#God – Breaking the Chains that Bind

Orthodoxy: God is the Only Object

Published by mhelbert on February 26, 2024

There’s one last thing that I want to muse about when it comes to orthodoxy. After this we’ll all take a break from that and pick on something else.
In the last post I talked about what my Correct Belief is not in: The Bible. Our Sacred Text was never meant to take the place of God. Neither are guns or country. In the first century, Jewish leaders put their faith in the Temple and the rites that took place there. Well, they found out how secure that was in 70 A.D. when Rome destroyed the Temple and put that entire system to the sword.
Stuff cannot be our God.
Here’s where I think that Correct Belief finds its true object.
God.
Period, end of story.
Perhaps not like you may think. I don’t think that belief IN God is adequate. Anyone can believe that God exists. James wrote in his epistle that the people believed “that God is one. Even the demons believe…and shudder.” Actually, when someone tells me that they believe in God I just shake my head. Those words mean nothing. I believe in gravity, also. What’s important is what I do with that belief.
That brings to what I think IS the Correct Belief. What it’s true subject has to be if we want to be faithful stewards of God’s love.
What we believe ABOUT God is paramount.
Who is God? What is God like? Show my God’s character and heart. These are the questions that we should be seeking answers to. Last year in our St. Barnabas Bible Study we spent several months on this question. What started out looking at how God’s wrath in the Bible can be an accurate description of God. Short answer, it can’t. The angry God that Jonathan Edwards preached about in an early American church in New England, doesn’t exist. From Edwards on the idea that God hates our sin so much that God can’t even look at us unless Jesus stands between God and humanity. That is a lie straight from the pit of hell. And, that lie has tied countless people into a bondage that suffocates the life out of their spirit.
Correct Belief, orthodoxy, starts at the Incarnation of God in Messiah Jesus. And, it ends with God sacrificing God’s self as Jesus the Son in order to defeat sin and death. The proof of this Correct Belief is the empty tomb. This is the Gospel. That the Kingdom of God is here, now. Jesus is the Messiah; the Christ; the Lord of all.
That is what we can know about God. That is the beginning of orthodoxy. That is where our Correct Belief finds its true object.

Friday Musing_7/17/2020

Published by mhelbert on July 17, 2020

I used to wonder why, if God desired love and justice in the world, why were we church folks only concerned about what happened after we left the world.
I know, it seems like a silly question. But, that’s exactly how many people who say that they follow Jesus think.
The rationale was that saving people from eternal, conscious torment was more important than providing for a good education or a leg up in the world.
If you ask many churchy people, they will say, “Well, duh! Of course eternity is of greater value than an education that will ultimately pass away!”
And, from within that religious bubble, that’s hard to argue with.

But, what if, as I’ve argued before, there is no Hell where people are toasted for eternity?

The African American Church can guide us here.
Born out of the true Hell of chattel slavery, they found a way to embrace the God of their captors. They found hope and love within the very same Bible that those who held the chains of their bondage.

For them, however, God was not a pious white man on a gleaming throne away off in some heaven. The streets of which mere mortals could never tread. The white god of those who imprisoned their bodies was only interested in keeping things the way that the white people always wanted them. That god sanctioned slavery. The white god cursed all who were NOT white. “The sin of Ham caused all of his seed to be dark and cursed,” this god exclaimed!

No. The God that the African Americans found was a God who walked with them in the fields as the chopped cotton or hoed the rows of tobacco. The God they knew promised to lead them from the bondage of slavery just as this same God rescued the Children of Israel all those many years ago.
They KNEW God as their friend, benefactor, and ultimately, their deliverer.

And, they have never forgotten that God.

Suffering was reality. Pain constant.
Yet, Jesus had come to this world to put an end to suffering.
His death and resurrection was the final act of redemption that rejected suffering as the way that life must be. As one writer put it,

“Through the Suffering Servant, God has spoken against evil and injustice. The empty cross and tomb are symbols of the victory.”
[Townes, Emilie M., A Trioubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil & Suffering, Emilie M. Townes, ed., Maryknoll, NY, 1993, p.84.]

With this hope in their hearts, God was the Agent of Transformation where justice and hope were not some pie in the sky dream. These things became the real, tangible call for all who would put their hand to the plow of Faith.

Yet, the White church continued to hold up their Bibles and cry, “Foul! We must obey what the Word of God says! Slaves, obey your masters!”

How far from the mark of God’s Glory were they!!!
The White church abdicated its responsibility to be light and salt in the world in order to fill their barns with the bounty of the harvest.
And, like in that story Jesus told, God said,

“You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?”
[New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Lk 12:20). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.]

Emilie Townes wrote

“Obedience that is blind to the world and only follows directions has divested itself of all responsibility for what it is commanded to do.”
[Townes, Emilie M., A Trioubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil & Suffering, Emilie M. Townes, ed., Maryknoll, NY, 1993, p.87.]

That blind obedience to ancient texts taken out of context and applied with an iron and unbending arm is what has happened, and continues to happen, in so, so many white churches.

It is past time to awaken the Church. Until we heed God’s call to provide justice to the poor, the widow, the foreigner, and all marginalized people we have no right to say that we are fully and truly disciples of Jesus.

We just can’t.

The Image of God

Published by mhelbert on December 28, 2018

Image from http://www.messagetoeagle.com/astronomers-probe-the-cosmic-web-of-the-universe/

God, Almighty Creator, seated in the Heavenlies on Your Throne! All Powerful, Ever Present, All Knowing!
This is the image that most Christian sects share somewhere in their core beliefs. These are images that help followers grasp the enormity of God. For, as they also teach, God is Infinite, Eternal, Alpha and Omega, First and Last. These words describe how impossible it really is us to wrap our finite, human brains around any concept of the Divine.
In fact, it is so impossible that the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, states clearly that we humans are not to even attempt to imagine God in any physical form. It seems that God was pretty serious about that.
Of course, we didn’t pay much attention to that.
Yesterday, my wife and I spent a couple of hours at the Cleveland Museum of Art. (What a great resource! But, that’s another story.) One thing that was abundantly clear was that artists throughout history have tried to imagine the image of God! Canvas and paint; carved wood, alabaster, and other stone; precious metals and gems. We saw images of God the Father looking down from the sky. There was one where the Holy Spirit was painted as a giant dove whose wings appeared to be proceeding from the mouths of Father and Son. I even saw one rendering of the Holy Spirit that looked more like an over-fed pigeon from Central Park in New York City made of silver. These were offered by various artists to render God, to usher the Divine into the non-Divine. And, no one seems to mind. There were wars fought over images and icons. “It’s ok to make these images. Just so long as we don’t “worship” them.
I considered this today in the quiet of my office, candles burning casting a gentle, living light.
What image might I use to describe God? How might the divine be understood by mere flesh and blood?
As I sat silently in God’s presence I saw an image.
I saw what many scientists think the Universe looks like. It reveals a vast network of light. Clusters of stars and nebulae connected to each other by “threads” made of the same stuff. In between there is Dark Matter and Dark Energy, (not all is light). Nebulae, dust, stars, comets, Black Holes, debris of every king, light, dark … All of it. Every creature, plant, and rock. The very particles of light and every wave of energy.
GOD.
I AM.
I AM BECOMING.
Near us.
Within us.
Yet…
Not us.
Entirely, “Other.”
This is what God ‘looks’ like!
Yet, even this is not quite right. Is it?
We tend to see God by way of negation.
God is not there.God is not present with “Them.”
God is not, cannot be, this or that.
I call bullshit on that.
God is not a negation; a non-presence. God is a lively, vital Presence! God is a resounding YES! It may be said that God penetrates into the very essence of the Universe and reaches beyond both time and space.
That, my friends, is entirely Inclusive.
Make no mistake, I think that there is definitely a difference between God and Not God; Creator and created; Divine and Non-Divine. Yet, they cannot be separated.
I have no idea how any of this works. So, please don’t ask. I’m not God; not Divine. I’m just a clump of dust that somehow contains the essence of the Divine. A spark of that live-giving energy that resides within molded clay.
May I be a clay lamp rather than a clay pot.

Tag: #God

Orthodoxy: God is the Only Object

Friday Musing_7/17/2020

The Image of God