December 4, 2006

• Still reading The Deity Formerly Known as God by Jarrett Stevens.

  This book is touching a lot of chords in me. I had discussed a few images of God from the book in a previous post. The next chapter is “Talent Show Judge.” Here is a quote that I can relate to: p. 54 “For as long as there have been people with even the slightest shred of dignity, there have been people who are there to tear them apart. It’s inevitable, almost Darwinian.”

  What saddens me is that this kind of behavior isn’t only in the unsaved world, but it is so apparent even in Churches today. People seem to want to tear down another person. There is denominationalism, there is a suggestion that my spirituality is better than your spirituality. It isn’t true discipleship if a person walks away from an encounter feeling that they have failed in their relationship with God, that a relationship isn’t attainable for whatever reason. That there are so many rules that a person can’t keep them all. A true shepherd walks alongside or slightly in front of the sheep, and guides them with love one step at a time.

  Jarrett Stevens continues to describe endless attempts of trying to impress and please a distant and difficult to please God. Feeling rejected, learning cues, doing things but they are never good enough. Living with the sense that God wants more, and more and more and more. Churches will also pull on people’s desire to work to please God, and volunteers are soon burnt out with too much on their plates.

  Listen to this passage, p. 60 “And yet I sometimes wonder that if God were to tell them, “Well done,” whether they would even recognize his still, small voice. For while they did more for God than most, it seemed as though they knew him less and less. Religion for God had ellipsed relationship with God until their inner lives were lost to their outer lives.”….”The strong, sturdy shell of godliness without its gentle growing grace. Somewhere along the way they substituted activity for intimacy, and the rest is history.”

  I sometimes catch myself doing this. Given my past, I learned that it was what you did that preserved your life. And I felt that if I tiptoed around God’s kingdom, didn’t draw too  much attention to myself, and did a lot of service, maybe, just maybe God wouldn’t kick me out of His kingdom. I felt sure that He would realize how horrible a mistake He had made in accepting me for salvation. I know that this is not true now, but there was a period of time when I feared attracting God’s notice.

  Jarrett continues, p. 63″Without realizing it, we have carelessly created for ourselves a God whom we can never please….No one wants to admit we don’t know what to do when it comes to God, so we begin to do anything and everything we think he might want…..There is always more. And over time, the more you cease to sense God’s inexplicable delight in you, the more your life begins to resemble a sad series of talent show auditions, ever hoping to impress or earn what was already offered to you.”

  I have to tell you that one sermon that really impacted me pointed out that nothing I could do now, nothing I did in the past, and nothing that I can do in the future will cause God to love me any less. This God is so incredible to me, that agape love thing blows my mind at times. I cannot conceive it, and at times even fear it. Yet I yearn for that kind of love, only to push it away in fear. Oh what a complex mess we can get ourselves into.

  Jarrett then says p. 64 “He is in fact the one (sometimes the only one) cheering us on. For some this is far more shocking than the God of More….His cheers ring out not for our flawless performances, but for our sheer existence. He loves us and delights in us not because of what we do for him, but because of who we are to him. It is from this place of love and acceptance that I long to serve God, not the other way around.”

  Heather says a hearty AMEN to that.

  Then Jarrett talks about the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. I have a few subscribers that fit that bill completely, and it saddens me. I lived at this buffet table for so many years when I was in the new age and occult, the idea that you can take the best of many religions and leave the rest behind.

  Jarrett begins by talking about how 90 percent of Americans believe in God, but what God do they believe in. He then points out that some believe in a God that takes on a vague form of nothingness, resembling an idea more than a person. Others see God as an “everythingness” a catchall for divine assumptions.  He points out that our culture is inundated with options, and we try to customize our God.

  pp.70-71 “…that it’s possible to spend your whole life filling your plate with your favorite parts about God, while your soul slowly starves from divine malnourishment. This smorgasbord of spirituality is how so many people like their God–a buffet, a hodgepodge, a veritable cornucopia of all the things we like in a deity, and none of the things we don’t. A plate overflowing with all the best parts. A God who encompasses the grace of Christianity, with the meditation practices of Eastern religions, with a dash of Catholic ritual, and a smidge of “health and wealth” to top it all off. Incongruity is no issue so long as you don’t think about it for too long.”

  The problem is that you end up with nothing. There is no way that you can successfully combine two opposite religions – God who tells us there is only one God and He is it with say, Hinduism who has so many gods to worship and appease.

  Jarrett continues, p. 74 “Could it be that in your desire to pick the best parts of everything, you have been left with the very worst part of nothingness?….Real faith comes from releasing control and choosing the whole of God instead of fabricating a God of your favorite parts. God is inseparably whole.”

  The last type is “Your Parents, Supersized.” Jarrett seems to have had an ok childhood, but what is interesting to me is that even with a childhood I might have envied, he still had problems dealing with God due to impressions made by his parents. I remember Bruno Bettelheim wrote a book once called A good enough parent and his conclusion was that no one is a perfect parent. When I read that, I vowed to be that perfect parent. I failed that vow, and as I read this chapter about your parents, supersized, I said a prayer to God that if there was anything that I said or did to hurt my kids’ perception of God, I wanted God to intervene and heal that breach.

  I grew up in a home filled with abuse and for many years having someone say, “Father God” would send chills up my spine. I did not want a father God, for I could only view him as brutal as my earthly father. Even to today, strong forceful people who talk loud can still send me cowering. I have a hard time with intensity. But God is healing that slowly. I now can handle “father God” but tend to still be a bit tentative about calling Him that myself. There are still areas that need healing in that regard.

  Jarrett says on p. 77 “Good or bad, like it or not, the bottom line is that there is no more powerful force in the universe that shapes your perception of and experience with God outside of your parents.”

  Then the book changes and the next few chapters will be accurate pictures of God, but the chapter that transitions is called “Show and Tell.”

  P.87 “‘Jesus wrecks everything!’ Contrary to the beliefs of many late-night blinged-out televangelists. Jesus really does wreck a lot of what we call life. He wrecks the comfy, cozy lives we build for ourselves. He messes up the neat little boxes we try to fit him into. He wrecks the subtle yet destructive images of God we’ve spent our whole lives building. Ultimately (and I hope), if we get close enough, Jesus wrecks us too.”

  I am so grateful that he wrecked my life. 

  Hoping you have a blessed week!

  Heather
   

   

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