The Love that is God

Matthew 7.21-29

“And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority.”

Several years ago now, USA Today featured a story about the various and often contradictory perceptions of God in America, and how a person’s perceptions of God influences their opinions on political issues of the day. The research came from a book by two sociologists at Baylor University in Texas entitled America’s Four Gods: What We Say about God and What that Says about Us. The four characteristics of God as defined by the researchers are Authoritative, Benevolent, Critical and Distant. Based on the surveys they conducted, the researches extrapolated the percentages of what American people believe about God.

Authoritative 28%

According to the authors, people who hold a view of God as Authoritative divide the world along good and evil.

They tend to be people who are worried, concerned, and frightened.

They take comfort and refuge in the concept of a powerful, sovereign God guiding this country.

Distant 24%

These are people who identify more as spiritual but not religious.

They speak of finding the mysterious, ineffable, unknowable God in nature, through contemplation, or in elegant mathematical theorems.

Critical 21%

The researchers describe people who perceive a God who keeps a critical eye on this world but only delivers justice in the next.

Benevolent 22%

According to the Baylor professors, those who understand God as benevolent believe God is a “positive influence,” who cares for all people, weeps at all conflicts, and will comfort all.

Benevolent. Distant. Critical. Authoritative.

Along the way, their research netted some curious findings. For instance, if your parents spanked you when you were a child, then you’re more likely to subscribe to an Authoritative God view. If you’re European, then in all likelihood you have a Distant view of God. If you’re poor then, odds are, you fall into the Critical view. United Methodists meanwhile, proving we can’t make up our minds about anything, tend to be evenly distributed among the four characteristic views.

Their research doesn’t mention anything about adults who like to be spanked and how that impacts their view of God but I’ll leave it to you to speculate.

The book is several years old now, but I was surprised to discover that the sociologists’s survey is still up and running online. As people take the survey, even now the percentages change. So you might be interested to know that, like they were horses at the track, the Distant God is now pulling ahead in the polls, as the Authoritative God falls behind, and the Benevolent God gains a few points.

When I discovered the website a few years ago, I decided to take the survey, all twenty questions of it. I was asked to rate whether or not the term “loving” described God very well, somewhat well, undecided, not very well, or not at all. Other qualities in the twenty ratable questions were “critical, punishing, severe, wrathful, distant, ever present.” I was asked if I thought God was angered by human sin and angered by my sin. I was asked if God was concerned with my personal well being and then with the well being of the world.

In order to capture my understanding of and belief in God, according to my watch, the survey took all of two minutes and thirty-five seconds. After I finished, I was told what percentage of people in my demographic shared my view of God (college educated men under age forty-five). You may be interested to know, but probably not surprised, that the survey says that this pastor solidly maintains a perception of a Benevolent God.

It was only after I answered all the questions, only after I saw my results, only after I saw how I measured up against other respondents, only then did it strike me how the Baylor survey never— not once, nary a single question— asked me about Jesus.

The survey asked me to choose if I thought God was Authoritative or Distant or Critical or Benevolent, but it never asked me, it was never given as an option, it was never preferred as a possibility, if I thought God was like Jesus.

And Baylor is a Baptist University, but the researches had zero questions along the lines, “Do you believe God is a Jew who lived briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly?”

Benevolent. Distant. Critical. Authoritative.

But not: Incarnate

Obviously I’m not a sociologist though I have pretended to be one at law firm Christmas parties. I’m not a social scientist but presumably, “Do you believe that God, though being in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself taking the form of a slave being born in human likeness and being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on the cross…” is a lousy survey question.

Nevertheless, it struck me that I’d just taken a supposedly thorough survey about my belief in God, and Jesus was not in any of the questions and he was never a possible answer.

Now, I’ve been accused in the past of being prejudiced against both Texans and Baptists so it should surprise no one when I say that I think the Baylor survey is— to use a precise theological term— a bunch of crap.

I even tried to go back and undo, invalidate my responses but it wouldn’t let me. I even emailed the Baylor sociologist to share my opinion of his survey (and by the way it’s Christopher_Bader@Baylor.edu). The problem with the survey is that, whether I like it or not, God is not someone I get to choose with either the click of a mouse or my own speculative thoughts.

As the atheist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach correctly pointed out two centuries ago, most of the time when human beings speak of God we actually are speaking about ourselves in a loud voice. Human beings, Augustine said, are incurvatus in se, bent in on ourselves— sinful from birth.

We can’t possibly be trusted to speak of God with any accuracy at all unless God first has spoken to us.

Unless Jesus is what God has to say to us.

All our God talk is wrong without revelation.

All our religion is idolatry apart from incarnation.

We don’t get to define God instead God has come to us in a way that confounds and upends and overturns all our definitions. The problem with the Baylor survey is that I don’t believe God is Authoritative, Distant, Critical, or Benevolent. I believe Jesus is God. I don’t have any choice.

Just look at the Sermon on the Mount—

When Jesus warns his hearers that false preachers will get their comeuppance (“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven…”), pay attention to the fact that Jesus is the one sitting on the judgment seat of God (“On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?”). And notice that when Christ comes to the end of his sermon, the crowd reacts not to the content of the preacher’s teaching but to his person. They're astonished by the authority he assumes. They’re unsettled and offended that Jesus taught as one with the authority to determine what is authoritative. They react to his preaching the same way they react to his miracles, “By what authority does he forgive sins? Where does he get off? No can forgive sins but God! Who died and made him the Maker of Heaven and Earth?” And don’t miss how Jesus stacks up the first person pronouns at the conclusion of his sermon: I, me, my, and mine.

Not only does Jesus assume for himself the place that heretofore the Law had occupied, he puts himself in the place of God.

Maybe this is why throughout the entire sermon only one character opens his mouth.

As New Testament scholar Dale Allison notes, from Matthew 5 to Matthew 8:

“There is no dialogue, there are no questions, and there is no vocal response. Jesus’s words are ringed in silence. This focuses all attention on him while it also implicitly impresses upon his great authority: when Jesus speaks, Jesus is alone and by himself” in a singular way analogous only to the Almighty himself.

Authoritative, Distant, Critical, Benevolent, Jesus.

Christians are peculiar. Maybe it takes a survey to point out just how odd.

When we say God, we mean Jesus.

And when we say Jesus, we mean the God who emptied himself, the God who traded divinity for poverty, power for weakness, the God who came down among us and stooped down to serve the lowliest of us.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said that if God had wanted God could’ve been Sovereign. If God had wanted, God could’ve been All-Powerful or All-Knowing. If God had wanted, God could’ve been Holy or Righteous. But instead, said Wesley, God chose to be Jesus. You see—  it’s not that God’s power and glory and divinity are somehow concealed behind Jesus‘s human life. It’s not that in Jesus God masquerades as someone he’s not already. The incarnation isn’t a temporary time-out in which God gets to pretend he’s a different person. Rather, when we see Jesus in the wilderness saying no to the world’s ways of power, when we see Jesus— the Great High Priest— embracing lepers and eating with sinners, when we see Jesus stoop down to wash our dirty feet, when we see Jesus freely choose death rather than retaliation, when we see Jesus pour himself out, empty himself, humble and humiliate himself we’re seeing as much of God as there is to see.

Jesus is God without remainder.

After I completed the Baylor survey, in less than three minutes, a window popped up on the screen to tell me, conclusively, that I had a perception of a Benevolent God. For me, the survey said, God is a positive influence on people. I suppose that means God is like Joel Osteen or Taylor Swift. The survey results also explained how my particular perception of God likely impacted my worldview, in other words, how my belief in God played out in my positions on contemporary issues. But the survey never said anything about a way of life. The survey never mentioned a community. According to the survey I’m just an individual person who has a certain perception of God and that perception influences my opinions on political issues.

Right after I completed that survey, the very same week, two events occurred in the life of the church I served.

One—

I celebrated a funeral service for a man who died much too young and much too suddenly, leaving behind his two nine year old twins.

During the sermon and all through the eulogies, if I’m honest, I only half-listened. And instead I sat up here at the altar table and I peeked around the specially-ordered flowers and I looked at the deceased’s fourth grade son, slumped in the pew and sitting in the crook of his mother’s arm. And I watched him again after the funeral service during the reception in the fellowship hall. He looked tired and red-eyed and uncomprehending. I watched him. And I thought about the questions he must have, the questions he will undoubtedly have as he gets older. I thought about the burden of grief he will carry. I thought about the anger that will come over him.

And maybe it’s because I’d just filled out that silly survey in the morning but as I watched him I thought about what sort of God it is that I want him to know.

I thought about what sort of God it is that makes it possible for a boy to mark his father’s death with worship of all things.

I thought about what sort of God it is that produces a community of people who can be the love and presence of God to a boy who’d just lost his Dad.

What sort of God is that?
Authoritative? Distant? Critical? Benevolent?

Or is it the God who trades away his divinity so that he might win us?

Is it the God who takes flesh and shares in the grief and joy and pain of our lives in order to redeem our them? Is it the God who stoops down to serve us so that we might learn how to serve one another? Is it the God who gets his hands dirty so that we might be made clean? Who judges us by suffering in our place? Whose mercy is as wide as a cross and as deep as the grave?

After the funeral, I met with a couple— parents.

Even though I emailed and texted them beforehand, they wouldn’t tell me why they needed to meet with me so urgently.

Great, I thought, they’re either PO’d at me and are leaving the church, or they’re getting divorced. Either way, I’m going to be late for dinner.

When they came to my office, I could feel the anxiety popping off of them like static electricity. The counseling textbooks call it “active listening” but really I was sitting there in front of them, silent, because I had no idea where or how to begin. The husband, the Dad, I noticed was clutching his jeans cuff at the knees. After an awkward silence and even more more awkward chit-chat, the wife, the Mom, finally said:

“You and this church have been an important part of our lives. You baptized and confined our daughters so we wanted you to know what’s going on in our family and we thought we should do it face-to-face.”

“Here we go,” I thought, “They’re splitting up or splitting from here.

“What’s up?” I asked, sitting up to find a knot in my stomach.

And then she told me something else entirely. Something surprising. She told me their daughters had both come out to them.

“They’re both gay,” she said.

“Is that all?!” I asked. “Good God, that’s a relief. I was afraid you were going to tell me you were getting a divorce! Jesus doesn’t like divorce.”

They exhaled.

I could see they’d been holding their breath.

“The church has been a big part of our lives and we wanted to make sure you knew that about them” she said.

“But also…” her voice trailed off and then her husband spoke up. “We also wanted to make sure that they’d still be welcomed here, that there’d be a place for them.”

“Of course. Absolutely.”

I could see the hesitation in their eyes, like I’d just tried to sell them the service plan at Best Buy so I said it plain:

“Look, I love them. This church loves them. And God loves them. Nothing will ever change that.”

“You don’t think they’re sinners?” she asked.

“Of course they’re sinners,” I said, “but that would be just as true if they were straight too. Besides, it doesn’t change my point. Jesus loves sinners and Jesus is as much of God as there is to know.”

After the funeral and after the meeting with the girls’s parents, I was in a contrary mood so I decided to emailed the Baylor sociologist responsible for the survey.

Dear Dr. Bader,

I’m a United Methodist pastor in northern Virginia. Having read about your book and your research in USA Today,

I just completed your survey online.

Since I was unable to cancel or otherwise invalidate my responses I felt I should share a few comments with you.

First, let me take issue with the four views of God that you group responses into.

I don’t deny there is a diversity of religious belief in America.

It’s just that, as a Christian, I was surprised to find that the God whom I worship isn’t to be found in any of your questions or categories.

I believe Jesus of Nazareth is as much of God as there to see. Authoritative, Distant, Critical, or Benevolent therefore are not sufficient categories to describe the God who, while we were yet his enemies, become our neighbor and died for us.

Perhaps you think my definition of God is too specific.

The trouble is in Jesus of Nazareth God couldn’t have been more specific.

Second, your survey suggests that believing in God is primarily a matter of having a particular worldview that then influences one’s opinions on issues.

I can’t speak for other religions, but as a Christian I can say that Jesus doesn’t seem interested in giving me a worldview.

He instead gives me an office.

He gives me the authority to be just as profligate with grace and mercy and forgiveness as him.

So, you see, Dr. Bader, Jesus expects a lot more from us than having the right positions on issues.

Finally, I just came from a funeral service for a fourth grader’s father.

And after the funeral I met with parents worried that God no longer loved their daughters for the way God had made them.

It occurred to me today especially, therefore, that in all of your questions on your survey, you never once asked if I believed that God loved me.

Martin Luther— maybe you’ve heard of him even though you teach at a Baptist University— said that’s the difference between the Naked God and the God who clothes himself in Jesus Christ.

Postulating a loving God in the abstract (the Naked God) isn’t the same thing as believing that God loves me, no matter what.

You never asked that question, professor, and I know in my bones that that’s the most important question.

For that little boy’s sake, and for his Dad’s, for those girls and their parents, I thank God that in Jesus Christ the answer is yes.

No doubt the harsh tone of my email will lead you to conclude that I score in the Authoritative God category.

Not so, even though my mother did spank me as a child.

No, I rate solidly in the Benevolent God category.

So I hope you will believe it’s in a spirit of benevolence when I say, for lack of a better expression, I think your survey is crap.

Blessings...

I don’t care what the survey says. I don’t give a rip what individual Americans say about God. Jesus is what God says to us.

So hear the Good News:

Benevolent?

Jeff Bezos is benevolent. God is better than Bezos. God is gracious. And his grace isn’t cheap. It isn’t even expensive. It’s free.

Critical?

Critical. Yeah, God takes your sin and your injustice and your little white lies and your comfortable compromises and your can’t-be-bothered apathy, all your hate and all your resentments, God takes all of it into his body and bears it on a tree. You can’t get more critical than a cross.

Authoritative?

The true God is so mighty he exercises his authority with just four little words, “Your sins are forgiven.” “By what authority?!” By the authority of God.

Benevolent, Critical, Authoritative, Distant.

Distant?

No.

God is not distant at all.

God is as close as the two little Gospel words “for you.”

Which means God is so close to you as soon to be in you.

So come to the Table.

The Love that is God is here.