Redeemed to God, Part II

Just to clarify, I don't know what the idea of being redeemed to God means if by that phrase someone means that I'm supposed to have a relationship with God. And by relationship I mean the kind where you talk to each other, know each other, hang out together, etc. Within a Christian framework it seems that Jesus came to reveal who God is, so it's not as if prior to Jesus people had a great idea what God was like. That is very evident within the narrative of the gospels because the people of God don't recognize the incarnation of God. This despite 39 previous books that allegedly revealed God's will, character, wants, and whims.

This is the point where Christians will say, "Jesus came so we can know God (among other things), and we receive the Spirit of God as both a guarantee of our salvation and a means to commune with Jesus." The problem as I see it is that there is no way for anyone to differentiate "the Spirit" from intuition, whim, impression, thought, hallucination, or projected desire. Talking to God at this point becomes a game of deciding which impressions are the Holy Ghost and which ones are random thoughts that flit through my head. This was especially treacherous in my charismatic days when everyone thought they had a "word from God." If there are no criteria by which to judge the Ghost's activity, then any inclination or desire can be read as "the Ghost." Borat made this painfully obvious in the scene where Cohen gets "saved and filled with the Spirit" at a charismatic church. No one knew they were being played, so everyone agrees to play along: Borat is therefore momentarily a charismatic Christian.

To use a less absurd example, the average person cannot distinguish the voice of the Ghost from any "good" thought that might come to mind. When people tell me they talk to God and God talks back, I ask what God had to say. It's always something vague or trite, and something that cannot be disproven: "I love you," "I've been with you all the time," "I hurt as much as you," "Trust me," or some equally innocuous tidbit. Just once I'd like someone to hear from God in such a way that the veracity of the claim can be measured. If it can't, you might as well be making things up in your mind. This tendency becomes dangerous and destructive when the voice of God is offered on behalf of someone else: the kind person who told a 12-year old girl last week that God took her daddy because He needed him for something. (God needs a 43-year old man more than his 12-year old daughter?) One of my favorites in the charismatic days was "God is going to restore your marriage." A promise that had the happy effect of making someone actually work at his marriage thereby fulfilling the "prophecy."

Christians seems fond of saying that God doesn't micromanage. Great. I think the Bible makes that abundantly clear, unless you read it through a Reformed lens, but what does that mean for a Christian? If God doesn't micromanage, what is she going to tell me? Greg, I don't care how you get this done, but I need you to go to Zambia, hold a revival, and get thousands saved. How 'bout, Greg, go to the hospital and pray for Joe Jones; I'm going to heal him of leukemia. Nope. God doesn't talk enough, nor does she speak with a distinct voice so that the person who wants to know God is talking can distinguish that voice.

Communication is the heart of relationship. Christians seem to know this when they trot out the old canards about marriage and family, but they develop selective amnesia concerning this point when the conversation is about prayer. You can't have relationship with someone whose face you can't see, whose words you can't read (I dare you to mention the Bible.), or whose voice you can't hear. Call it what you want, but it ain't a relationship. If being redeemed to God means that I'm supposed to have some sort of relationship with Her, then I'm out. If redeemed to God means Jesus came so we would know at some level that God really loved us, I can live with that. If that love has to be mediated by some other means than loving the other as if that other were the beloved of God, then I'm lost. I can't love an abstraction or a concept. I can love a person. I hope that God is okay with that.

Comments

[Fremen_Warrior66]

Hmmm....Communication with God is a problem seen throughout the Bible. Every time God "tells" someone to do something, they don't quite get the message.

Some of the Psalms even talk about the seemingly silent nature of God.

The church tradition I've grown up in has always been kind of hush hush about the holy spirit. It's like we don't quite know what to do with it. So we just kind of push it to the side. People get uncomfortable when people mention its presence in their life.

There have been times for me personally when I notice that a specific line of thought or idea is constantly repeated to me through a variety of sources. It has has crossed my mind that maybe that's how God talks to people. Something as simple as repetition.

Something won't work out and an opportunity will come about that would never have been realized otherwise.

These are the times when the thought of communication with God crosses my mind.

I've always seen prayer as a symbolic sacrifice of time. I never really see it as anything but a one way conversation. Maybe he answers those prayers, but he never communicates to me directly.

I've also found great peace and solace in prayer. There's something therapeutic about it, especially when it doesn't involve heaping your minuscule problems on the creator of the universe and instead just acknowledging your contentment of everything.

[Kristen]

I've never understood prayer, never liked prayer but I've tried. When I was a kid there was a time when I lost someone so close to me and really lost a dream and hope and needed to hear from God. All I needed was him to comfort me and promise that something better would come and there was nothing. Since I was so young I didnt understand this and its been an ongoing thing. There have been times since then that I thought God talked to me, but the inconsistency with which he chooses to speak is madening if he really even speaks. How is that a friend?

[april]

greg, this is awesome.
kristen, love your comment.

[Leighton]

Human minds are very good at finding significance in stories. Today I came across this story of a National Guardsman who legally changed his name to Optimus Prime because

My dad passed away the year before and I didn't have anybody really around, so I really latched onto him when I was a kid.

This sounds crazy at first glance, but I think it's actually a normal sort of thing to do, even though people usually don't do this except with more socially mainstream narratives. (The article says the toy filled a void, though that's absurd; I think it's much more likely that the character in the cartoon was the stopgap. If I had found myself on my own, I would probably have done the same thing with Tom Baker from Doctor Who.)

I think what winds up happening is that for whatever reason, we need to be part of a narrative, so whether we mean to or not, we pick one that feels like it's "good enough"; sometimes it's a single, overarching story, sometimes it's a collection of competing yet complementary narratives that function like a conversation. "Good enough" is the tricky part. I grew up in a church, but the community's story there didn't address any of the things I was dealing with, and imposed lots of things that seemed unnecessary, so even before I started school I was always unconsciously looking for something else.

The funny thing is, sufficiently deep and aware people can give just about any story meaningful life. God may be an idea and an abstraction, but there have been enough people over the centuries trying to make the notion work that the various theisms have a lot of power, and it's easier for people to plug themselves into the narratives since they've been distilled (or watered down) so many times and in so many different ways. What's pernicious about parts of American Christendom, though, is the category error that claims this story is something that can impose itself on you in the same way other physical people can--it's not. You have to seek it out and actively make it work, and if you aren't, or if you're not surrounded by people doing it for you, there isn't anything there. It's not like when you tell your roommate you're not sure he exists and he calls a psychiatric hospital to have you evaluated. You're just sitting there waiting for Godot.

Lots of people say they have an inner relationship with God, and I think in a lot of these cases what's happening is the same sort of thing that goes on when you're at the store or see something on TV and think "Oh, my friend Beth would like that," or when you hear what they would say in response to a joke even when they're not there. Authors routinely have their characters interrupt in this way, too. These experiences are real--they exist in the sense that they cause and are caused by other mental processes--but part of the humility in what Buddhists refer to as "nondetachment from beliefs" is recognizing that what is absolutely binding for us in our inner lives can't possibly be decisive for other people who don't share our inner experiences. (Likewise, no one else's inner experiences can be binding for us, since we can't properly interpret them.) It's good to view those impulses and flashes with insight with a little bit of discernment, examining them from the perspective of our other faculties, being mindful of the direction they want to take us. This is probably what Paul meant by "testing the spirits."

Man, this would have been so much shorter if I weren't totally drunk and could tell which parts are actually relevant and which just restate parts of your post. This is ridiculously long. Sorry bout that.

[Dino]

Greg,

Perhaps relationship may be a bit of a stretch to describe the present connecton between God and humanity.

However, I think for me there is a mystery and a sense of hope in the redemptive work of Christ. Somehow through the Christ event we are in the process of being relationally restored towards God and towards one another, both of which seemed to be lost in the Genesis narrative. That journey or process has begun and can be partially accessed, but is not completely or fully accesible at this time. The kingdom is present but not fully disclosed.

Perhaps what God has said or communicated has already been revealed, and His relationship towards us is symbolically and literally established in the Incarnation of Christ. Maybe now our part in this partial relationship is to bend our lives towards God and seek to be faithful to become the people Jesus taught, lived, and called us to be, by participating in and practicing redemptive relationships and actions in the world.

I am compelled to believe that God's Spirit is active and present in the world today. I am not sure I can explain how or when God speaks or why He/She at times seems to be hidden and far removed.

[Natalie]

Awesome post.

[Jared Rader]

When I first became a Christian, the summer after my 6th grade year, I was all fired up about having a relationship with Jesus and showing that to my friends and whatnot. Some time in 7th grade I was doing some sort of devotional thing, and it asked me to try to speak to God and hear from God. So I was all fired up and I sat there, asking God to reveal something to me.

And I sat there. And sat there. And sat there. Praying and praying, and then all of a sudden, a voice popped into my head that said this:

"Drop your swords."

I remember that at the time, I was certain, OMG God spoke to me! But now, years later, that could have just been a random thought that popped into my head. It was vague and trite. What the hell could "drop your swords" mean? I could easily apply some redemptive value to that. It could mean that I need to let go of some sort of security I have in something that is not redemptive. Or something like that. It also doesn't help that the voice that popped into my head had a British accent. And I'm not even kidding about that. I don't know why God would choose to speak to me with a British accent, and I can't say it was God. I think you can try and believe something so much that when a random thought or event happens, you can easily be like "that's God!" Which is maybe what happened with me then.

I do know a man who was somehow miraculously healed after having a stroke that killed about a third of his brain that was pretty vital to the function of the body. Somehow after one of the greatest people I've ever know prayed for him, he became fully functional. This event of course only breeds more questions like, why did it get to happen to that guy and not some other guy in a similar situation.

So, all in all, the conclusion I get to is, I just can't be sure. And I don't think it matters that I'm not sure. If I live the way Jesus taught to live, that should be well enough, maybe? Hopefully?

[Leighton]

If I heard "Drop your sword[s]," I would assume I was remembering a Princess Bride line, especially if it was in a British accent. But seemingly unlike most people, I tend to remember lines from movies and TV shows at the most random times. When I heard a few years ago that my grandpa had died, the first things I thought were lines from the opening theme to an anime. Brains are strange and resilient things.