Ash and I are in the midst of a three-day conference-retreat-conversation-thingy called Soliton here in Ventura at the bridge, our local emergent community. Brennan Manning is the key guy this time around, and he gave us “homework” last night, which was to pray through Psalm 103, 1 John 4:16-19, and Isaiah 43:1-5. 1 John 4:17 really stood out to me: “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.” Ash and I talked late into the night about what it looks like to be like Jesus. Being wannabe activists and achievement-oriented types, we started with the action and achievement part: feeding the hungry, comforting the sick, freeing the oppressed, etc. But then we started thinking about BEING like Jesus: confident in the love of the Father, peacefully and constantly aware of the Father’s acceptance.
It’s really hard for me to wrap my head and heart around a love that is completely independent of my actions. I can’t come to grips with a love that pre-exists my acceptance of it…that’s just not how it’s supposed to work! Yet it seems that if God’s unique and totally other identity is to be believed (”God is love”), it must be true. As Ash would say, “What a mind-f***.”
The other thing I’m chewing on is the idea that we all project a god that is not the God of Jesus onto God. C.S. Lewis explored this theme in one of his poems when he wrote that “all prayer is idolatry.” (Brennan used the example of a popular preacher - who will remain nameless, but his name rhymes with “Barry Smallwell” - who claimed the 9/11 attacks were the judgment of God on gays and lesbians. “That is blasphemy!” yelled Brennan in his thick Brooklyn accent. “That preacher is projecting his own hate and rejection of gays onto a god that would summon a jihad!”) Anyway, I’m realizing that I, too, have a projection of god that is not the God of Jesus…which is very weird to own, since I’ve called myself a Christian for quite a few years now. There is a part of me that doesn’t want to turn in my exasperated, disappointed, disapproving (yet mildly amused) god for the Real Thing. I don’t really want to trade in my god of high standards and expectation for a foolish God whose love for me is unaffected by me. Silly, silly God. Can’t you see that makes me powerless to control you?
-ah
This, more than anything, drives home for me how desperately we need a mediator. My language to and about God, in acts of prayer or worship, are wholely inadequate and misaligned with his full nature and work. I speak to him in ways that are inacurate, and I worship him for aspects of his nature that I improperly understand. I need the Holy Spirit to wrap my thoughts in words adequate to the task, the groanings too deep for words that intercede on my behalf. I need a Christ, a mediator to stand in between, and be the god-i-can-see, and to be the man-he-can-accept.
So here is my resting place on this for now. The God I cannot comprehend has made himself known, in every way that it’s important for me to know him, in the person of Christ. Let me start by knowing him.