A Danger to God Himself

A blog about living a great life without God—because, really, isn’t that where we all find ourselves? What does it even mean to “have” God in your life?

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What do people mean when they say, “I follow God”?

January 9, 2016 By John Draper 6 Comments

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Nestled at the core of every religion is the assumption that we are meant to give ourselves to God, join His “side,” if you will. Life lived right is a life oriented around God. “He must become greater. I must become less,” as the bushy bearded John the Baptist said. We must serve God.

Which begs the question, “How is it we are supposed to know what He wants us to do?”

I mean, He is silent and invisible, after all. It’s not like He leaves a sticky note on your bathroom mirror each morning so you’ll see “God’s To Do List For Today” while you’re shaving.

Let’s review our options.

One, we could hear the audible voice of God. Obviously, this is a non-starter. When someone tells us they hear the audible voice of God we think they only have one oar in the water, that they’re one taco shy of a combo platter.

Number two, we could lean on a sacred text. This really isn’t much better. Every sacred text out there leaks like a sieve. I mean, look at Christianity. Jesus never wrote down any instructions for his apostles. And the apostles never wrote down any instructions for us. Most Christian dogma comes from the writings of Paul, and he never even met Jesus. And the Book of Mormon—don’t get me started on the Book of Mormon! Really.

Three, God could speak to us through that Still, Small Voice that scripture speaks of—that inkling that we’re headed in the right or wrong direction. “I feel a peace about this,” so many believers say when explaining their decision to take a particular course. Here’s the problem with the Still, Small Voice. It’s always what we would have decided left to our own intuition. In fact, I’d go further: It is our intuition—and it’s usually over trifling matters. When the problem’s really thorny, we just end up throwing our hands in the air and taking our best guess.

(I’m sorry, but I must throw out Mormon tidbit. I read about 50 books on Mormonism to research my novel, so I’m just chock full of these things. When the Mormon prophet Spencer Kimball was personally troubled by the church’s long-held doctrine of excluding black men from the priesthood in the late 70s, he sought out the will of God by entering into earnest prayer. He had the other apostles join in. No word, though—neither audible nor of the Still, Small variety. So here’s what Kimball did. He told Heavenly Father that he was going to go ahead and remove the ban unless Heavenly Father interceded and told him not to. Heavenly Father didn’t, and Kimball lifted the ban on black men. It was a Revelation of Omission. There’s the Still, Small Voice in action for you.)

Four, God could speak to us through other people. This one doesn’t go anywhere, either. Turns out everyone else is as in the dark about what God wants as we are, so they’re no help.

So . . . how in the world do we know what God wants us to do? Turns out, believers are just doing the same thing non-believers do when it comes to making life choices: making it up as they go along and hoping for the best.

What more could you possibly expect from the God Who Hides?

 

Photo: For God, follow signs to Salt Lake City by Quinn Dombrowski CC By-SA 2.0

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Does God require worship?

December 29, 2015 By John Draper 1 Comment

Does God require worship

First off, let me say that worship is real. I’ve experienced it. Back when I went to church, I loved to worship God. In fact, it might have been my favorite part of the service. (The sermons were always pretty boring.) I felt a . . . yearning . . . for God when I would be caught up in worship. Caught up. That’s a good description. Reminds me of body surfing in Hawaii. Sometimes you wouldn’t time it quite right and the wave would grab you and fling you around. For a moment, you weren’t sure in which direction the surface lay and you panicked realizing you weren’t in control of the situation.

Worship’s like that. You’re engulfed. At times, there’s even a sense of panic—a taste of what it means to fear God. It is awful—in that you’re full of awe. Caught up in the wave.

Worship feels so . . . right. So fitting—as if we were made for this very thing and we’re not fully ourselves until we are engaged in it.

So I don’t think people are deluding themselves when they worship God. I think it’s a natural outcome of trying to conceive of the inconceivable. No other response seems right when we try to grasp how high and wide God is.

That said, I don’t think God really cares one way or another if we worship Him/Her/It/Them. If you pushed Him/Her/It/Them, the answer you’d get is that there was probably a better way you could be spending your time.

Saying this, I realize it runs counter to the express instruction of Jesus Christ. He was asked what the greatest commandment was and He said it was to love “the Lord they God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Coming up a close second was loving your neighbor as yourself.

Putting God at the center of your life—that was the point of life, according to Jesus.

Jesus got it wrong. You can’t blame Him, though. What else was He supposed to say? He was a first-century devout Jew. The people who were questioning about the greatest commandment were just looking for a way to accuse him of blasphemy. He had to give the politically correct answer. He was just telling the truth, to his way of thinking.

He was wrong, though. God doesn’t care about worship.

I’d go further. I think the primary error of religion is the notion that God wants us to focus on Him/Her/It/Them. I think He/She/It/They want us to focus on one another.

I mean, God certainly isn’t vain. A self-centered God isn’t worth worshipping.

Some religious folks may say that the reason we devote ourselves to God—and lose ourselves in worship—is that it gives us perspective. It puts us in our place. We are not on the pedestal. God is. I understand the sentiment. God is awful—terrifying, even, when you think about it, even a God Of Love. The fitting reaction is to fall upon one’s face, as the Bible says.

Problem is, worship actually makes us more self-centered. After all, we have the correct God. All those others—hapless boobs—they worship false Gods. No God but God, the Muslims say, for example, by which they mean Allah. A staunch Baptist will tell you Mormons worship the devil.

Everyone says their God is the God—ergo holy wars.

It’s Jesus’ greatest commandment that causes all the religious friction in the world. I mean, no one will argue with doing good to one’s fellow man/woman. But to insist that we worship God begs the question: Whose God?

God is, well, God and, as such, is due the devotion of every heart, soul and mind on the planet. Those who think otherwise must be . . . corrected.

Why can’t religion not be about God.

Going to church to worship God on Sundays isn’t wrong. It’s understandable, but it’s unnecessary. The value of church is that it’s a community of people who care for each other.

That’s the religion I want.

 

Photo: Worship by Montecruz Foto https://www.flickr.com/photos/libertinus/ CCBY-SA 2.0

 

*****

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