SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE! 3
A DEVOTIONAL ESPECIALLY CHOSEN FOR MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH OF THE SMOKING CHRISTIAN
This devotional is taken from the book “Searching for God Knows What” by Donald Miller. (Nelson Books, 2004)
I remember watching that television show I Dream of Jeannie when I was young, and I wondered at how great it would be to have a Jeannie of my own, complete with the sexy outfit, who could blink a grilled-cheese sandwich out of think air, all the while cleaning my room and doing my homework. I realize, of course, that is very silly and there is no such thing as a genie that lives in a lamp, but it makes me wonder if secretly we don’t wish God were a genie who could deliver a few wishes here and there. And that makes me wonder if what we really want from the formulas are the wishes, not God. It makes me wonder if what we really want is control, not a relationship.
Some would say formulas are how we interact with God, that going through motions and jumping through hoops are how a person acts out his spirituality. This method of interaction, however, seems odd to me, because if I want to hang out with my friend Tuck, I don’t stomp my foot three times, turn around, and say his name over and over like a mantra, lighting candles and getting myself in a certain mood. I just call him. In this way, formulas presuppose God is more a computer or a circus monkey than an intelligent Being. I realize that sounds harsh, but it is true.
So if the difference between Christian faith and all other forms of spirituality is that Christian faith offers a relational dynamic with God, why are we cloaking this relational dynamic in formulas? Are we jealous of the Mormons? And are the formulas getting us anywhere? Are modern forms of Christian spirituality producing better Christians than days long ago, when people didn’t use formulas and understood, intrinsically, that God is a Being with a personality and a will of His own? Martin Luther didn’t believe in formulas, and neither did John Calvin. Were they missing something, or are we?
The truth is there are a million steps, and we don’t even know what the steps are, and worse, at any given moment we may not be willing or even able to take them; and still worse, they are different for you and me and they are always changing. I have come to believe the sooner we find this truth beautiful, the sooner we will fall in love with the God who keeps shaking things up, keeps changing the path, keeps rocking the boat to test our faith in Him, teaching us to not rely on easy answers, bullet points, magic mantras, or genies in lamps, but rather in His guidance, His existence, His mercy, and His love.
2 Comments:
I think C.S. Lewis would answer your question by saying that yes, God is our friend but he is not, “safe.” God himself demanded certain “formulas” for approaching him in Exodus 19. (Yes I understand that the veil is now removed by Christ’s death on the cross.)
One of my favorite professors at the Harvard of Christian Evangelicalism, Robert Webber (a proud Bob Jones University reject), called your formulas the “dead forms of religion.” He gave a chapel message on the subject. I have the tape somewhere. He too railed against the dead forms that come between God and us.
I suppose that the reason these formulas exist is because people find comfort in them. They establish a set of conventions and a kind of framework for proper behavior towards God. Not always bad. Second, they appeal to our pride by convincing us that we are actually doing something good or accomplishing some level of piety, which will be recognized and rewarded by God and our fellow man. Not usually good. Third, whoever or whatever is determining the formulas has power over those following them. Almost always bad over time.
On the other hand, Jesus and the apostles gave some forms: like communion and, in a general way, baptism. Also I find the complete lack of any kind of formula, disturbing. Worship–in some evangelical churches but not all–is a good example of an area where formula has been jettisoned to the detriment of meaning. Worship devoid of its historical conventions and connections becomes mere methodology for recruitment or an appeal to cultural relevance, as if the Holy Spirit needed such assistance. When confronted, people will inevitably try to frame the argument in terms of style. This is a false argument.
How we approach God is one of those areas where we will never completely agree. The person who thinks they have figured it out, well, see one, two and three above.
Dear Yak,
Thank you for your comment. I am so looking forward to chatting with you when you come back here to visit. You stimulate my thinking.
I fear I have taken Miller's quote out of its context and thus robbed it of its intent. He was talking about a person's personal relationship with God rather than corporate worship.
Undoubtedly, God laid down very clear directions for how he was to be worshiped under the old covenant and one only varied those directions to his own peril. At the same time, following those directions to the letter apart from a heart relationship with God resulted in the Pharisees and the ultimate rejection of Messiah.
There is a huge danger out there in evangelicalism that I battled for many years. Let me give one illustration (and I have far too many of them!). At my last church quite a few young, unchurched people began attending and a number of them came to faith. To my horror, when they came to share their profession of faith for membership, a number of them were rejected by the church leaders because they "left out" certain steps in their process of conversion. One guy said, "I didn't hear him talk about repentance." He had most assuredly described his repentance but he hadn't used the word itself. (I guess I lied, here's a second illustration.) A young woman spoke about being convinced that only Jesus could save her so she knelt down beside her bed and prayed to God and "saved herself." This, of course, brought howls of "heresy" from the leaders. These people had unquestionably experienced faith but they were unable to describe the "steps" they had gone through to the satisfaction of the judges.
At the same time, as Miller points out elsewhere in his books, there is another danger in the way we condense the conversion process into a series of intellectual affirmations, so many "spiritual laws." A person can confess to believing all the elements of the gospel message without having any sort of relationship with God at all. We aren't communicating the gospel message well if people come away thinking it is merely a series of intellectual assertions. I think this is why so many of our good, old, faithful mainline denominations have congregations full of people who have never experienced a personal relationship with God.
In my humble opinion, when pastors, elders, evangelists, or any other Christian authority starts putting out hoops for people to jump through in order for them to become followers of Jesus, they put themselves in great danger. The Wild Lion seizes his prey however he wants to! We cannot dictate how he will save someone any more than we can dictate to Him what he will do in our own lives after he has saved us!
I think Miller is talking about personal Christian spirituality in this section of his book. I don't think he is making a comment about corporate worship or conversion. I quite agree with you about the value of ancient forms in corporate worship. I've had the privilege of spending a great deal of time with Bob Webber over the last 20 years and my views on this subject owe a great deal to him. Traditional evangelicalism and seeker churches have stripped away the forms of worship with Cromwellian gusto and have replaced them with nothing! The "purpose driven" church we left a couple of years ago was nothing more than a contemporary Christian rock concert with a pop speaker added onto the end of it. There was no corporate worship, no sense of believers joining together to share their love and adoration of their God. We are restoring a good many of the ancient forms at Shiloh.
I think that, at the end of the day, we probably would find ourselves in very close agreement on these things. At least, that is the flavor I get from your comment.
Thanks again for such a thoughtful comment! (These comments are almost blogworthy! As long as we are coining new terminology!)
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