God Ain’t Easy

Lincoln knew. In his Second Inaugural Address, he spoke of the Civil War’s bloody opponents:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

1. As then, so now.

I worship the Lord, like some of my conservative friends. Liberal that I am, I believe that for several months in 2012, every time someone said "God bless America", whether they knew it or not, they were praying for the defeat of Mitt Romney. My religious-conservative friends might think the opposite.

The Lord, as I understand him, takes the side of the poor, and he is pleased when the government of our country helps to control AIDS in poor countries, and he is pleased when the government of our country helps the legions of our hungry to buy food. But some of my friends know that the Lord said to help the poor and feed the hungry, but they point out, quite rightly, that he never said that the government should be a means of that.

I might be right or I might be wrong; likewise my friends might be right or wrong.

But right or wrong, it’s safe to say that all of us are so vastly thick in our knowledge of the depth and height of breadth and beauty and glory and love of the Lord that compared to what we don’t know, what we do know is very small. And what little we know is often wrong.

 2. Not looking, not seeing.

We like to know things. If mysteries don’t provoke us to seek answers, then they discomfort us. They make us feel small, and we don’t like that. So if we don’t chase knowledge of the Unknowable, we shrink the Unknowable to a size that suits our minds, we compress the glory of the Lord to a shape that fits our ideas . We don’t plead with God to impress his image on our souls; we look for his image in a mirror.

Idolatry is a way to shrink the Lord to the size of our minds. The ancient Israelites made a golden calf that they could see and touch, a golden calf with finite qualities. Know the calf: know the Lord.

3. The mystery.

Meanwhile, Moses was on the mountain, learning from God how to make burnt offerings, the smoke of which would rise into the sky, where God resided above the Israelites, un-seeable, largely inscrutable.

Moses pleaded to see God; God put Moses in the cleft of a rock, and he put his hand over the cleft while he passed, so Moses would not see God’s face and be destroyed. Moses saw only God’s back, and he lived.
 

To Job, God was in the wrong. Job accused God. Then God revealed something of his vastness to Job, and Job put his hand over his own mouth.
 
Sometimes desperate men of God have lifted this deep question:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?/ Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? [Psalm 22:1 (NRSV).]

This, in fact, is the mystery that, in one form or another, unbelievers sometime consider the summit of proof against a loving, powerful God. The lack of a satisfying answer to this question is, to them, the answer to every question about God.

 

Jesus, as a man, is accessible to us; but, like God, he is deeper than our understanding. And, as with God, we tend to project our ideas and attitudes onto him.

 

4. Unexamined ideas.

The glib is the enemy of the deep. We often fail to examine received wisdom. That’s as true of me as it is of anybody. But since I’m ignorant of my own error (if I knew it was error, I wouldn’t cling to it), I’ll pick on other people.

I learned as a young man that salvation was simple. Just say "Jesus Christ, come into my heart", or some version of that, and salvation is a done deal. Some of my friends believe that today. It’s their interpretation of what Jesus said to Nicodemus, about being "born again":

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." [John 3:3 (KJV).]

I wonder how many of my friends who have produced a child think that birth is easy?

I won’t say that there’s an easy answer in the Bible about what it takes to be saved; I admit that if you're willing to isolate some verses, the answer can seem easy. There are arguments on the side of easy grace. But people who believe in that might reckon the parts of the Bible that suggest that salvation ain’t easy.

 

For example:

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. [Philippians 2:12-13 (NRSV).]

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:2-3 (NRSV).]

[B]ut those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. [Luke 20:35 (NRSV).]

 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." [Matthew 24:41-46 (NRSV).]

And "If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?" [1 Peter 4:18 (NRSV).]

I’m not trying to plant panic. I’m just taking the wisdom received from some preachers and from people who approach us in parking lots with invitations to be "saved" and saying that they might be inviting us to adopt a simplistic, if not an entirely wrong-headed, understanding of God.

And I'm not pretending that the passages that I've quoted are a complete answer. There are comforting passages about salvation. Rightly or wrongly, I think that much depends on who you are. Rightly or wrongly, I think that God means to comfort the broken hearted and those who struggle and those who suffer; he means to goad toward love those who prosper and think their prosperity is for themselves only.

5. Paths to take.

"[W]hoever would approach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him." True for the audience of the book of Hebrews; true for us. We are called to seek the Lord.

To seek the Lord, we can test what we know about him by reading the inspired words of those who knew the Lord better than we do – the Bible.

Sometimes I wonder, too, if prayer isn’t more important than reading the Bible. For most of history most people could not read; that's still true in large parts of the world today. But almost everybody can talk to God.

Good preaching lifts the soul.
      
God is love; to love is to know God.

Or maybe, because God is deep and vast, there is no one way and no one combination of ways to journey toward knowledge of him.

6. Journey.

But it is a journey. No journey is more worthwhile. People spend years learning law, medicine, music, football, poker, Mark Twain, or art. People spend decades learning their spouse and discovering their children. These are all good things.

But none of them is, by itself, a path to a joy beyond our imaginations, which we’re called pursue piece by piece, piece by piece, day by day, day by day. The journey can start at any time; it should end when God says.

And this I also trust: God helps along the way.

7. Prayer.

Lord, please un-satisfy us with our present knowledge of you, and make us yearn to know you better. Give us the means to know you. Along the way, call to us toward the direction we should go. Reward our seeking with understanding. Give us strength to persist until we come to where you want us to be. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Annie Dillard Does Not Believe

Annie Dillard is brilliant. Someone asked me why no American public intellectuals believed in God. She was the first candidate I thought of, she of the Pulitzer Prize.

I knew that she believed because I knew some of her work.

This was a woman who wrote about feeling her way through a library at night and taking a book that her hand landed on in the dark. When she turned on the light, the book was The Story of My Life, by Helen Keller. A numinous moment.

I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. It’s a memoir, but it’s theology. I read parts of Teaching a Stone to Talk; parts only, because I left it in a hotel room. At the time, I wanted every American Christian to read "An Expedition to the Pole". I thought that to complacent believers, reading it would be like a groggy man splashing his face from a basin of icy water, though the details of it are hazy now, years later. To me, at the time, it was proof that Annie Dillard got it.

But now, her web page says that she doesn’t believe. Under "Religion", she says "None."

"An Expedition to the Pole" contains a description of a feeble church service, which, however, she found sacredness in. As I understand her website, she now calls it "hilarious".

It’s tempting to wonder what happened. I know some outline of her life, and there are things in that outline that I’m tempted to peer into for an explanation. But that would be glib. The truth is, I have no idea. The truth is that I don’t know what happened in the head of this brilliant stranger who once wrote of God with awe and reverence. I don’t know what happened between this brilliant stranger and a God that I understood better when I followed her thoughts.

She is smarter than me, so her unbelief would be more deeply-thought than my belief.

The unbelief of Annie Dillard absolves anyone of unbelief who has tried to climb to God on a tower that they built with ideas and analysis and knowledge. If Annie Dillard’s brilliance was not wings that would hold the wind of God, then no brilliance is.

And if I must admit that I don’t know why Annie Dillard doesn’t believe, then I also must admit that I don’t know why my friends who don’t believe tread the paths of the world like I do, but don’t see what I see or hope for what I hope for.

And if I must admit that I don’t know why Annie Dillard does not believe, then I can’t know that my own faith won’t pull away, or slip away, or wither away.

I know little of her life; I know none of her future. One day the story of her life will be fully written; that time is not now.

I don’t presume to know the end of that story; nor the end of my story; nor the end of my friends’ stories; nor the end of my family’s stories. These stories are being written. And the best stories go in directions that, looking ahead, you do not see, but, looking back, seem inevitable.

But in the meantime, I cannot count on smarts. What then? Sometimes, when my mind wobbles my faith, I look to God with desperation and hope and say, If I don’t believe in you, I have no hope at all!

I believe because I want to believe. I believe because I believe that life would be unbearable without belief. God forbid that I should be offered some bright worldly prize, a promise of prosperity or prestige or happiness, the price of which is unbelief, paid then or later.

I can keep praying. I can continue to pray for God to draw me to him, to make me grow in faith and love.

I can keep reading the Bible to learn how to live, then live that way. This is called Building your house upon a rock, so that when the storm comes, your house isn’t swept away.

I can keep seeking the company of believers, to surround myself with witnesses to faith.

I can keep remembering those moments in my life when the supernatural has intersected with the natural.

Most of all, I can keep hoping in God’s grace to make me believe, grace to resist what would take me away from God. I can’t control God’s grace, but I can hope in it. "For [the Lord] says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’" (Romans 9:15 (NRSV).) I can hope he will have mercy on me, and that I will receive his mercy humbly, not boasting in merit

Donkeys Like Us

Is Barack Obama arrogant? Yeah, probably.

Look. He rose from nothing; became the first African-American editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review; became a law professor at the highly-acclaimed University of Chicago School of Law; made millions from a best-selling memoir; became a U.S. Senator as a young man; and, against the odds, beat the Clinton machine and the Clinton money for the Democratic nomination for President. Then he took the most powerful office in the world.

Would a guy like that have a high opinion of himself?

Might.

1. The donkey.
 
But here’s the thing: arrogance isn’t the only thing about him. He’s also a loving family man; he’s a thoughtful policy wonk; he’s a serious Christian; he cares about the welfare of the humble; he reaches out to his adversaries (too much, say his critics on the left). He takes risks (Osama bin Laden).

Some people won’t acknowledge the bad in him. Some won’t acknowledge the good. Some believe good things about him that aren’t true. Some believe bad things that are lies.

But our political leaders, including Obama, aren’t cartoon villains, and they aren’t storybook heroes.

They’re complicated. Like you and like me.

As Martin Luther (I believe) said, A man is a donkey, sometimes ridden by God and sometimes by the devil.

2. The Word.

  Why don’t we get that?

We’re a nation dominated by Judeo-Christian traditions, a nation of people of The Book.

So we should.

The Bible is unlike other ancient texts of history and origins. It doesn’t photoshop our historical forbears; it doesn’t edit out all evidence of their sin and fault. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, the son of his old age, in obedience to God, such was his faith; but he also sent away his servant girl with his other son, by her, into the desert, where, but for God, they would have died.

Ten of the twelve patriarchs plotted to kill their brother, Joseph, but instead sold him into slavery to a passing caravan of foreigners.

David loved God with his whole heart; but in the book of Kings, he had sex with another man’s wife. And then, when she got pregnant, he killed the husband to hide his own fault.

By tradition, the apostle Peter asked to be crucified upside down, because he felt unworthy to die as his Lord had died; but while Jesus was in custody before his own crucifixion, Peter denied him three times. When Jesus was arrested, all of his remaining disciples fled.

So the bedrock book of our culture is clear: people are complicated. They are capable of greatness and great love; the same people can be cruel or cowardly or foolish. This truth embraces the great men of our tradition.

3. A sports metaphor.

Why can't we see our leaders that way?

Sometimes we seem to think and speak about our leaders with the restraint and thoughtfulness of a sports fan chauvinistically shouting up his favorite team or putting down a rival team.

4. Myself, ridden by the devil.

And I have been guilty of this. When George W. Bush was president, I happily read Maureen Dowd’s book Bushworld. I gobbled down the delicious disparagements of our president. Ditto when I read Shrub by Molly Ivans.

And in these days, I've had the habit to spend thirty minutes four days a week watching John Stewart on The Daily Show as he hilariously explodes the hypocrisy of Republican leaders and conservative media.

5. Ridden by God.

But I’ve stopped.

I don’t watch The Daily Show anymore. I choose not to watch a man, however clever, put other people down.

I’ve tried to be disciplined about Republican leaders. I’ve written essays on the virtues of Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry, none of whom I could imagine voting for.

6. The Why of it.
 
If the Bible is believed, to see someone as complex is to see them as God sees them. Why shouldn’t we have the habit of seeing as God sees?

And to see someone as evil and only evil, to cherish our hatred of him or her, is sin. Is Jesus’s call to love our enemies a nice idea from a dreamer of dreams? Then, too, 1 John 4:20:

Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

7.  Practice.

I’m a man of faults and virtues. My friends and family likewise are men and women of faults and virtues. However hard, I try to know that about my adversaries and my enemies, too, when I take wisdom.

And I pray for those I oppose. Sometimes, I pray for opposing counsel in cases I have, even if I lean toward having a low opinion of them.

I think that the Minority Leader of the Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, would harm the country for the sake of his ideology. I tend not to think highly of John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, but it’s easier for me to see him as complex than McConnell. But I pray for them by name every day, sometimes twice.

It’s easier to think of someone as reachable by God if they are complex, as opposed to evil. It’s easier to pray for someone whom you think is reachable by God.

And praying for persons in high positions, after all, is the will of God. (1 Timothy 2:1-2.)

Or we can do otherwise. It’s our choice. After all, we are complex creatures, sometimes ridden by God, sometimes by the devil.

A Prayer for American Christians

Father, pity your Christian children in America.
Have mercy upon us when don’t do your will.
Have sympathy when we don’t do what you tell us to do.
Do not punish us; be lavish with the gift of your Spirit.

We are not Christians because we are better than others.
We are Christians because you moved in our lives.
We are not virtuous because we were born virtuous.
Our virtue is a gift of your Spirit.

You teach us virtue.
You teach us, by Paul, that we must not boast.
You teach us, by Jesus, that we serve you when we serve the weak.
You teach us, by Jesus, to love our neighbors as ourselves.

But we don’t love our neighbors as ourselves.
We may despise our neighbors, as if we could judge them.
We treat our Muslim neighbors badly.
We stop their architecture of worship.

Lord, I trust that you cherish our Muslim neighbors.
You are the Maker; you made us all.
An artist loves his art, and you love the work of you hand.
And Ishmael, like Isaac, was made by you.

Lord, precept by precept, day by day, etch your Word upon our hearts.
By your spirit, put your image upon our souls.
Teach us to love what you love, cherish what you cherish.
Teach us to cherish our Muslim neighbors as you cherish them.

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. [Isaiah 64:6.]

Have pity, Lord. Remember that we are leaves in the wind.

In Jesus’s name, Amen.