The Cosmic Conflict over God's
Character
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the December 21, 2013
Sabbath School Lesson
“Dear friends, let us love one
another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows
God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. Whoever
claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar… For whoever does
not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom
they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must
also love their brother and sister.” 1 John 4:7-8, 20-21, NIV
Have you
ever wondered what people are doing on other planets throughout the universe?
Perhaps you have. However, most likely, like many other people, you spend your
day taking care of the necessities of life. You work. You raise your children.
You care for your home. In fact, you may be so busy that you have little time
to even consider things like life throughout the cosmos. Paying attention to
everything here may be challenge enough. Yet there is a school of theological
thought that believes this is a major occupation for those living on those
other worlds.
They teach
that Earth is like a theatre, or perhaps a television transmitter broadcasting
what is going on here on Earth to the rest of the universe. How reminiscent
this is of the days when Galileo challenged the prevailing theology of his time
that the Earth was the physical center of space. We laugh at the arrogance and
simple-mindedness of those people of long ago who believed that they held such
an important place in the center of everything. Yet, we continue to believe,
like a spoiled child, that we are at the center of everyone’s attention,
instead of perhaps being a backwater planet, relegated insignificantly to the
edge of our own spiral galaxy, out on the fringes as it were.
Perhaps if
we could avoid the human tendency toward pride, we could like Arthur Dent in
the novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” whose planet was demolished
for a galactic expressway,[i]
come to a more accurate understanding of our place in the universe. Like King
David, we might find ourselves asking of God, “What is mankind that you are
mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”[ii]
For truly once we discover how insignificant and finite we are in this infinite
expanse of stars, we may not be able to fathom the mystery of why we at first
thought ourselves so wonderfully superior. We as a people who wish to stand and
proclaim our worthiness to the universe appear to presumptuously feel that we
alone can vindicate God before the entire alien host.
Even if we
feel this is the correct state of things, when we consider what they have been
viewing through our presentation, we see that our portrayal of God’s character
is somewhat schizophrenic. Like Janus, the two-headed god, we give God two
heads, one vicious and cruel and the other loving and compassionate. James, in
his Epistle, pointed out how inconsistent this is. “With the tongue we praise
our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in
God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and
sisters, this should not be.”[iii]
When we look
at the church, which, by definition, should probably be the most accurate
representation of how we see God’s character, we see some, perhaps far too few,
within the church that indeed are compassionate and caring. However, we also
see those who are anything but. Those who are not tend to constantly be on the
look-out for those who deviate from understood orthodoxy, they mercilessly
judge, recoil from, and if possible cast out those who offend their delicate
sensibilities. They claim justification in doing this by asserting they are
simply protecting the flock. In reality, they are perhaps more interested in
preserving a culture and a life-style they have grown accustomed to and are
very comfortable with. Perhaps they think that because they like their
segregated cultural ghetto, God must like it, too. Therefore, they must do all
they can to preserve it, in His name of course.
Lest some
think this is all speculation. A few years ago, John,* a youth leader in a
long-established, inner-city church planned a camping trip to provide the young
people an opportunity to get out of the concrete jungle and enjoy God’s
beautiful natural creation. When he decided that the trip should be opened up
to non-church children from the community as a way to speak God’s love into
their lives, all the church members with children in his group promptly
withdrew their children from the planned campout. The reason they gave was that
they did not want their children being contaminated by influences from
non-Christians.
While
stating that they believe that God is love, the message they delivered loud and
clear to the non-Christians was, “You are losers who do not belong in our
group.” Thankfully, the leader did not relay this attitude to the children who
went on the camp out. He later remarked to me that he heard far less foul
language and greater respect and politeness from the non-Christians than he had
ever experienced on previous outings with the regular church youth. Apparently
the parents even had their children send thank you notes and make appreciative
phone calls to thank him after the trip. However, the parents of the church
children who had not gone on the trip only expressed frustration that the youth
leader had not recognized their “entitlement” to have a proper “Christian”
outing.
While this
is a sad little episode, it is illustrative of how all too often our
Christianity gets played out in the world.
Instead of seeing the sheep outside the fold as lost and needing our
help,[iv]
they are portrayed as the enemy and a threat to everything we hold dear as
Christians. Interacting with them will make us “unclean.” Bringing them into
our churches would destroy the idyllic sanctuary from the world that we have
carefully preserved. And if this is how we feel about the church, how much
worse would it be in our homes, and at our dinner tables? Why would we even
consider “eating with sinners?”[v]
What a
horrible picture this paints of the character of God. Instead of being the God
of all glory who came into our dark and gloomy world to live a life of poverty
and deprivation, a God who bled and died on a filthy, splintery cross to
demonstrate how far He was willing to go to compassionately succor his
despondent lambs, we portray Him as a mean-spirited Being, more concerned with
protecting the cleanliness of heaven than with the needs of Earth.
As if that
were not enough, we also claim that if we could only fully implement that
miss-characterization here on Earth, the whole world would be a heavenly place
to live. We forget that even among ourselves, as Christians, we cannot agree on
the details of that corrupted vision. Some view that vision as every man and
woman with a gun in their hand to do battle with evil as the answer, while
others feel that passing enough laws and constructing enough prisons will
produce the utopia we crave. But few see the answer as simply going to the
bleating, lost sheep and compassionately meeting their need as being in any way
effective. Never mind that the Bible reveals Jesus did exactly that for us.
Instead of
continuing the work of the Great Shepherd, we muddy the still water[vi]
for the other sheep and push them away when they are drawn to drink. It was
God, the Shepherd who brought them to drink. It is He who provides the water.
How dare we block their path? Instead of readily receiving the sheep that
freely come, we make long lists of exactions and if we are in the mood, we go
in search only of those who measure up to those lists. When we find them, we
train them to do the same as we have done and continue in them the process of
driving away those we find undesirable, never asking ourselves why those
unclean sheep might have shown up at our holy door in the first place.
How strange
it must look, if there is life on other planets, and they are indeed observing
all this. If God is truth,[vii]
truth is consistent. This schizoid portrayal of saying that God is love and
acting in such an unloving manner toward those He has called is not. It
portrays a God powerless to protect His people. Therefore, Christians must protect
themselves with guns, laws, and exclusive elitism. We must banish every attempt
that sin makes to enter our precincts, even if that means rejecting the lost
sinner as well. The paradox is that perhaps once we give in to this distorted
image of God’s character, we may find ourselves without the only protection
that really matters: the love of God.
*A pseudonym to protect privacy
