Emerging God: Did God "grow old and grow up?"

Emergent God: “Did God grow old and grow up?” (revised on 3/10/08)

By Daryl Underwood

We are created in God's image and we have ways of trying to explain or understand that truth. Wouldn't it be refreshing to take it as it stands? That is, to grasp that we reflect him in our journey, we are "like" him though he is "otherly". One of the predominate ways we "grow up" is through experience. We figure it out as we go. What if it was that way for God? Perhaps he "knows" the outcome but lives the experience and is often "surprised" as indicated in scripture by outcomes in the narrative of Tanahk. He seems to transition in emotion or personality in the same way that we do. Initially, in the creation, he is bold and simply "speaks" creation into being. He seems tenuous when Babel is being constructed; a bit insecure about where they are going, perhaps a bit alarmed by their confidence which mirrors His to a tea. If this continues there is no end to what they can imagine.

As time goes on He takes the risk of becoming a friend of particular men. He is "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob." He in relationship reveals himself. Don't we all. He is sometimes not so welcomed or appreciated. Did this "hurt" the divine being? As the relationship He has with "the people as their God" and notice in passing the subtle shift that occurs whenever we engage in relationship, unfolds we notice a suble change. A shift from his ownership to their ownership, so to speak. They "own" him as a personal God. No longer does he sit austere from the heavens and speak forth, he now engages at the table and negotiates. Once He spoke and Abraham listened dutifully. In two short generations we see Jacob making demands, conditions actually, that He must meet in order "to then be my God". What is intriguing is that God meets his demands. As God reaches down, bends down for relationship, man ascends to influence and confidence.

And familiarity breeds contempt. It explains why God reestablishes his place by expressing Himself as the warrior God, God the Almighty, in the book of Exodus. A buffer is needed. You get too close and your are vulnerable. As Michael Card pens in his powerful song "Why",

"Only a friend can betray a friend,
A stranger has nothing to gain,
And only a friend comes close enough to ever cause so much pain" 

As time passes the quarrel between God and Israel (the name now given to represent Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) becomes heated. It reaches a crescendo in the book of Job which is in "the writings" of Tanakh, the final section of the Hebrew metanarrative. When this argument is finalized we hardly hear from God at all. The conversation ends tensely when God says, "How dare you challenge my moral integrity" and stomps off ne'er to be heard from again. We can presume he is in his room, or perhaps his cave. The books of Nehemiah, Esther, and Ruth, for example, hardly mention His name, although His influence is written all over his people who carry, like an ex-wife or lost child or departed friend his marks. They carry on in his absence.

And who of us hasn't experienced that.

It is as if God is sulking, withdrawing, thinking, when this heated, drawn out, ongoing relationship seems untenable. He is separate. Tired. (See article entitled The tired God of Tanakh below.)

And who of us hasn't done that. Withdrew, sulked, retreated. Image bearers. We can "get it" when it is told honestly.

This wound is so deep that God becomes utterly silent during the ensuing intertestimental period. It is as if He is trying to determine whether or not to continue. Maybe He will leave, jump ship, head to Baltimore Jack.

He works it out.

He decides to "remake himself" and using the history he now has, He enters the world again, this time not as a brash confident creator...but as the most vulnerable creature we know. He empties Himself of vestries and becomes flesh, a baby. When the time comes, and its noteworthy to remember He does this following His baptism of repentance...and what is He repenting of, what did he do? Fail in His relationship with His beloved. Hurt them in recoil when he was wounded, taken for granted, or ignored? Perhaps He who demanded that His people "shall not kill" is feeling the blood on His hands from His various forays into genocide...when this time comes

He enters, or re-enters, the stage and reveals Himself in experiential wisdom. "You have heard it said...but I say unto you”. Now where did they hear it "said"...why, in the scriptures of course, and the traditions born of them. This is the obvious answer. That is why it is said that Jesus spoke with an authority unheard of amongst the religious elite at that time. It is said, but I say unto you, indeed.

But now God is shifting his position.

I once heard a prominent theologian, once very quietly ask, as if he were treading on "holy ground" and in danger of being struck down...this question.

What if God realized that violence wasn't working?

What if God "owns up" to some of the way He operated and now that He "knows better" or has experienced more, with his creation, repents? Take for point of illustration 1 Kings 20. The Lord has promised Ahab, king of Israel, victory over Ben-Hadad, the king of Aram. The battle goes just as promised, but aides to Ben-Hadad advise him: "We have heard that Israelite kings are merciful. Let us dress in sackcloth with cords around our heads (the traditional garb of penitinance) and go out and meet the king of Israel; maybe he will spare your life" (1 Kings 20:31). Ahab shows himself merciful indeed, making a generous peace settlement and sparing Ben-Hadad's life. The Lord, however, is furious with this conduct. He is enraged and tells Ahab, "You will pay with your life for having set free a man who was under my curse of destruction. It will be your life for his, your people for his'" (1 Kings 20:42). God is vengeful...indeed, not such a new concept, and one that I didn't pull out of the air, we all are familiar with 'vengeance is Mine' declares the Lord. And so it seems.

Our modern ears recoil from this type of God. We truly avoid the text altogether so as ignore or hide the reality of the writing of it. We are like the enabling spouse, who makes excuses for the drunk husband when He doesn't pick the children up from school. There is some reason given--something palatable, 'he needed to catch up on his sleep, he works hard, you know' or 'It slipped his mind, he has so much going on these days', or whatever, to save herself the uncomfortable moment of dealing with the damage daddy does. She does it unthinkingly almost second nature she's been in this groove so long; it is the way she carries on with the relationship. Why rock the boat?. She enables the behavior by letting it go forever. And so does much of Christianity.

Which is confounding?

Why don't we just admit it. This behavior of God, this unmerciful vengeance which when revealed, really makes us squirm. It makes us feel ill at ease, like we must 'cover' for Him. We hope the children NEVER discover it. Hopefully, they will read the New Testament and miss this rendering of God in the Tanahk. And should they stumble upon the Jack Daniels in the closet, it 'isn't what it seems' we say and manipulate some forced interpretation so complex or silly that even we can't swallow it. The preacher will tell us, 'God is a mystery' and if we persist 'who are we to 'question the potter' being only the clay and all.' It is a subtle veiled threat from one with ascribed power, who, we instinctively want to trust, has answers. Basically he is saying 'don't go there' and will become stern if need be. Because in the system we have he doesn't have answers but the system must go on and he is the keeper of the door. Generally, people get it and cease to ask hard questions and get on with life. Best to leave it alone.

But you won't hear this, First Kings Twenty, as a Sunday morning text. Best to just stash it away. In many circles this stash is more dangerous than Playboy and liberal theology rolled into one. It might undo the thinking person--really, it might. So we attempt not to deal with it. We put a shadowy pall over folks like me--on the edge, you know--and leave it under the bed.

But I can't. I have taken the red pill and, indeed, Neo is right, there is no going back. So I begin to ask questions about this reading of scripture and wonder if there is another way. And in the journey down the rabbit hole, I begin to see things in a new way by viewing Scripture; through the literary lens of narrative theology. God was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the tension He was feeling in violence. He was looking for an out that worked. Not in a way of a "cleaner" as portrayed by George Clooney in the movie "Michael Clayton." No, Jesus does not come to function as a janitor to clean up the mess in the cosmos that indicts The Lord on His own judicial court. This is no cover up. It is the honest uncovering of "what I found myself in" and "what I did about it" unveiled in Scripture, by God.

And we call all learn something from that. We can imitate that. The alcoholic, "drunk" can deal with it, once He has uncovered the lie he lives in, and come out on the other side as the better man. All of us, when we weigh ourselves and find our "kingdom" wanting can shift and change. We are not locked down. We are not stuck.

Either is God in this unfolding story. This is, I suggest, at the heart of the tranforming power of the gospel. What ever it is that has "undone" us does not "own us". God is showing us the way, leading us.

Mark it now: Whatever it is that has undone us does not own us.

What if He needed to repent (it wouldn't be the first time, at several points in the Tanakh He bemoans the fact that he created and threatens to "undo His creation") for His part in this mess. No cover up, but an embracing of responsibility that we all deem so honorable and good. This is the kinder, gentler Jesus that has emerged after a long silence to represent God's recommitted heart to this covenant.

The question now becomes what will we do with the man who has surrendered or suspended His power?

This is the crisis that is in Jerusalem on that climactic hole week of scripture;What will they do with the "emptied God?" It is the same scenario in our own heart everyday in every generation. This story becomes utterly believable because we live in it. What will we do when God does not force us?

Sadly, we, with power, often use it to "seize the kingdom", the very thing God was fearful (at Babel and other points such as when Israel begged for a king to rule over them like the other nations) we would do. Seizing the kingdom has to do with the attitude that we can do this well along without you; it is the fall of autonomy. But God has become wise in His time alone thinking. He knows where this may go...and He goes now willingly. This will be the end of the first relationship He so dearly fought for. This decision to "empty Himself" will be expensive.

It will cost Him his life.

And it will set Him free to recreate life again, fresh...which He longs to do. Don't we all?

And who of us doesn't want a second chance?
Why not God?

And isn't that "second chance" the grace we so cherish. Isn't it the amazing thing that breaks our heart? Turns the brash slave traders into gentle parsons. It is amazing. To blow it, get it, and have a chance to make good? Makes a blind man see, this kind of second shot.

I close this today with this:

"In the course of this book we are repeatedly told about the differences between the Lord of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament, and the changed relationship with his followers: ''Once he demanded that they offer sacrifice to him; now he sacrifices himself for them. Once he demanded that they serve him; now he serves them. Once he demanded that they love him; now he loves them 'to the end.' '--Jack Miles in "God: A Biography"

What a tremendous story we live in.

My friend, Kevin Vredeveld, asked the question of how this understanding of God might have implications for us. One certain implication is that we might begin to have a basis for believing certain things on a real level. Let me explain:

We can be transformed when we know that God has "experienced" our difficulties as Hebrews suggests in a way that is truly as deep as ours. Sometimes it is hard to imagine a God that sympathizes if He has never done anything, well, wrong. It changes when we realise that perhaps He is acquainted with regret, understands "repentance" from a perspective that aligns us with Him and makes Him more "touchable / respected". We don't wonder if He feels our pain, we know He felt pain. 

He ceases to be the God "saying He can sympathize" (and us nodding simply because "He said so") but becomes clearly One who understands...and then He becomes the model for us to "conquer" our own "little demons" to use a phrase popularized by Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac fame. He isn't so above us that He hasn't walked in our shoes. We might deeply believe things we have brushed over or avoided and as a result the collective church might lose some of the lethargy that we see so prevalent today.

The story becomes very believable and extremely "tell able". Indeed it IS a compelling story with a myriad of facets to be forever enjoyed, discovered and learned from. The gospel we have purported to this point is quickly becoming difficult for others to get in the postmodern world. It is in many was a lessor gospel.. There are far too many holes for the rendering to be compelling; to even be true. Clearly, there is more to the story than a bridge, or four spiritual laws. That in itself ought to be reason enough to re-think our understanding of God.

I say the real story is very, very inviting, and extremely compelling. In other words, the story has "authority" to remake us. It is The Story that all cultures can embrace. It would be tragic to waste this opportunity clinging to "the traditions of men". Sound familiar?

This way of understanding God could thrust Christianity to the fore in the postmodern, soon to be post postmodern world.

Go to the navigation page on the left and enter the Songs link...Listen to the song "Hurt" with this story in mind...notice the brashness of the young Cash, the distance from June, the loneliness amongst having it all..."what have I become my dearest friend, everybody leaves...in the end". Notice the entrance of the figure of Christ and ponder His presence in the song. Let the story breathe.

Do we read the Bible rightly?

Randall Balmer, a Columbia University professor and expert on American religious history, says this...

"The evangelical faith that nurtured me as a child and that sustains me as an adult has been hijacked by right wing zealots who really have no real understanding of the teachings of Jesus,” he said.

“They have taken the Gospel the Good News of Jesus Christ, something that I consider to be lovely and redemptive, and turned it into something ugly and punitive," he said. "They have cherry picked through the Scriptures wrenching verses out of context and used those verses as a bludgeon against their political enemies.”

Rather to the point, eh, Randall? "They have cherry picked through the Scriptures wrenching verses out of context and used those verses as a bludgeon..." are stern words which engage my attention. Common man translation: proof-texting. Using scripture to back my personal agenda or belief. Not my cup of tea. Proof-texting is often the expected mode of study emphasized in modernity, accepted by the church evangelical, fundamental. A child of the time where we could figure almost anything out, or at least, thought we could. The afterbirth of the enlightenment for all disciplines across the board. In truth, modernity and its ways, is useful in some disciplines, actually at home at disciplines such as science and medicine...but in reality, abysmal in others, such as religion.

Really untrustworthy at best. For example, Solomon says, in the Bible, "there is nothing new under the sun" and so be it. Nothing is really a surprsie, things are somewhat redundant. Same old same old. I could make a case for this if I wanted to "lift" this passage and preach it. It would preach, I could make this mark.

But let's say that it didn't suit me. Why not, then, use Jesus words, same Bible, and say "behold I make all things new" and preach that message because well, it serves me, it suits me and my purpose that day. I could make that stick. If I want to preach one message, then I pull one scripture out of my lipstick case, another message, another flavor. My choice, my option. Nothing is really as settled as they say in theology. Lots of blurry lines to live with. Honestly. And let's face it people are catching on to that these days. When they don't, or why some don't and continue to back this type of exposition, I confess stupifies me. So call me stupid. But when is the last time you heard 1 Kings 20, God's anger at Ahab's mercy, or  the census slaughter in 1 Chronicles "pulled". This stuff doesn't really preach so we can avoid it altogether if it suits us, and of course it usually does. I suggest we get honest about it all.

Jack Miles poses an insightful question about how we read and ingest scripture: “Why take so narrowly instrumental an attitude toward a work of the imagination?"

I suppose the simple answer is: Because the enlightenment and modernity which followed told us to. It told us to, so that we might not fall prey to myth and imagination. It came to deliver us from the evil of imagination and wonder. It came to deliver us from wonder and imagination at all. With its rules and constructs we were handed a better, logical model of tested proven investigation into the Scriptures. Why tested? Because it was handed over to the professionals to deal with the word of God to protect us from error, such as we are prone, like that which surely comes out of the dark ages, when man is left to himself. It came as the saving grace form a time of great human progress. In the end. Hogwash.

Let us dream, wonder and be amazed by the authority of the deep engaging story. 

MORE TO COME... 

The tired God of Tanakh

Johnny Cash was a tired man when he came to the end. His last recorded song is a dark Nine Inch Nails song entitled "Hurt". One would wonder about how that came about. it seems to me it could be the song of God as he enters the twilight of his days with Jerusalem at the conclusion of the Tanakh. "try to kill it all away, but I remember everything."

For a powerful thoughtful clip of the song go to the Songs section to the left and click on "Hurt" by Johnny Cash. I tend to imagine God in the final silent stages of Tanahk when I watch the video. The lyrics are below and the song coincides with the article "Emerging God" on this blog. The final vindication of Jesus is alluded to in the final verse. it could be the type of motivation He feels as He sets His face as flint toward Jerusalem:

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way.

The "resurrection" is grand...again before the lyrics and the song Jack Miles. Thanks, Drew, for putting me onto his work.

"Irony is the last word that the "Hallelujah Chorus" brings to mind, and yet the enthronement of the Lamb is a supremely ironic outcome. This is not how God's work in the world was supposed to culminate, and yet, ironically, this is just what was predicted. This is not the glorious victory that the Lord promised to Judah, and yet, ironically, it meets every criterion for that victory. The Bible is a divine comedy in both the high and low sense of the word comedy. The enthronement of the Lamb is truly both sublime and ridiculous. Yield to it in just the right way, with just the right music playing, and you will be swept away. Catch it at a slightly crooked angle, with the sound system off, and you will laugh out loud."

HURT

I hurt myself today

To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything

[Chorus:]
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns
Upon my liar's chair
Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here

[Chorus:]
What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

If I could start again
A million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way

The High Price of the Power Metanarrative: a political comentary with ethical implications

I have been reflecting on the price of power.

Having listened again to the  "A Few Good Men" clip and feeling the shame of our collaborative input in the creation of a Colonel Jessep I feel the need to write. This is personal more than theological. But theological in that "ethics are central" to the gospel.

I am grieved and troubled. "War is not the answer and young men should not die". Or kill for that matter. When you realise the untenable position we put young men in as we place them in difficult circumstances in faraway lands and cultures we must pay attention. The message of negotiation before engagement needs to become stronger. We need to pay attention to situations before they erupt. The illustration of John Woolman and the Quakers is valuable here. Woolman spent decades in conversations with the people in his own movement surrounding the issues of the legitimacy of slavery. His hope was that they reconsider their practice as a community. They did.

In 1754 Woolman wrote Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. He subsequently refused to draw up wills transferring slaves. Working on a nonconfrontational, personal level, he individually convinced many Quaker slaveholders to free their slaves. He attempted personally to avoid using the products of slavery; for example, he wore undyed clothing because slaves were used in the making of dyes. He was also known in later life to abjure riding in stagecoaches, on grounds that their operation was too often cruel and injurious to their teams of horses.

In Woolman's travels, whenever he received hospitality from a slaveholder, he insisted on paying the slaves for their work in attending him. He would also refuse to be served with silver cups, plates, and utensils, on grounds that slaves were forced to dig such precious minerals and gems for the rich. On one occasion in his early adulthood, he did convey the ownership of a slave in someone's will, but was later so filled with remorse over the act that he went back, found the individual so injured, and made monetary reparations sufficient to sustain that person in freedom for some years. He observed that some owners used the labor of their slaves to enjoy lives of ease, and found much more fault with this practice than with those owners who treated their slaves gently, or even worked alongside them.

Woolman worked within the Friends traditions of seeking the guidance of the Spirit of Christ and patiently waiting to achieve unity in the Spirit. He went from one Friends meeting to another and expressed his concern about slaveholding. One by one the various Quaker Meetings began to see the evils of slavery and wrote minutes condemning the practice.

In his lifetime, Woolman did not succeed in eradicating slavery even within the Society of Friends in colonial America; however, his personal efforts changed Quaker viewpoints. In 1790 the Society of Friends petitioned the United States Congress for the abolition of slavery. The fair treatment of people of all races is now part of the Friends Testimony of Equality. Woolman's colonial-era success in persuading his fellow Quakers on this issue is credited with giving Quakers in the early days of the USA the moral authority to labor with people of other Christian traditions over it.

Notice the year of the appeal to the United States Congress for the abolition of slavery (1790). Now consider  the period of the Civil War in America (1860's). What if Congress had resolved to listen to Woolman and the Quakers rather than allowing the manifestation of slavery to stew below the surface. Remembering the amount of bloodshed and lost life in the Civil War should make us pause at the rejection of the appeal.  Compare the results: lost lives during the patient arbitration in the Quaker movement (0)... the tragic loss of life during the Civil War when things had fired into the stubborn position that always precedes chaos (618,000).

The price of determined arbitration is minimal when you consider the often exorbitant price groups pay in blood for their stand.

What I am getting at is this: if we don't pay attention early and instead hold resentments too long...the lid eventually blows off and the steam cannot be contained.

Once chaos sets in we have few righteous choices. Arbitrate or vacate. When one is in the setting of confrontation at the tender age of 19 faced with an untenable choice to pull the trigger or not life stands still. And the problem is you don't have the luxury to think about it "because the crucible is here, right now" whether you are ready or not. The tragic consequence of  a blackened heart inside the chest of such a young man who has gone against his soul is unsettling. When one trusts that "I've got God on my side" and don't we all,  but loses his faith along the way for the "sins he has committed"--this is too steep a price  to pay--over and over again.

I have three sons and am grateful they never had to put their "finger on the trigger"...Listen to this great song by Bruce Springsteen entitled "Devils and Dust". The clip is in the songs and articles section.

"We're a long long way from home Bob,
home's a long, long way from us,
I feel a dirty wind a blowing..."

Thesis statement for Centerpoint Christianity

Thesis: What Centerpoint Christianity attempts to do is bypass some of the constraints imposed by metanarratives by using the life of Christ and particularly the climactic actions of Christ as beginning points. It supports the conviction that God is essentially timeless. From this beginning point we endeavor to move outward from the definitive moment of the parousia (visitation) of Christ and forward to the future which functions as a type of magnet to "what can be--and is coming".