What do you believe about God? I mean what do you really believe?
Do you believe in the creeds? Are there parts that you struggle with?
Do you believe that God is alive and in our midst?
Do you believe that God isn’t just in our midst, but also has something to say about our lives, our society, our politics, and how we interact with others? Now we’re getting uncomfortable, aren’t we? Do we want God to have something to say about our lives, society, money, politics? If this is true, then we might have to change.
If someone were to look at your life and how you talk, and they were asked to describe what you believed about God based on that, what would that say about you and your belief in God?
Do your words and actions, how you live your life, and how you deal with others, match with what you claim to believe about God? If there is a difference, why?
Laced up Lutheran 
So many questions. I dunno where to start.
I have a lot to say, actually. More than a comment box can handle.
In broad strokes, I believe… (not that it’s worth much what I believe) …that God is alive and well, that he cares about his creation and what we do with it.
I believe God is overly patient and longsuffering and asks us to be like that too. But I believe he comes in Judgment also, and there is a finality for wrong-doing after much, much, much patience and longsuffering.
I think we think too big.
Come to my church and you will find a multi-million dollar building with projections for future buildings full of beauty and wonder (so far so good) but somehow it generally (and subtly) glorifies rich, white people. That is, after all, the make up of 90% of those who assemble there.
Do they not CARE for the poor and humble and minority races?
It would not be fair to them to say NO to that question with a blanket answer. There are lots of outreach ministries, lots of money raised, and lots of weekend mission trips organized. And I am grateful for every crumb that falls from the table. Real people with real needs get real needs met from this church every day.
So what’s the problem?
Well, there’s no cross bearing in it, for one thing. But I wont open up that discussion here.
How about we point out how ARM’S LENGTH the poor are carefully kept from us with all this care we offer?
Yeah, carefully prescribed care that we offer that is real actually, but it manages to come out in ways so that WE CAN BRAG ABOUT OUR DEEDS (no, really, go look at the info board in the lobby or the TV monitors displaying such in between worship videos). Also, you rarely find the poor among our ranks (for one thing, we built this fantastic facility over in the white-flight district (wonder why?)). And no one notices, since very few actually hit the streets themselves to see first hand, but rather read what’s printed up in the brochures, when the charitable organizations we support shut their doors on the poor – every day!
The part where crumbs fall from the table? Well, that part I find in the Bible. But the arms length stuff? The bragging?? The outsourcing???
None of that looks like the Jesus of the Bible.
The Jesus of the Bible is there alright, but the “religious leaders of the day” (as we like to call them) mostly don’t see him, and the little bit they do, they find him confronting them for their hypocrisy.
I see it that way still.
Yeah, if you wanna SEE Jesus in the world today, I can take you to a small two person camper trailer where a disabled lady living hand to mouth and off the kindness of others has opened her door to a young couple pregnant with child and fighting addiction to come in and live with her, to share her tiny warm space and her meager food. Her situation is desperate, really, but she has a heart for others.
It reminds me of a young couple about to deliver a baby who showed up from outa town and found no room at the inn. So they gave birth and took shelter in the barn.
Yeah.
Wanna see God in our world today???
Go down to the barn. He is there.
See a mob of hungry lost people looking for a simple touch and a free meal? (You do if you go down to the Ave O soup kitchen.) Well, in the Bible, you find Jesus in the middle of all that, being crushed by the mob on all sides. You don’t find it at the million dollar church where I attend, but you find it at a little camper down South of town.
Yeah. I believe.
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X, thank you for your comments. Believing is more than just the words that we adopt, as you have spelled out so well. It is what we do with those words. I saw an article about a famous “Christian” pastor who proudly proclaimed that he doesn’t refer back to Jesus for his political views. What’s the point of believing in Jesus if Jesus is walled off from areas of our life? Arms-length Jesus is what so many want. Nice Jesus is what people want. Comfy Jesus is a good neighbor to have – one who won’t ask you difficult questions or make life difficult. Give me angry Jesus any day. Angry Jesus changes the world. Weeping Jesus changes the world. Cross carrying Jesus gets in our face. Dying Jesus can’t be avoided. Resurrected Jesus isn’t just changing things – He is the change.
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Matt,
I hear ya. Comfy Jesus is a tame Jesus. He obeys me reeeeeeeeeeeeeeal good! Might move him from the cotton field into the house, he’s so good.
BUT…
I am talking about thinking too BIG here.
Big.
It goes in tandem with comfy, but its not the same. They play well together on the same team, but they are not the same.
Comfy isn’t the whole story.
Big is powerful. Big is prestigious. Big is comfortable. And more…
But look at all the really BIG things God does in the Bible. And look at all the small things he does too.
The biggest of all is also the smallest, most humiliating, most devastated, shameful, painful, emptying, AND UNCOMFORTABLE too. But it requires MOST FAITH to even see it. Even more faith to participate in it.
Exodus! That’s huge! How come it’s not recorded in Egyptian history? How could Pharaoh miss it?
And anyway, it was the little guy taking on the BIG guy and showing him who’s BOSS (God).
And THAT is a constant theme. God keeps choosing the weak, the despised, the foolish, the shameful things to shame the strong, the proud, and so forth.
But my church has gone the way of pride, of strong, of BIG…. all so subtly, but it has. Constantinian baptism. Jesus + …
But every time, in Scripture, this is not God. Its the people wanting a king LIKE THE NATIONS and thus rejecting God as king (I Sam. 8). This is how the child King comes to be laid in a manger and then coronated on a Roman cross. But God takes that Roman cross, that small, shameful, painful, despairing death sentence placed on God by humanity, and turns it into his HOMECOMING…. for those with the faith to see it.
And yes, that challenges comfort too.
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I hear you also. I actually think while we think big, we think God is rather small and not that special. How else to explain why we put limitations on so much of ministry. We think of God in small ways, and think we have to be big to make up for the lack that God offers. Small God is comfy, weak, safe. Big God is the God of Exodus, the God of flipping tables in the Temple, the God of Daniel and Revelation. The God of creation. The God who dies and yet is risen anyway. That’s a big God. And yet so often we want a small god who can’t do anything. Because if god can’t do it, then there’s no push for us to do it either. But if God really does overcome death and sin, well, then all bets are off and it’s about to get uncomfortable. To me, the two are intimately tied.
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At this point, I think we are toying with the semantics. At some (though not all, I think, but some for sure) levels we are using opposite wording to say essentially the same thing.
As I have said before on this blog, your opinions, views, values and all that are generally very close to mine too. Not the same, but close. And I appreciate that. Means I am not as alone as it seems sometimes. Means there is OTHER out there with whom I share a LOT. Which is rare.
Thanx
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I would agree. And yes, knowing that any of us are not alone is a God send. It keeps me sane knowing that there are others out there who can’t just sit by and watch, but feel called to do something, to stir the pot, to be rabble rousers.
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