What is relationship with God?

Disclaimer:

I don’t presume to speak for God. This is my best analysis based on my reading of the bible.

God made us for relationship……to walk in the garden with him. But, why? Why does he want relationship with us…….with me? And, what does that relationship look like?

I believe that it is based on a parent/child model. In other words it is not a relationship of equals…..and it is certainly not a relationship where we get to pass judgement on God.

We can’t see it clearly from here.
We can’t understand it clearly from here.
And yet, we must actively seek it.
We must reach out.
We have to take the first step toward God.
Relationship is a gift from God…..not earned. …not deserved ….grace.
It completes us…..it fills a hole in us that we can sense……in our hearts, we know that something is missing.
It requires an act of faith. There is no other precondition.
It requires us to recognize our smallness, our weakness, and our dirtyness………..in a word, our failure. And if you don’t believe that we have failed………. just take a look around.

In the end it requires submission to a benevolent higher being…..and we hate this.

The main impediment to our relationship with God is our ego……our insistence that we are in charge in spite of overwhelming evidence that we have messed it all up.

Our contribution is small…….it mainly involves reaching out from our weakness and imperfection. We give up our position as the center of the universe. We humble ourselves. We touch the shadow of God’s enormous reservoir of love and realize the promise of knowing it more fully in paradise. We must accept on faith that God’s vision for us is better than our own and this goes against everything that our society tells us.

God’s contribution is hard for us to see. It is nonetheless always there and active…even when we lash out at him or ignore him. We cannot turn off God’s pursuit of relationship. We cannot turn off God…….no matter how hard we work at rejecting him.

I can only guess at God’s feeling…at his motivation. He is our ultimate and perfect parent. If he is like our earthly parents……..and I believe that he is. He wants us to be complete and happy. But on his terms…….not on ours. Because his plan is better for us than our own plans.

He knows that our vision and our goals are clouded and imperfect. At best our plan is short term………limited to 90 years, give or take……..in the tangible universe. His vision and plan extend far beyond the space and time that we can comprehend. He knows that his vision, his path for us, will lead us to a better place than the path we choose for ourselves. After all, how can we create and execute a plan when we know next to nothing about our destination? The best destination we can imagine is to either accept death as the ultimate end…….”the lights just go out” or to dream up a very nice version of our failed world. The first option is at least intellectually honest……..though it is depressingly bleak. The second option is appealing, though completely dishonest…..that is unless I actually am the creator of the universe….in that event it works out nicely. Unfortunately, my life experience, at least so far, clearly tells me that I am somewhere well below creator in the chain of command.

So……God loves us and lays out a plan for us……a plan to fulfill and satisfy us. He gives us free will. He then watches us reject his plan………and him. He sees us slip away from him and the paradise that he has built for us. He watches us slip away from the relationship that he knows will complete us. I can’t see into Gods heart. The best I can do is draw conclusions based on his actions and my experience as a parent. My experience tells me that this must break his heart. I think that God must be saddened to the point of tears at our rejection. I think that God probably spends more time shedding tears than hurling lightning bolts.

This is the God that I know.

First off, what is “bad”……Bad is something that makes me unhappy right now. If you ask a child who has just received his DPT shot to describe it, he would say it was a bad thing. He is not necessarily wrong. He is just speaking from a limited, short term, perspective.

Bad things happen. They happen all of the time. They happen to good people. I can’t justify them. I can’t always assign blame for them. It’s not fair. I can’t control them. All I can control is my reaction to them.

The most important outcome when bad things happen to me, and to you, is that the feelings that follow can crowd out the love that we need to give to God and others.

In the worst case, our natural and normal love can turn into anger. Anger at the people we should be loving is sad. Anger at God is a tragedy. It is a tragedy because it is purely self destructive. Do you think that your anger with God does him any real harm? It certainly harms you. Vengeance against the creator of the universe is self defeating………even if you are right……. and you aren’t.

I have struggled with the book of Job for a long time. Job was a good man, certainly better than me. God turned Satan loose on him and this wrecked Job’s life. What follows is about 40 chapters where Job and his friends try unsuccessfully to explain. Then, there is a conversation between Job and God. The gist of it is: “God is big and we are tiny. Things are going to happen that we will never understand.” Some of them will be good and some will be unspeakably bad. I believe that God has a purpose behind it all. Just like the kid’s DPT shot, the bad things serve a greater purpose that is beyond our immediate understanding. We need to be patient in our pain and this is very hard. In our pain we have to fall back on rules #1 & 2…….

LOVE GOD…….. LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR.

My oldest son Ryan lived a life that was rough. He spent many years in various forms of rebellion. Then he turned his life around. He had a daughter, he got baptised, he turned the corner……..and a few months later he died. How could God do this to Ryan? How could God do this to ME? I don’t understand any more than Job did………any more than the kid leaving the doctor’s office.

I believe that God has a plan that is larger than what I can understand. Maybe, there was something waiting for Ryan that God wanted to spare him from. Maybe God said, “Today, Ryan is mine. Tomorrow he may not be”. I believe that someday Ryan and I will sit down in paradise over a cup of coffee and that we will both understand. I bet that the coffee will be fabulous.

When bad things happen, we often ask the wrong question. We ask “Where did this bad thing come from?” Instead we should ask “Where is this bad thing going?” I believe that God is at work, even in the bad times, and that my current “bad thing” is working toward something good…………..even if I can’t see it or understand it from where I’m standing right now.

I have to believe that God knows what he is doing.

Ok, maybe despise is a bit strong. Think of the word Christian and jot down the first few adjectives that come to mind. If your list is primarily negative then it’s fair to say that you dislike Christians at the very least. Often, people who dislike, or even despise Christians do so because of experiences with Christians in their past.

Perhaps, You knew a Christian who was judgemental, who acted as though they were better than you, who implied that you were going straight to hell. Maybe they practiced a brand of Christianity that was an exercise in pain. Maybe they were legalistic, constantly quoting rules from the Bible. Maybe they handed you a booklet saying that Catholics are not Christians. Maybe they said that the problems that you face are a punishment from God because of something that you did……or your grandfather did. Maybe the way that they expressed their faith was just plain wierd. Once a Christian doggedly tried to save me in a public restroom. He tried to grill me about my faith to see if it met his standards……to see if I was following enough of his rules. (I sure hope he’s not watching the gate when I arrive). There are a lot of different ways to be a Christian. In a word…….it’s a big tent. Some do it very well……… others, not so much.

So……… if you are going to judge Christians, please don’t base your judgement on people who are doing it badly. Judge based on somebody who is doing it well…….somebody like Billy Graham or Mother Teresa. They are much closer to the heart of Christianity than the guy who acts pious or judgemental and then mistreats you.

Here are some simple tests to rate a Christian:

Are they acting out of love………for you?

Do they radiate joy?

If a Christian you meet fails these two tests, then don’t use them as an example of Christianity………… find a better model.

If you dislike Christians because of an experience in your past, maybe the picture of Christians that you are lugging around is inaccurate. Maybe you were exposed to somebody who just wasn’t doing it well……. and there are plenty of them. There is a very easy way to experience Christianity done well. Go to the source.

Get a copy of the bible that has the words that Christ spoke in red. Just read the red words. It won’t take long. Then you will see my faith as it was intended to be.

You will find that it is very hard to dislike the speaker.

I once dated a girl. She was really nice. She was wise, honest, kind, funny……..I could go on. The only trouble was that she was a serious, committed Christian………..and I wasn’t.

One day she asked me, “What are you afraid of……… that God will ask you to do something that you don’t want to do? ”

She hit the nail on the head. I was terrified, because I had plans for my life……and I realized that God had plans too. I knew that God’s plans trumped mine. I knew that getting tangled up with God might interfere with my plans. (What if he sent me to Africa?) I realized that if I was going to be the center of my universe……..if I was going to get what I wanted……….then there was no room for God. In a word, I knew that God is disruptive…..and I needed to get him out of my way.

I was, at my core, a secular humanist/Darwinist.

I finally broke it off……..because I could see that her Christianity might interfere with my plans for my life.  At the time my response to her made perfect sense. It still would……if I could just get rid of this disruptive God.

Enter Darwinism………if the universe is a giant biochemical accident, then there is no need for a creator……..no need for God. I can shove him aside and take over. In effect,  I can use Darwinism to kill God and then I can take over. This is the heart of secular humanism.

There it is. We can’t tolerate anybody else being in charge. So we use Darwinism and evolution to kill the creator. With no creator, we are the highest life form in the universe. We get to run things…….we are in charge. I think that this is the crux of the problem for the unchurched…… for the secular humanist/Darwinist. We are smart……. the smartest creatures to ever exist. We believe that we should be in charge. We make plans to further our goals. Our plans must be the best, because we are the smartest creatures alive.

This is great………. as long as Darwin was correct.

But, not so great…………. if Darwin was wrong…….if there is a more intelligent being out there……..if there is a creator.

The problem is that God is smarter, not to mention kinder and more generous than we are……. the problem is that God has a plan for us that is better than our own. We just can’t see all of the outcomes.

What I know now, is that God’s plan is a plan for my well being…….. and the well being of those around me. In order to profit from God’s plan, I have to step a way from the center. I have to put God……. and his plan……… in the center. My ego, my hubris must take a back seat.

In a way, this is the most important decision of your life……Darwin’s accident………..or God’s intelligent design.

In his novel, “Slaughterhouse Five”, Kurt Vonnegut describes the end of the world. (A great book BTW).

A Tralfamadorian test pilot panics, pushes the wrong button and the universe vaporizes….not just earth……. the entire universe. As a hypothetical, imagine that this actually happens. There is nothing left but an endless cloud of subatomic particles, nothing larger than a proton. Visualize this cloud for a minute……….minute subatomic particles floating in a black sea of nothing for as far as you can imagine. This is essentially what the scientists tell us existed right after the “big bang”.

Now, ask yourself this question:

“After the Tralfamadorian disaster, do you believe that this cloud of subatomic particles, floating in an endless sea of nothing, will spontaneously reconstitute the earth and everything in it just as it is today……all by itself…..purely by random accident.” Remember……..we are talking about the real world, not a theoretical construct.

Choose one answer:

YES
NO
IT’S POSSIBLE BUT IMPROBABLE

If you answered YES, then you are a secular humanist/Darwinist.

If you answered NO, then you are a creationist.

If you answered POSSIBLE BUT IMPROBABLE, then things get complicated. You are exploring the boundary between improbable and impossible. In the real world, there is no clear line. What is theoretically possible may be practically impossible. The theoretical world and the real world are often not the same.

So, we go to the next question:

What is the probability that the universe and our earth will spontaneously reconstite themselves after the Tralfamadorian disaster?

1 chance in 10
1 chance in 100
1 chance in 1,000
1 chance in a million
1 chance in 10 to the 50th power.

As you can see, you reach a point where improbable effectively becomes impossible. Some statisticians use 10 to the 50th power (10 with 50 zeroes). This is great theory……..but 10 to the 50th is hard to apply in real life.

I find the Tom Clancy analysis more useful. In his book “Patriot Games”, a spy tells his boss something (and I’m paraphrasing). The boss says “how confident are you?” The spy says “I’m not absolutely sure”. The boss says, “nothing is absolutely for certain…… but, are you sure enough?” By that the boss means “are you sure enough to act based on the information?” This is probability made practical.

So……….. are you sure enough that the universe will spontaneously regenerate itself after the Tralfamadorian disaster to reject the possibility of an intelligent creator?

Are you sure enough to reject the possibility of paradise………of hell?

This week’s post is the second half of a 2 part series. If you haven’t read “plan a”, go back and read last week’s post.

Have you ever had this conversation?

Turn right in 100 yards
Uh huh

Turn right in 50 yards
Uh huh

Turn right now
Nah

Make a u-turn at 48th street
Yeah

Make a u-turn at 46th street
I don’t think so

Make a u-turn at 44th street
Where’s the volume control?

Make a u-turn at 42nd street
Can somebody shut her up!

Make a u-turn at 40th street
#@!%&^*

Recalculating

I don’t claim to know whether God knew that we were going to mess things up from the start or whether he was surprised by our behavior. But, if you compare the old testament with the new testament, it is pretty clear that God has done some “recalculating” in order to deal with the reality of our situation.

I call this plan b.

The reality of our current situation is that God had a plan for us that was ideal (the garden of Eden……or ….. plan a). Unfortunately, we had other ideas that have resulted in the messed up world that we live in today. We try hard to fix things…… but they just keep getting worse. I try to extrapolate our current path into the future and I have to say that I’m not optimistic. I generally avoid this topic with my kids……. but they tell me that my generation has wrecked things for them. They will have to clean up our (that is the baby boomer’s) mess……or at least try to. The reality is that they probably won’t do any better at it than we did.

How has God handled our behavior? What is God to do with rebellious children? He has a problem strangely familiar to any parent of teens.  From my limited perspective, he has a few options.

1. Burn it down and start all over.
2. Compromise himself….. that is……lower himself to our level.
3. Find a “workaround”…….sort of a detour that leaves the mess in place but allows us to ultimately get to where he…… and we want to be.

Christianity teaches that God chose option 3…… and I’m glad he did. Option 1, the cosmic “redo”, and option 2, a God who behaves as badly as we do, are not very appealing.

So what does option 3…….. “plan b” …….look like?

God clarifies and simplifies the rules:

He sent a mentor, Christ, who teaches “love God and love your fellow man”. Hard to argue with that.

Christ takes possession of all of the wrong that we have done, that we are doing, and that we will do.  A pretty sweet deal.

I don’t know how this works. It seems to be a deal between Christ and his Father. But, the result is that…… from God’s point of view……. we are made clean.  It almost feels like a trick……….. but if it’s good enough for God………it’s good enough for me.

There is a condition.

We have to humble ourselves, recognize Christ’s gift, and ask for it.

Plan b is amazingly simple………. and yet hard. We are not by nature humble creatures. We believe that we are the center of it all…… and we don’t want to give that up…. even in the face of overwhelming evidence that we have messed it all up. Our inability to step away from the center of the universe and to humble ourselves before the creator……. that is to say……..our arrogance ……….is all that stands between us and the destiny that we were created for.

There are 5 foundational ideas….pillars…… of Christianity:

Creation

You are not a biochemical accident. You were created intentionally. Don’t get hung up on 6000 years vs. 400 million years. Focus on intentional creation vs. accidental biochemistry.

Love

God loves you…..he wants you to love him & your neighbor. Pretty basic. If you remember nothing else……. know this.

Eternity

There is something waiting for you after your brief human life. It will last forever……..and you have the gift of choice. But, your choice is not between nothing and paradise. Your choice is between paradise and something very unpleasant. Even scientists believe in eternity…….some of them just don’t believe that you will be there.

Good and Evil

There are 2 forces at work in this world…….good and evil. You feel it in your heart. You know this to be true. You know good and evil exist. But, if you look closely at them, you can see that they act as though there is an intelligence and a motivation behind them. In a word, they behave as though they were alive. Christianity teaches that God is the active intentional force behind good……and that Satan is the active intentional force behind evil. Christianity looks past the secondary display of good and evil in our world to the primary motivating forces behind them…….God and Satan. In short, Christianity teaches that good and evil are not simple descriptors of things in our physical world. They are alive. They are active in our world. There is intelligence and motivation behind them. They have a plan for you. They have a plan for your future.

You are wanted

God, the active intelligence behind good and Satan, the active intelligence behind evil want you. It’s like 2 giant Madison Avenue advertising firms trying to get you to buy their brand of cereal.

Choice

You have free will. You get to decide. There is a lot going on that is beyond your control. There is a lot of stuff that you don’t get to choose. You are often pushed around by situations that you cannot manage. But, on the truly important issues, you have complete control. You have the absolute power to choose your destiny.

So……. you were created…….you are loved……..you are ,at least in part, eternal……..you are immersed in good and evil………you are wanted.

And you get to choose your destiny.

Stay tuned for plan B.

I’ve been struggling.

Someone I know has hurt somebody I care for. The crime is big enough that it will take years, maybe decades,  to repair the damage. I am angry.  And I know where he lives.

I began by being angry about the unfairness of it…….. the injustice of it. I was angry about the pain and sadness that it caused. I was angry that a criminal had profited and that a good person had been harmed. I was angry that the systems in place, the law, the courts, and the police were not bringing justice to bear. I wanted the criminal punished……..now.

So far…..so good.

I am, by nature, a fixer. I think that all of us are, too a degree……especially men. In my frustration at the unfairness of the situation, I began to consider how I could fix this injustice. I began to consider how to help the police. But, as my frustration grew, I began to dwell on ways that I could bring this mess to a just conclusion. Before long I was fantasizing on ways to hurt the criminal…….. ways that were far beyond the call of justice. Looking back I had quietly slipped down the slope from unfairness……. to injustice….. to frustration…….. to anger and finally to vengeance. I found myself in a very black place. How did I get there? There was no instant of transition. Each step was logical, appropriate and, worst of all, very comfortable. Nobody suggested this path to me. It came from somewhere deep inside of me. I can now see that the blackness was there inside me all along,  waiting quietly for a situation like this to wake it up.

I think that the black place is there in all of us. It always has been. It is part of our human nature. It is just as much a part of us as generosity, honor, and love. In a way, just as there is a little piece of God in each of us, there is a little piece of Satan as well. How we run our lives hinges largely on how we balance these two sides of our nature. Some people spend most of their time in the black place, others dwell mostly in the light. Most of us move back and forth……. without giving it much thought.

A wise old indian said to his grandson:

“I feel like there are two wolves fighting inside of me…..one is kindness, generosity and love…… the other is anger, hatred, and vengeance.”

The boy said: “Grandpa…… which one will win? ”

The old man replied: “The one that I feed.”

I will try to feed the better side of my nature. In our public conversation, I feel that we have, at the insistence of the angry talking heads in the media, fed the baser side of our natures. We need to, as a nation and as individuals, turn back from the slide down the slope to anger. This is a choice that we can make. We can WILL this to be so……….. even if the other guy doesn’t. Even if the criminal is unrepentant. Even if we are unable to heal the world, we can heal ourselves

“Lord help me to feed the better side of my nature.”

“Lord please heal the criminal who harmed my family.”

There is an old idea. This was around when I was a kid.

“If you give enough monkeys enough typewriters and enough time…… they will type the encyclopedia Brittanica.” This is the exact logic that is used to justify darwinian evolution. If you give a pile of simple dead atoms enough time, they will assemble themselves into Angelina Jolie. Enough time essentially means an infinite amount of time.

You can tell how old this statement is because typewriters and encyclopedias pretty much no longer exist. The idea, however, is that given an infinite time frame, the extremely unlikely ……even the impossible…….can happen.

This is a flawed idea; but, we use it every day to justify darwinian evolution. The idea is flawed because we apply the theoretical concept of infinity to the concrete, finite physical world.

It is true that, given an infinite number of attempts…… that is, an infinite amount of time, you could assemble the 400 billion chemical bonds of the human genome by random accident. It is also true that with an infinite amount of time we could build a just, fair, peaceful society.

The problem is that infinity is a theoretical concept. It does not exist in our physical world. Things that are theoretically possible in infinity are not possible in our finite world.

So…….darwinian evolution is possible given an infinite time frame. But, an infinite time frame is a theoretical concept that does not exist is our finite physical world.

This failure of logic would be an entertaining mental exercise if the stakes were not so high.

We use flawed logic to “prove” darwinism.

We use darwinism to eliminate the need for God.

We fire God because we no longer need him.

We get to do whatever we want.

All is well………..until we meet God.

Someday I will meet God………. and it will be fabulous……worth dying for.

My hope is to make that meeting with God a joyous event for as many people as possible.

My great fear is that I may have friends and acquaintances for whom it could be uncomfortable.

My great fear is that I will have failed them.

As I think about Christianity, I try to boil it down to its essentials. What is the very heart of my faith? In one word, I think it must be love. I think that this is written on our hearts. We are born with a need for love. And love is inseparable from joy. In short we are hard-wired to love and be loved. The greatest joy that we as human beings…… children of God…….. can know is to love and to be loved. To love without being loved in return is a close second. If you think about it, love is central to a mature relationship with God.

So we need to explore love and joy. I have often said that I have the most valuable skill that a man can know. I have learned how to be happy……to live with joy. Surprisingly, this skill is not universal. In fact, it is uncommon enough that when we see somebody who is filled with joy we take notice.

So how do we become filled with joy? Try getting up tomorrow…… and telling yourself “Today I will be joyous!” Good luck……… we both know that it doesn’t work that way.
Joy just seems to happen. It often just sneaks up on you……right out of the blue. But, is there a way to put yourself in joy’s path……. to set yourself up for joy? I think that there is. And it has to do with the relationship between joy and love.

Joy grows out of love.

One of the rules that I live by is this: “When you are faced with a problem…… focus on the part of the problem that you can control.” I believe that joy comes from love. There is no lasting path to joy other than through love. I will concede that you can go out and buy something and experience a brief burst of joy. I experience this when I buy an exceptional new hand plane……. or a fishing rod…….. or a shotgun. Your list will be different. But, the rush of joy that you get from buying stuff lasts for hours……. days at the most. Shopaholics spend their lives and their money trying to buy lasting joy. Alcoholics try to drink it. You get the point.

So if love is the key to joy…….. then how do we find it? We cannot create love in others. We cannot MAKE people love us. We cannot buy love……and it’s about the only thing that we can’t find on line. So if we are to find love……we must focus on the part of the problem that we can control. And when it comes to love…… the only thing that we can control is how we love others. This is the genius of God, Christ, and the Holy spirit. This is the genius of Christianity.

Two “rules”…………Love God……Love your neighbor.

This is something you can control. You can WILL this to be. And when you do this…… trust me…….the joy will come. And even better……… the joy will stay.

So how do we love?

The heart of love is to focus on the well being of others. This means sometimes putting their needs ahead of your own. This often means forgiving their failures……. maybe even their crimes. If you do this well you may create joy in your target. You will create joy in yourself. I will concede that there are people who will stay angry and mean even after you love them……… love them anyway. The power of love………over time……….will wear them down…… and you will both be better for it.

1 Corinthians 13 includes the best description of love on this planet.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

This universal truth is a huge part of the reason that I am a Christian.

So……. you want joy? You want happiness?

Then love God and those around you. Do this by serving them and caring for them. The joy will come……… and it will endure……and it will spread.