The Burnside Writers Collective is an online magazine co-founded by Donald Miller. The purpose of the magazine is to spur conversation and engage culture from a semi-emergent, semi-evangelical perspective. I recently added their link in my sidebar and you can RSS them if you want – which I’ve done. Below is the text of an article that makes a very strong, personal, and hard point. While not stated explicitly, it’s getting at the heart of disicpleship – i.e. living like Jesus. Just read it…it’s well worth it…
GOD HATES YOU
FEATURED, SOCIAL JUSTICE — BY M. MORFORD ON OCTOBER 28, 2009 AT 12:00 AM
When I was a kid, we used to play the “opposite game”. A typical conversation would go like this;
Me: “I’m not hungry.”
My brother: “I’m really not hungry.”
Me: “I’m really, really, not hungry. I’m so not hungry that I couldn’t take a single bite”.
My brother: “Oh, yeah, I’m so not hungry I couldn’t even LOOK at a picture of food right now.”
Obviously this is game no one wins and it veers into absurdity almost immediately.
Sometimes I think churches and religious organizations are playing this game as I read articles and emails that tell me in breathless urgency what God hates.
Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church (who calls the Catholic Church the “Pedophile Rape Machine”) openly admits that “God hates fags” sums up his theology (he is also passionate in his hatred for Jews, Michael Jackson, President Obama, popular culture, media “elites”, member of the US military, the East and West Coasts, and just about everyone else on the planet).
Phelps, of course is not alone in this hostility based theology. I get emails on a regular basis from those who describe other faiths as evil. The girl who wore her “Islam is of the devil” T shirt to the first day of school (inspired by her pastor father) is only one incident – the pastor who is encouraging his congregation to fast and pray in opposition to health care reform must have a unique interpretation of “taking care of the least of these.”
Sometimes I can’t figure out if a “Christian” movement is a spoof or if they are truly serious. God Hates Figs surely is a parody site.
I’m not so sure about God Hates Shrimp which has more extensive scriptural support for its position – and I am sure, serious followers. I have friends who believe far flakier things than this.
And just in case you are interested in a more global view, you have to check out God Hates the World. They have posted a detailed analysis of John 3:16 that explains their theology, but their premise is that God has grounds to “hate” every nation on the face of the earth. (I have problems with a theology of salvation based on one’s nation of birth or citizenship. I thought being human was grounds enough for the necessity of God’s grace).
In fact, godhatestheworld.com has an interactive map on its site that allows a user to find out exactly why God hates any given country. They have a special section on the website exploring “the John 3:16 lie.” And of course you can’t miss “God Loves Everyone” – The Greatest Lie Ever Told, which includes 701 passages from the Bible proving God’s hatred and wrath for most of mankind.
If this doesn’t get you down, check out americaisdoomed.com. Like no others, this website cheerily “builds the airtight case that America is not only cursed of God, but that this curse is irreversible.”
I grew up with seemingly endless booklets with the message “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” These booklets were beyond simplistic in their cartoonish formulaic presentation of God’s grace. Yes, the message was shallow and easy to dismiss, but there was at least some sense of a God, however distant, who could – and in fact did – care about a confused kid looking at a booklet.
It still seems to me that any God worth believing in must be far larger than our definitions, formulas or categories.
I’m inclined to agree with those who say that God is too big to be defined (or owned) by any one religion. (A classic book on this topic is Your God is too Small by JB Phillips.) I know that moves me into suspicious territory theologically, but if I saw the slightest evidence that a “godly” nation behaved according to a higher moral standard, I might be tempted to believe some nation, any nation, had a firmer grip on truth and justice.
One of the issues that comes up in these conversations is the question of whether we “worship the same god;” in other words, is “Allah” the same as “God?”
This is a very odd question when you think about it. Who of us has the same conception of “God” as we had five or ten years ago? Do we really think an urban person, a resident of a tiny village or a resident of a refugee camp would have the same sense of who God is and what a good and just can – and does do? The Jews were wise to avoid “naming” God – He was not theirs. They were His. They knew in their gut that they could not be “territorial” about God. There were pagan gods who were indeed territorial, but the God of the Jews was far beyond these – and to categorize God as “one of the gods” was blasphemy.
The flag-waving God of many American Christians is very much one of these “territorial” gods and is a bizarre amalgam of white privilege and American exclusivism based on illusions (at least until recently) of infinite technological progress.
Is the God most Christians worship the same as the unnamed God of those who exhibit and preach hate?
We might consider these voices as extreme, but you can see the “leaven” of their ravings in the margins of the mainstream Christian community.
For a faith that is best – and most fully expressed – by the love believers have for one another (John 13:35) a rallying cry to hate is odd indeed.
Glenn Beck (among many others) has been promoting a list of organizations that are “dedicated to the destruction of America” including groups as diverse as the YWCA, the World Wildlife Fund, Sojourners, World Vision and many other faith and justice groups. You can see the list here.
What are we to make of this?
Is hatred the new love?
Is divisiveness the new unity?
I have always found it supremely odd that most Christians, when pressed, will admit that they don’t care very much how Jesus lived his life, or the theology he lived out or spoke of, but they claim “salvation through his ’substitutionary’” death. (This,of course, is Paul’s view. It would be a shock to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.) In other words, even though Christians insist that Jesus was God and man, most have no interest whatsoever in the “humanhood” of Jesus. And this is in spite of songs like “I want to be like Jesus.” But, of course no one really want to be like Jesus; who wants to be rejected by his family, abandoned by his friends and finally murdered by his own people?
I think those who consider these matters seriously know that the closer one gets to real truth, the more alone and isolated one gets. Truth and the pursuit of justice is the ultimate rarified atmosphere. Being misunderstood is part of the territory. Jesus knew this well when he reminded his followers of the prophet getting no honor in his own country.
So do we worship the same God?
Do we worship the God beyond labels and denominations? Do we worship a God literally beyond our own borders of politics, personal preferences and biases? Can we worship this God with people who don’t look like us? Sing like us? Act like us? Is this God larger – or smaller – than we are?
If our “god” only confirms our political biases and that we are “right”, then this “god” is clearly of our own creation. We have made a “god” in our own image. Such a “god” is unworthy of us. We need a God who expects – and demands – much of us. More than we think we can give.
And we also need a God who is beyond our words – and our definitions. To me, the only God that matters is one far beyond any denomination – perhaps even any religion, but he still knows the hairs on my head. And my deepest fears.
Perhaps it all comes back to the opposite game;
God hates shrimp.
God hates fags
And God really, really hates you.
Filed under: Christian Living, Christianity, Church, Culture, Discipleship
