Poor god.
These days everyone is making a claim on 'god'. He/She is popular because people find that eliciting the support of a deity gives legitimacy and even power to their particular point of view. Religious groups, terrorists, healers, political parties and just about anyone seeking a way to justify their position, often brings 'god' into the equation.
A god without a name, without a self-defined identity is a very convenient god. That is a god we can use according to our own personal needs. You can mold that god into anything you want as you sort out your existence & 'place' with neighbours, politics, morality, lifestyles, economics, community and yes, even vaccinations. A god like that is just so useful!
But what if this god has a name? What if they are self-defined? A name means something. Your own name identifies you. It's not merely a label as though it was an impersonal number. Your name comes to represent YOU - your character, convictions, loves, dreams and a host of other qualities.
God has a Name. But what a name! God Self-revealed as Yawheh/Jehovah, which was a name deemed too sacred to even be spoken, so other names (dozens and dozens) were used to help paint the picture. This is important, because a name means something. If the name of God is too sacred to be spoken and takes multiple other descriptors to define, that in itself should keep us from turning God into whatever thing we want to use God for. He is not for us to define.
Yet even we who follow Gods incarnate Christ often make God into a thing we use. Allow me to unpack an example by turning my attention to myself and my peers who lead other followers of this God.
It is baffling to understand how the institutional church, the gathering that is meant to reflect God to the world, can ignore or minimize the Creators' omnipresence in the nooks and crannies of life on this planet, and virtually ignore how the ways and presence of Yahweh has everything to do with community life, creation care, social and political well-being, economic structures, treatment of the marginalized - I could go on. The institutionalized church does this by concentrating almost exclusively on how to ensure the activity of the congregation preserves and adds to the longevity of the organization. The intention and rhetoric may be 'missional', but the reality is that too often God is used to justify the efforts to perpetuate the organization.
YAHWEH, JEHOVAH, CREATOR, acted and spoke though a people in history as told in Scripture, although He Himself is beyond Scripture. Yet we have used those same inspired words and stories as talismans and tools so we can use God for our purposes. It was/is Christian leaders who have found theological justification to align with political despots, to support and service anti-human programs of government (residential schools), and to hide sinful and illegal behaviour within their congregations from the law - all to preserve the institution. Less onerous but just as relevant is how we connect alignment to the denomination or local church with a persons identity in Christ. It's wrong, but it is a convenient way to use God for our purposes.
And we have become addicted to it.
As Elijah encountered in his various confrontations with Baal worshipers (former Yawheh worshippers by the way) that culminated in that grand spectacle on Mt. Carmel, there's an addictive quality to worshiping a convenient god you can use, conjured up as needed to fulfill a need or want. That was Israels' relationship with Baal. How about us - do we have a convenient Baal-like image of God?
To give up our image of God is to give up our control of, and influence over, God. We no longer can have our way with Him in order to keep the church in order. Even in the face of the true God's power, Ahab & Jezebel (and many others) maintained their addiction. Do we? Eugene Petersen reminds us all that even in the face of God's Truth, it's very hard to "let go of the comforting illusions that allow us to live with guilt-free dishonesty". (The Jesus Way, p 125.) That guilt free dishonesty by the way plagues our relationship with indigenous peoples in Canada, even in the face of Gods' truth that all humans are equally made in God's image.
This is a call to you to seek and submit to the God with a Name, who is not, and will not be defined by your constitution, tradition, dogma or your forms for worshiping Him. This is a call for you to pay attention to the living and active voice of God Himself, to examine the ties that bind your obedience to convenience, pragmatism, dogma, denomination or religion. Stay alert and knowledgeable that the rituals of your so-called faith may be more a religion of useful convenience than they are expressions of submission and obedience to a living and active God.
Who is this God?
Who are we before Him?
Harv Matchullis
