Spiritual Conversations pt. 4

Please click here for part 1.
Please click here for part 2
Please click here for part 3
Please click here for part 4

I think the best way for us to safeguard ourselves from the charge of this being too New Agey is to recognize that while we are called to be gods, our god-ness is always derivative and therefore diminutive. This is a critical distinction that prevents putting humanity on the same level as the Triune God but at the same time acknowledges and engages what appears to be the full intent of the biblical material. Whatever it means that we are made imago dei and have the breath of God within us, it is certainly does not mean we are in every way shape and form identical to the Triune God the Creator of the Universe. There is a distinction between Creator and the Created. There is a qualitative and unique difference between the Maker and the Made. As the Created and Made ones, whatever similarities, likenesses, and whatever imago dei fullness we have, is derived from the God who made us. As a result of being derived it means we are less than the Creator. This is the safeguard and clarification of how we can have the first person conversation while allowing the Triune God to remain God and yet at the same time we can be imago dei, little gods, as Jesus says.

Lots of issues could be raised here and lots of material commented on and debated, but here is my hope. Is it possible the imago dei, as the common thread of all human beings, is the best starting point for spiritual conversations because it is something intuitively present? All of the current cultural conversations on spirituality have deep first person god tonality and it seems most people instantly gravitate toward and understand them. Most people ‘get’ they are somehow god, or have God within, or have a seed of the divine.

I am not saying these first person understandings people have about being god or having God within them are entirely accurate understandings. But we are crazy not to wonder what theological basis there might be for this universal sense. And while we may not think people have this first person god thing right, I think we have already demonstrated that many Christians, who are long standing Christ Followers, have very inaccurate views of God being primarily a Judge and have a hard time seeing God as love (I John 4.8 and 4.16). In other words inaccurate first person understandings don’t make more traditional second person understandings automatically more accurate. I think we need to radically rethink and reconsider all possible arenas of inquiry into how we think a journey toward God must proceed. These sorts of “reading the Bible again with a different perspective” exercises require significant humility and a willingness to realize we may not have it all figured out.

GOD IN CREATION
So let’s review. We in the church are more than willing to have the second person, God as Other conversation with people. Our culture isn’t so interested in that, and is quite convinced the church is a pretty judgmental and negative place. So while many remain spiritually interested, the church probably won’t be the primary laboratory for their exploration. Further, culture is having all sorts of conversations about the god within, a sort of first person understanding of God. Those conversations are happening on the national best seller list, day time TV and chat boards across the Net. But the church? Well, we are uncomfortable with that conversation because it is New Age mumbo jumbo and it isn’t the second person God as Other conversation, which is the only one we are familiar with.

There is yet another God conversation the culture is having: the third person conversation about God. God as “It,” God as something out there, God as found and experienced in creation. Alongside the books and conversations about these first person god topics, there is a huge contingent of people who are increasingly concerned about the environment and Mother Earth and the living breathing organism of creation. This is the third person “it” view of God if you will. Whatever you think about the environment is secondary. Adam’s quite literal physical connection to the dirt (adamah in Hebrew, with Adam’s name being adam), and he and Eve being given a mandate to take care of the earth, should be enough for us to recognize people are hovering over material we should be willing to have God-conversations about. Certainly one of the more hopeful conversations going on in the church recently is the need for us to be tuned into the creation, the environment, God’s earth he’s given us to steward.

Again we need to learn to read the Bible with this new view. We have lots of passages that seem to indicate an intimate connection between God and creation. Consider Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.

Creation here is so intimately linked to God. In a passage like this, creation is personified as speaking, as God actually telling us something about himself. Romans 8 seems to be the New Testament counterpart to a passage like Psalm 19.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:18-22)

Again creation is personified as living, breathing, longing and injured.

Of course other passages could be listed but the point is clear: God has a deep connection with creation. And note we didn’t say God is creation. Just like the first person God caveats we noted, we need to offer third person God caveats as well. We need to maintain a view of God that says God is distinct from creation but intimately invested in and working in and through creation. And the issue is getting momentum these days. If Oprah is the goddess of the first person god conversation I would guess we would have to say people like Thomas Berry and more popularly Al Gore are the apostles of the third person god conversation.

Until recently the Christian conversation about ecology and God’s creation was mostly relegated to those who were considered tree-hugging liberals. But not so anymore. This is a huge issue that more and more people in the church are starting to realize is part and parcel of the very story we have been invited to live, a story that starts in the Garden of Eden. Again I need to say I am not suggesting God and creation are one and the same. But I am suggesting that for all the cultural conversation where creation is personified and nearly deified, we have within our Christian tradition and theological repertoire adequate and legitimate resources to enter into powerful conversations.

I can talk to any of my investigating friends about being made like god or having a charge from God to take care of creation, and every one of them instantly gets that and understands what I am talking about. When I use that entry point into the conversation I am starting where they are, not where I wish them to be. When I start there, I then open the possibilities of entering into second person conversation about God as Other, about the God who made creation, about the God that put this intuitive sense in them that they are divine or somehow connected to the divine.

I am afraid as long as Christianity is primarily understood as a batch of propositions where God is judging how well you execute them, we will have problems getting people interested in the story. And I would suggest their lack of interest may be a good thing. Their lack of interest in our truncated, abbreviated Fall-Redemption story may be the very thing we have needed to get us to re-read the story to see if we have it right.

Tagged as: culture, spiritual conversations, theology