“I pray God to rid me of God (Meister Eckhart 1260-1329)
Having surpassed by two years my allotted “three score and ten” on this earth, I am still puzzled by so much in Christianity. Let me get some of these puzzlements and frustrations off my chest.
- How can some Christians be in churches for decades and still basically believe the same things they believed when they joined the church?
- How can some Christians talk and sing about God’s amazing grace and saving love and remain racists? Have they never heard Jesus’ great love commandment?
- How can some Christians claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior and yet live lives of greed and indifference to those suffering around them? Are they ignorant of the Sermon on the Mount, the greatest distillation of Jesus’ teaching, or the parable of the last judgment in Matthew 25?
- How can some Christians enjoy all the benefits of science as they seek help from their physicians and at the same time be so opposed to the discoveries of science regarding evolution, vaccines, mental health, and sexual orientation? I remember hearing of members of a flat earth society flying to a conference of fellow flat earthers. Did they not realize that the planes were being flown with the assistance of instruments which assumed the earth is round?
- How can Christians read their Bibles and pray to the God of Jesus Christ and still cling to parochial, ignorant, destructive, self-serving understandings of the God who created a universe measured in trillions of miles and made up of hundreds of billions of galaxies with each galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars?
- How can Christians who supposedly believe in a Savior who is the way, the truth, and the life be so afraid of truth elsewhere? Do they not realize that truth is indivisible?
- And of late, how can white Fundamentalists and Evangelicals join white supremacists, QAnon conspiracy theorists, KKK members, neo-Nazis, and right-wing lunatics in an attempt to oppress people of color and overthrow a democracy based on the radical idea that we are all created equal? Are these Christians ignorant of Jesus’ teachings to love our enemies, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to be compassionate as our God is compassionate toward all of us? How could they have missed that nonnegotiable emphasis?
The problem in a lot of Christianity is not God—the problem is what people believe about God.
These are just a few of my questions and frustrations. I could list at least a hundred more. What I have discovered over the years is this simple truth: what we believe about God determines everything else we believe in our religion. The problem in a lot of Christianity is not God—the problem is what people believe about God. Over the years as a pastor, I met many Christians who did their daily Bible reading and spent much time in prayer. And yet I never saw much if any growth in their spirituality; in their discipleship; in their intellectual understanding of their faith; in their joy and peace; or in how they related to the world around them and the world beyond the narrow confines of their daily experiences. Most of these people were admired for their “steadfast faith and unchanging commitment to God.” But I failed to see much faith in the inertia and status quo of their religious lives. What I saw was an existence void of wonder, curiosity, and openness to truths greater and bigger than the settlement they had chosen. Their lives had become a comfortable and convenient homesteading rather than a pilgrim’s progress.
Finally, I realized that many Christians have created their own idols; their own diminished views of God; their own safe and secure versions of a static god who would never call them to grow out of the confines of the existence they had created. What they needed to do was to rid themselves, their prayers, and their expectations of this truncated god they had molded into a manageable deity—a god who would never ask, much less demand, anything that would shake the foundations of their predictable lives. Sometimes our god must die for God to live.
Meister Eckhart, one of the greatest Christian mystics, understood the necessity of ridding ourselves of god. Notice that he said, “I pray God to rid me of God.” Part of his devotional life was to pray that God wipe from his heart, mind, and soul any notion of the Creator which would stifle his pilgrimage beyond the vast horizons of truth, love, and experience which were before him. He had to let go of the convenient and comfortable idols he had created to discover more and more the authentic God as he traveled his own path of faithful discipleship.
Sometimes as a pastor, I was approached by people who complained that they were stuck in their prayer lives. God seemed absent, indifferent, deaf to their pleas. I always asked these people to tell me about the God they were praying to and what they were asking God to do for them. Almost always, their prayers, in some way, were directed to a God whom they hoped would preserve their status quo, simply give them more of what they already had, or return to them that which they had lost. I realized over the years that when people pray this way and with this limited understanding of God, they never grow in their faith; they never venture forth in trust; and they never find their lives by losing them as they join God in loving this world into its healing (See Mark 8:34-37). They can pray for many hours each day and read their Bibles until their eyes fall out and yet never progress in their spiritual lives and discipleship. Why? Because the God they are praying to is an idol they have created. (I also ask people who have problems with their prayer lives if they ever become silent and listen to what God might say to them. Most of the time, I get blank stares to that question. Prayer as receptive listening had never occurred to them.)
Such idolatry explains why Christians can be racists, homophobes, right-wing lunatics, greedy, violent, arrogant, and willfully ignorant. They have created a god who either confirms their limited or sick religious beliefs and feelings or a god who will never challenge their cherished status quo existence. That’s why when people ask me if I believe in God, my answer is always the same: “Tell me what kind of God you are talking about. I may or may not believe in that kind of God.” (I give the same answer if people ask me if I believe in Jesus. The popular Jesus of American civil religion is a blasphemous distortion.) Sometimes those asking that question respond, “But there is only one kind of God,” to which I respond, “Precisely. And it takes a lifetime and more even to begin to discover and experience the depths of that God. What makes you think that you or I have it all figured out?”
Each of us should be on a pilgrim’s progress. After all, Jesus charged his disciples to “follow me.” I presume that such following never ends. And as the great Albert Schweitzer said, it is only in that following that any of us will come to know who he is. All of which reminds me that I am yet to arrive. I have rid myself of many false gods. And I’m sure I have more that must die of neglect as I open myself to the real God. We all have a lot of spiritual housekeeping to do. We must let our god die so God can live. And that’s a lifetime task.
