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Copyright 2015 Joe Anderson. All rights reserved.
I was raised by God-fearing, Bible-believing fundamentalists. Not surprisingly, I became one myself. I loved the simple black and white morality of it. The surety in an uncertain world. The knowledge that God watched my every footstep and would save me in my hour of need.
Then life intervened - death, divorce, disappointment - the normal traumas of existence. And I dove back into the Bible to make sense of it all. But this time with the eye of an adult - with a number of degrees behind my name and a commitment to what was written.
Something odd happens when you start to read what the Bible actually says. Not what other people say is says. Not what other people say it means. But what it actually says, in black and white. It triggers a lot of questions, like the following:
... what if God didn’t really create us to worship him … or to serve him either?
Now stop right there. Before we go another step, you need to know my motivations, otherwise you’ll start making them up. Here they are. I think Christians – especially the conservative side of the family – are hiding their candles under iron bushels. We squelch our best selves in a misguided effort to stay humble before the Lord, and obedient to His ways. I think that really irritates God. Well, maybe it’s just me that gets irritated. God is most likely just saddened by it. He has always had more patience than me. At any rate, that is my motivation. So let’s get back to the question:
... what if God didn’t really create us to worship him … or to serve him either?
That question struck me on my 10th or 11th trip through the book of Genesis. Go read it yourself. It’s one of the few books that include the ruminations of the Almighty, Himself, unfiltered by what others say He wants, or what He meant by what He said. It simply reports what He thought and did. Make sure you read both versions.
Yeh – both versions. Unless you’re a bit of a Bible scholar yourself, you might not know there are two versions of the creation story, right there in the same book. Ah, the things they neglect to tell us in Sunday School. And it gets really interesting when you read both versions of “the Fall” and the Tower of Babel.
Here’s the thing that struck me as I read the creation story in Genesis. God never said, “Look, I need some blind obedience and slavish worship. And frankly a little step and fetch-it boy would be nice too. Let me invent such a thing, and call it Man. And while I’m at it, let me invent a worshipful step and fetch-it thing for him too, and call it woman.”
He never said it. Honest. I checked. So if that’s not the reason for my existence, what is? Ah … that’s sneaky, isn’t it? I’ve actually asked a second simple little question. The same one that you, and every other human asks themselves at some point or another. Why am I here? It’s not a bad question to ask. Why am I here?
It turns out that I’m here because God was hungry for good company. God was lonely. And he was looking for some fellowship. That’s why I was created. You too. Check it out. Both versions. And while you do that, note something very interesting. Adam and Eve were not created as infants. They sprang into being as full grown adults. Now, why do you think that was? I’m thinking that was because God was impatient. He wanted the fellowship right away.
So what the heck is fellowship, anyway? I’m thinking it only exists with someone who can go toe to toe with you. Someone with the intellect and willingness to challenge the Almighty, Himself. Question His mind, contend with His will, warm His heart and love Him with our own. That’s the way He wanted it. He wanted the push back, the give and take. And that only exists between entities with some thread of equality, or at least, equivalence. He made us to be that way. Look it up.
He did NOT create us as an excuse to play the Redemption Game. You know, that destructive upstairs/downstairs game where we sin, God judges, we repent, God forgives, we’re clean as snow, so we sin again, God judges again, we repent again, God forgives yet again, we’re back on the heavenly guest list once again, on and on and on ... ad nauseum. It’s a tad bit difficult to see yourself as a highly competent, fully functioning, friend of gods and angels after a few rounds of that mind bending game.
Who invented that? That’s not what God intended. Go look it up. It’s right there in Genesis. Actually it’s NOT there. That’s the point. WE MADE IT UP. Why do you suppose we did that?
Another pause to check the author’s motivation. Look, I am painfully aware that we sin. I know about the ritual sacrifices, the paschal lamb., the whole works. I know about all the angry prophets; Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, etc. BUT (I say in a louder voice), I also know that God says over and over, by word and deed, that He doesn’t really care about the redemption game nearly as much as He does about whether our intentions are good or evil. If they’re good, everything else falls into place; so get on with the business of leading your lives. This is the crucial point of the book. Right here. If you can move beyond the Redemption Game, then this book will make sense. If not, I just don’t see how reading it would be anything other than an exercise in frustration for you, like having a heated argument with someone whose language you don’t understand.
Here’s my suggestion. Go back and read what God actually says, and what he actually does; from the first verse of Chapter 1 to right around the story of Jacob’s ladder. He blessed a whole lot of people, right after they’d broken rules, laws, protocols or traditions which anyone else would count as a sin. Ponder that for a while and ask yourself “why?” I think you’ll find that it’s something much bigger than the redemption game.
Here’s another shocker - God is interested in us even when we don’t sin. God doesn’t walk away if we’re not busy sinning. Instead, I think He hangs around waiting for us to offer Him something of value. So, if you’re not going to talk to God about sin (yours, or someone else’s) what is there to talk about? Well, He might have an interest in that nifty little marketing plan you put together for those new widgets on aisle 6. Or He might like your opinion on artichokes. Or you could show Him your painting of moonlight on a mountain lake, and He could actually show you the dawn. It turns out that God is interested in a wide range of topics (like --- well, all of them). And sin is a whole lot less important to Him than it is to us. In fact, there’s good reason to believe that after an eternity of listening, he’s pretty bored with it. Maybe you should find a new topic of conversation.
In fact, he’s most interested in us when we’re doing something that is interesting to Him. Now, this is where it gets intriguing. What do you think God’s interested in? It’s probably the thing He’s best at. So, what do you think God’s best at? Undisputed champ of the entire universe at it? Come on, you know. That’s right. Creation. No one else could figure out how to do it. He made the prototype. The rest of us are just doing variations on His theme. And since He made us in His image, we know He’s just like everybody else. So, if you want to get His undivided attention, what do you do? You talk about something He’s interested in. Better still, get thoroughly involved in His favorite activity.
That’s why you touch the hand of God every time you get creative. You’re speaking His language, playing his game. His eye is on you. You are walking in His pathway. You could help Him with a project of His, or vice versa. If it were any more obvious it would bite you on the nose. We touch the hand of God, or maybe He touches ours. Either way, it is the crowning moment of the fellowship God had in mind when He first thought up the idea of making Man.
But, every creative act also threatens our relationship with God. First because every creative act is in some measure an imitation of the original one. Every time we create something, we imitate God. Every time we imitate God we are, in essence, playing God. That’s why the creative act gives us a little wave of divine joy. It’s also why creativity scares some of us. We fear that being creative is sacrilege. I watched this, first hand, in my own mother. She spent her entire adult life trying to deny her own creativity, yet she was compelled to pursue it despite her own terror of it. Talk about agony. Did you ever notice yourself pulling back right on the brink of giving vent to a great idea? Ma may not have been the only person squelching herself. Huh?
Second – every creative thought and act causes change, and people of faith have real trouble with that. I don’t mean on the small stuff. Christians are actually pretty good about being creative on the small stuff. If the Fortune 500 could harness the creativity that goes into banquet decorations, vacation Bible School curriculums, youth group outings and the like – there would be no recessions. That level of creativity comes easy for us, because we pretty much know the changes that will occur in response to them.
But all that creativity comes to a screeching halt when we consider the big stuff, like the question that led off this book, or the question of how we meet the sexual and relational needs of the widows and widowers in our church pews. Their humanity didn’t die. Just their mate. We tend to kill their humanity by encouraging them to forget about what makes life worth living. When it comes to getting creative in theology or ministry, we balk.
Why do you suppose that is? Why do we have so much trouble getting off our God-fearing bottoms and getting in the game on the big stuff? That’s actually the 4th or 5th simple little question. Isn’t it? We don’t know where the solutions to those issues will lead us and we’re afraid of losing the ultimate truths to which we cling, and on which we build the rest of our lives. That’s an enormous obstacle.
So more often than not, we find ourselves fighting against the very thing that puts us most in the presence of God – change. We need to get a handle on that dilemma, or the world will leave us in the dust – as a church, and as individuals. We can start with a few assumptions.
- God is not fragile. We need to lighten up and stop trying to protect Him.
- Nothing happens without an idea. Not creativity. Not change. Nothing.
- Groups don’t have ideas – individuals do.
- The key is giving the individual (yourself) permission to have a new one.
I would give you one word of warning here. Taking that first step will put you on the slippery slope, because each change accelerates the pace of other changes (they travel in clusters). It’ll be like going downhill with your hair on fire. Your only choice is to go faster. But there is one big payoff on this trip ---
--- you will be holding the hand of God.
So let's find out what it looks like – this creativity and change.