Walking With God in a World Without "God"

Walking With God in a World Without “God”

1 Kings18:25-39

I suspect that from the very beginning of human history, human beings had some sense that there was “something more” to this life, something sacred.  Those nomadic people with their handful of animals or those subsistence farmers, scratching at the ground had to be so aware of how totally vulnerable they were.  Evidence seems to suggest that the earliest “gods” were connected to those vulnerabilities:  a sun god; a rain god, a fertility god; a healing god and on an on.  If there was a problem between human beings, they could appeal to each other.  If there was a larger problem, they could appeal to or do things to appease those gods.  Maybe a sacrifice to the right god will bring some rain or make winter end or bring a cure for my loved one.

If you read Greek mythology, then you know the next step:  if there are so many gods then how do they all get along?  The Greek answer is, “They don’t!”  They argue and get jealous and go to war just like human beings.  Occasionally, they even meddle in the world of mortals.  This drama is very entertaining and reassuring—“Wow,” we think to ourselves, “the gods are just like us, after all!”

The biggest leap in the history of human beings and their notion of gods was the move to the notion of one God.  This is called monotheism.  Judaism is usually credited with being the first monotheistic faith (followed by Christianity and later, Islam.)  In Judaism, people don’t infer the gods and then decide what they’d like and then imagine how they all get along.  No…in Judaism, God reaches out to human beings.  (Remember Moses here…He’s just minding his business, tending sheep, and suddenly he’s in God’s presence and God has a job for him to do.) Among the first rules that God gives Moses is, “You shall have no other gods before me.”  People were still anxious about weather and healing and prevailing in wars but now they were to leave the gods of those things behind and learn how to walk in the world with the one, true God.

In much of the world, over centuries, the monotheistic notion of God prevailed.  Over time, that notion became grounded, not in human experience, but in theological/philosophical discourse. (If you ever took a philosophy class, you might remember that Plato chose the ideal over the real.  Actual, lived experience is somehow less, somehow suspect.)  Essentially, if there is one God, then just imagine an attribute that is positive (powerful, knowledgable, unchanging) and God must be the highest, fullest expression of that attribute.  So, God is all powerful, all knowing, absolutely unchanging and so on.  These things are true by definition, not on the basis of experience.  

Here’s where that leaves us.  I believe that the central task of Christianity is to live a faithful life, not to think philosophical thoughts.  Jesus spent a lot of time showing us what a faithful life might look like and helping us to see the faithful choices that are ours to make.  This is all about real, lived experiences.  It is also about discovering God’s presence in the midst of our experiences.  Here’s the problem… none of us experience the theological, philosophical, theoretical “God.”  We catch a glimpse of God’s presence in nature or we feel like the Spirit may have energized us to do the hard thing we had to do.  Those experiences are intimate and relational and particular—not universal.  We say, “My God,” not “Thanks Omnipotent God!” (Remember when Jesus called God, “Abba”—“Daddy?”  That’s the closeness I’m talking about.

The universal, theological, philosophical, theoretical “God” is also unknown to those of us trying to walk with God in this world and live a faithful life.  Theoretical “God” doesn’t speak to this world.  With theoretical “God” as the default understanding of God, we now live in a world without God.  Let me explain…

Let’s take the notion of an all-powerful God.  Historically, this understanding of God means that God can do anything.  I assume that this understanding comes out of times when people looked around themselves and asked, “What does real power look like?”  In most places, they would have seen a tribal chief or a national king and extrapolated from there.  God is like a king.  So, God sits on his throne “up there” and judges the rest of us down here and intervenes whenever God feels like it.  Since God could make things different if God wanted to, then everything must be just as God wants it to be, otherwise God would change it.   So, the way things are comes stamped, “Endorsed by God.”  And, if things really get bad, God will change them.  My loved one will be cured.  My nation will win the war. It’s all about me. Way to go, theoretical God!

As someone who used to be so in love with theology and philosophy and theory, I have to tell you that some of the most beautiful mansions have been built out of theories.  They look lovely.  All the pieces seem to be in the right place.  It is such an inviting living situation that we are ready to move in now…except, there’s no way to live in that space.  This is the truth that the world that is living without “God” is trying to tell us:  they crave meaning and purpose and spirituality but that “God”—the old guy on a throne just waiting to intervene—is all theory and no flesh and bone.

I think 150 years ago, it would have been easier to sustain theoretical “God” on a pedestal.  After all, the world was still pretty agrarian and there’s nothing like depending on the next rain storm to come at the right time and then stop at the right time to leave one praying.  People’s worlds were small two—covering their town and maybe a town or two in each direction.  Bad things might happen but they would happen sporadically.  You probably didn’t know the people too well so maybe you could convince yourself that they deserved it in the end.  You weren’t bombarded with evidence of a world that seems devoid of the work of a God who is in charge, who is in control, who is endorsing all that is.

If power is defined in those ways—controlling, manipulating, micromanaging power—then “God” either doesn’t care or “God” isn’t just.  You fill in the list… Who is your friend who died of a terrible disease?  Have you ever read about the holocaust or slavery?  Have you noticed how messed up so many things are? If God’s in charge of this world and everything is endorsed by God then I don’t want to have anything to do with that God—just like the millions of people around us who have come to that exact same conclusion.

However, that is not the God that I know.  The messed up world that I live in is the result of human choices.  If you mess up the environment long enough, the climate changes.  If you don’t produce food in healthy ways, chemicals make their way into the ground and into the food and into our bodies and diseases run rampant.  If we can travel the world in a day then diseases that might never have made it far make their way all around the world.  If we develop terrible weapons, those weapons will one day be used.  Some people want to blame God for such things.  The more direct question is probably, “When we make bad choices, what do we think is going to happen? The only ones who are responsible are all of us human beings.  Sure…we didn’t chop down the rain forest but we wanted the beef and that created the demand for land for those cattle to graze.

I believe that God is all powerful but I believe the highest form of power is not control and manipulation.  No…the most powerful people I know are persuasive and restrained and patient.  The most powerful people whom I know understand that people will never be “all in” until they choose to be all in.  The highest form of love that I see in this world is that of a loving parent who understands the limits of what they can do for their child without limiting their child’s chance to truly grow.  I think God is like the very best loving parent, coaxing us, inspiring us, listening to us but ultimately respecting us enough to allow us to choose.

God won’t stop us from making bad choices, individually or collectively.  God won’t intervene to make those choices consequence free.  (Our ancestors in faith seemed to think God did this but they were also honest enough to tell us that even then, it didn’t work.  People just kept making the same bad choices.) God will inspire people to make better choices.  God will inspire people to be brave peacemakers and excellent doctors and nurses, and amazing scientists.  However, it’s up to us.  God won’t fix us or our world.  God will just love us like our loving parents and keep hoping against hope that one day we will choose to change.

This is why our text is so tempting.  Wouldn’t it be great if God responded on demand, if God was ready to put a little proof into the world, if God was ready to show the people that oppose me that God stands with me?  The prophet Elijah (Team Yahweh) has been going nose to nose with the prophets of Baal (Team Baal.) Now, it’s the final contest.  Elijah sets the terms.  “We’re going to see whose God is THE GOD.  Here’s how it’s going to work.  Sacrifice that oxen. Do whatever you do to get your God to go into action.  Build your altar and let me see some spontaneous flames!  You go first.”  The altar was built.  The oxen was killed.  The wood was stacked.  Words were said. Prayers were lifted up.  Dances were danced.  Knives and swords cut human flesh and human blood was spilled.  And nothing happened…nada…crickets.

Elijah, in an act of mercy, stopped that display.  He rearranged the altar and the wood and the pieces of oxen.  He put 12 stones around the altar, one for each tribe of Israel.  He dug a moat around the altar, too.  Then, three times, Elijah douses the altar with buckets of water, to the point where everything is drenched and the trench is filled with water.  Finally, Elijah offers up a prayer, essentially, “God show us you’re here.  Show the world you are our God.  Please give these people a chance to repent, too.”  Then, in an instant, fire rains down from heaven, ox meat and wood and stones are turned to ash and even the water in the trench is vaporized.  Wouldn’t that be amazing?  Wouldn’t that be…ideal? 

That is not the world we live in.  This is not the God we know.  Instead, I’m stuck back at the “nothing happens…nada…crickets” part.  Every time I want God to intervene, every time I know exactly what I would do if I were God, every time that I want proof and I want it now and I want it mostly to prove that I’m right and someone else is wrong, “nothing happens…nada…crickets.”  It is so easy to conclude in those moments that God just doesn’t care, that life’s not fair, that we have been abandoned after all.

Here’s the thing.  In the silence that follows such efforts, there is space to consider things differently, to learn, maybe even to change.  There is room to entertain the notion that our choices might be the proof of God’s presence, that our actions might be the only hope we have to right what’s wrong, and that our God—the living God—might be more than ready to inspire and guide us forward.  When nothing happens, it’s up to us to make something good happen.