It’s finally Spring again. Yesterday was cold. We had 2 nights of hard freeze. Today the rumor mill of the weather prognostication world says it’s going to get up near 70. Gotta love life next to the Great Swamp Erie!
Part of my job here is to try and illuminate where and why the Church has turned left when they shoulda turned right. I’m not talking politics. I’m simply stating that a wrong turn was made that affected the direction that the Church pursued in her identity and her work. After all, this blog thingy is called the “Layperson Who Ate the Church” for a reason. It’s not because I like crunchy things.
It is because our Western culture was built on many cultural foundations. The Western Church is one of those. I think that part of the reason that we find ourselves in chaotic times in general, our current time in particular, is because the Church has allowed itself to become skewed and unreliable. I can trace the cracks all the way back to the 12 disciples. However, I believe that the greatest damage was done by the way in which the early Church leaders interpreted a wholly Jewish Messiah by means of Greek philosophy. In particular Plato and later, Aristotle. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m against studying the ancients in Greece. Their influence is felt in many positive ways yet today. With God and the Church, though, it’s more like trying to use Rubic’s Cube rather than the Rosetta Stone for the key to ancient languages. Not the same thing.
I wish that I had the time and space to develop this idea. But this is only a blog not an academic project. There are a couple of things that I can write about that may provide the gist of what I think.
Maybe.
Plato’s influence is clearly seen in the way the early Church described God. For them God is divine, ultimate reality by which all other reality derives. It was, therefore, important for them to identify what God is. What is divinity? How does the man Jesus fit into the question of divine essence? What is the Holy Spirit? In other words, ‘What is God?’ This question was by and large answered in philosophical terms. A hierarchy was built where God was the Monarch of the Universe. All authority derived from that One Source. The model was followed by Western rulers through the centuries. The Emperor or the king were viewed as if they were God’s representatives on earth. They were imbued with authority because God was viewed as the Ultimate Authority. With God as the Ultimate King, kings on earth claimed to reign under and with Divine Authority. One doesn’t need a degree in Western history to see how that has played out over the centuries. Wars, brutality, greed, conquerors all in the name of God. Oppression and might over right are the trademarks of this Western culture.
The God that was created in those early days of the Church is still alive and well. Just ask Pete Hegseth or any other Christian Nationalist.
That is NOT the God that is revealed in the Bible. Not even a little bit. Even though many who do a cursory reading of parts of the Bible may find evidence to support their views. But only that will be a very selective reading done through the lens of Western ideas. That lens will skew the image of God and twist it into something that the first believers would not even recognize. Yet, this is precisely the image of God the Church built and has sustained for over 1,500 years.
Ok, so what? If this is how the traditions of the Church have interpreted the Holy Text, it must be correct, right?
Wrong. Oh, so wrong.
Many long-held ideas and beliefs have come under scrutiny over the past couple hundred years. Many of those were proven wrong, or at least not accurate. Why should the understanding of God and God’s various relationships be any different?
What I’m finding out through study and reflection is a wholly separate way to see and know God. A way that fits better with the Scriptures and the Mideastern culture that understands and supports it. The Christian Church was not born in a vacuum. Nor was it born from Greco-Roman philosophy. It was born out of Jewish culture as it was during what’s called the Second Temple Period. The differences are many and great. However, I’m just gonna write a small bit about them.
The greatest difference from my view is that while the Greeks asked, “What is God?” the Bible starts with the question, “Who is God?” While the first tries to explain God’s divinity in terms of known reality, the second tries to explain God’s relationship with the world.
Where better to see that relationship than in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The texts are clear that Jesus was the sole source of human knowledge of God. John’s Gospel states this right up front in the first chapter. John wrote, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” Jesus told his disciple that if they had seen Him then they had seen the Father. If that’s the starting point what can we know about God’s true identity, who God is? There are a few places to look in both the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the New Testament. I’m only going to mention one. Who knows, maybe I’ll write more about it some other time.
The Apostle Paul wrote many letters. Some of them are included in the Christian New Testament. One of those was addressed to the community of the faithful in the city of Philippi. In chapter 2 of that letter Paul told the folks there to become like Jesus. The characteristics Paul shared go to the heart of what I’m writing today. He wrote, “ who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
There’s too much there to unpack. I only want to make one point from this. It is BECAUSE Jesus emptied Himself that God highly exalted Him and gave Him the Name that is above every name. It is in the humiliation and crucifixion of Jesus that God truly reveals Who God is. God isn’t the unmoved mover nor the uncreated creator. God’s not the Great Monarch on a Great Throne moving the world like a big chess board. God is not the One at the top of the hierarchy looking down upon us. According to John Jesus made the Father known. He did that by emptying himself of any claim to divinity and became a human person. He lived the life of a real man in Palestine. He became a servant to the Cosmos in order to reveal to the world Who God really is. When we look at the man Jesus of Nazareth we are looking at the God of all creation.
I know that this is longer than most things that I post. It’s something that I am passionate about expressing.
God is Not the god that is so popular right now in our culture. That god is a false idol.
No, God is Good! God’s mercy lasts for all time and beyond! I will continue to shout that at the top of my lungs as long as I have breath.
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