Month: November 2021

What Size and Shape is Your God?

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Way back in the 1950’s, a British biblical scholar, J. B. Phillips, wrote and published a small, but impactful book entitled: Your God is Too Small. His premise was that many of our images of God are totally inadequate. Doctor Phillips gave a number of examples of images that people regularly put onto God, and showed how and why they did not fit the God of Scripture, especially as revealed in and through Jesus.

It seems to me that we tend to fall into one of three big mistakes (I’m sure there are more than three) when we try to capture God in an image. The first is when we make God think, feel, behave, act just like we human beings do: anthropomorphism. We project onto God how we think we would be if we were god. This never works.

The second is when we dive into the Scriptures and choose an image depicted there that does not reach the full image of God that Jesus presents to us. Too often we can’t get beyond the compelling images of God in the Old Testament. Don’t you dare stir up God’s righteous wrath! The irony is that the Israelites grew beyond their own earlier less adequate images of God. Just compare the God described in the Pentateuch (first five books = the Torah) with the God of the Prophets. 

The third big mistake is when we cozy up to and get comfortable with an image of God that matches our individual preconceived ideas and personal preferences. This God (My God), surprisingly enough, is totally in tune with what I think, my idea of right and wrong, how I judge others, and is enamored of the way I choose to live my life. This God is on our side; so sorry, not on yours.

In random posts to come, I hope to look at some of the less than healthy, or even less than holy, images that we human beings come up with to justify our way of being in the world.

Are You Sure? – Discernment part 7

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How can we be sure we’ve made the right choice?  Sorry, but we can’t – at least not absolutely. A key moment in the discernment process comes after we’ve chosen what we believe is the better option, when we pray for confirmation. As we live into the consequences of our choice, we seek this gift/grace. We ask the Holy Spirit to bless us with some sense that we have chosen rightly and well.

Praying for confirmation is not asking for a divine guarantee. Such a thing doesn’t exist. As long as we are fallible and easily swayed by forces within and outside of ourselves, we cannot be absolutely certain.

I was finishing my commitment with a L’Arche community, and had made plans to enter a program in a few weeks that would lead to a Certificate in Respiratory Therapy. Having studied philosophy and theology, I was not prepared for any kind of career. I knew that my life was meant to be of service to others, and I had worked in hospitals for a number of years and felt comfortable in that environment.

The community’s leader approached me with a request: Would I be willing to stay on just a bit longer to allow a part-time assistant, who also worked full-time outside of the home, to participate in a large international meeting of L’Arche? This was a first for this person, after a number of years of humble, faithful service. I knew two things to be true, if I chose to stay: The people with disabilities would feel safer and more secure with me than with a patchwork of benevolent caregivers who did not know those I was living with as well as I; and, I would not be able, at that moment, to fulfill my desire of attaining the skills that could lead to the satisfaction of having a concrete and tangible line of work.

I had an immediate and clear sense of what appeared to be the “right thing to do” – to continue a little while longer with these wonderful, vulnerable people who had taught me so much. Yet, in the back of my mind, there was this creeping sense that I was “throwing away” my first real opportunity for stable work. After all, respiratory therapy was a relatively new and much needed area of healthcare. I would be helping plenty of people.

I stayed on in the community. The community leader and the other assistant went off to the big meeting. The extra time passed by, and I savored each day. I became filled with peace and the sense: this is the right thing to do. Yes, I did miss the date to enter the training program, but it was okay. 

I hadn’t formally prayed for the grace of confirmation, but it was given, and I recognized it as a gift from God. We can feel the grace of confirmation. We are at peace, even though the decision was difficult and may have seemed illogical. There is an inner sense of rightness. We can feel joy, new energy; we may feel freer and more alive. Choose carefully, and then ask for confirmation, before you finalize your life-plans or major decisions.

Something Messy Emerging

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We wish it weren’t true! We would much prefer a gentle unifier; someone who makes everyone feel at ease, content – a conciliator. Jesus, please, tone it down a little!

In Luke 12:49-51, Jesus cries out, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing. There is a baptism which I need to undergo, and how great is my anguish until it is done. Do you imagine that I have come to establish peace in the world? Not at all, hear me say it, rather division is what follows in my wake.” Jesus, these are not the words we wanted to hear.

Jesus has taken the road to Jerusalem. His disciples are dreaming of conquest and glory, despite Jesus’ regular reminders of what is likely to be the reaction to his mission there. He now turns to images from the prophetic tradition to describe his experience and what awaits him: fire, baptism, division. He feels in his bones the tension and conflict of his impact on others and on the inevitable confrontation before him. Jesus, once again, invites his followers to see what he is seeing.

“I have come bringing fire!” For the prophets, fire was symbol of purification, of transformation. Jesus understood his mission from Abba-God as one that required the kind of radical change that fire generates. The way things had devolved could only lead to disaster, incredible suffering and misery. Business as usual can never save us. But not even his closest disciples were able to see this coming. 

Jesus had submitted his life to God’s Will and sensed that now he was entering into a new, critical phase (crisis = a defining event). This is the baptism he refers to.  He is about to be plunged (and all those who continue to follow him) into the crucial (literally = cross roads) moment that will define his life and ministry. Is this the baptism we are ready to endure?

All the true prophets had experienced opposition – frequently from the powers that be. The people divided in response to their preaching: acceptance of the message, or rejection. Jesus is only noting what was obvious when he said that division, not peace, resulted from his words and actions. He saw families split apart because of him, maybe even some of the families of his apostles.

All this was likely on his mind when he cried out these terribly anguished words. Hearing them, we are called to choose to follow him all the way, or to dismiss him and huddle with a familiar, risk-delaying life. It’s either hanging on to what we think we have or opting for the messy disruption of something new emerging – the Kingdom of God.