Spiritual Practices for Action.  (2013, Upper Room Books.)
2. The daily lectionary can be found in .pdf format here.
3. James 1:23-24
4. See my sermon "A God-Sized Gospel."
5. From the song "Terrible Lie" by Nine Inch Nails.
6. Colossians 1:15 (NRSV)
7. Brian Zahnd.  "God Is Like Jesus."  BrianZahnd.com, 08/11/2011.
8. 1 John 4:8
9. Rob Bell writes about this concept in chapter 7 of his book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  (2011, HarperOne.)  Greg Boyd has also spoken of this concept in his sermons.  See the sermon "Escaping the Twilight Zone God."

The photograph of the Pleiades was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004.