I'm leading a three week bible study at my church Sunday mornings, and we're going through the book of Jonah. This last week, we were reading/discussing chapter one, and one of the women in attendance said that she didn't like that God created a storm to interrupt Jonah's "escape" from God's call. She mentioned some of the recent dialogue attributing storms like Sandy to "God's punishment against the wicked" and ended with "my God doesn't get involved like that."
(Before I go on, I want to make clear that I don't mean to belittle her comment or engagement with the story. Her comment was wonderful in its openness and it greatly contributed to the discussion; I was grateful that she shared it with us.)
Now, I agree with her in that it angers me when Christian leaders decide they have an inside line to God and can discern God's hand in natural disasters. But, I disagree with her reasoning for getting there. It's not that I don't think God could cause storms to "punish the wicked," but rather that we have no business speaking about God in a way other than how God has made Godself known. God has chosen to remain hidden from us in things like storms and earthquakes so that God can be revealed to us in Jesus Christ. It is only God's self-revelation to us that authorizes our speech about God. If God did not come to us in Christ, we would simply have nothing to say.
Now, God is revealed through scripture, which always points to the pinnacle of God's revelation in Jesus Christ. And God as shown in scripture does things like create storms in Jonah. The God of scripture is a God who gets involved, and often in ways we don't like. I'm reminded of the story of the man who had been blind from birth in John 9. The disciples ask Jesus who sinned that this man was born blind, since they assumed that an ailment like this must be punishment for someone's sin. Was it the man who somehow brought this on himself in the womb? Or was it that his parents sinned? "Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.'" (John 9:3 NRSV) Jesus' answer is surprising because, while it does deny this tragedy as a punishment for sin, it doesn't preclude God from being involved. According to Jesus, this man's blindness is intended to serve God's purpose.
So, returning to events like the devastation wrought by Sandy on the east coast, it's not the case that we can assume that bad events happen to punish bad people, but neither can we assume that God is not involved. The fact is that God has not chosen to reveal God's involvement (or lack thereof) in events like this, and therefore we have nothing to say.
I was thinking about this as I got ready this morning, and I found myself wondering what the woman at bible study would think about all of it. I think probably her answer would be pretty much the same: "my God doesn't get involved like that." That answer is wonderfully revealing: her God doesn't get involved like the God of the Bible does, which in biblical terminology, means that her god is an idol.
I don't mean to single her out. The fact is, we are all idolaters. Each of us has our own understanding of who God is and what God does, and I am convinced that all of our understandings err at one point or another. All of us ultimately put our faith in an idol which we have constructed ourselves. And of course, this is a problem because our idols cannot save us. The false gods which we build for ourselves out of our needs, our desires--even our theologies!--cannot save us. Only the true God can do that.
So, what hope do we idolaters have?
Finally, our only hope is this: that God (the True God) has determined to be our God and displace our idols. God promises to be God for us and against idols, as it says in the first "commandment:" "You will have no other gods before me." (Exodus 20:3) This is a command, sure, but it is also a promise. God will be our God and we will have no other. No idol that we create is able to keep us from the saving reach of this God who gets involved. And that's very good news for us.
What did you end up saying to the woman who made that comment?
ReplyDeleteI didn't say much. I simplified the exchange for the sake of this post, so in the middle of it I expressed how I get frustrated when people attribute natural disasters to God's punishment. The conversation moved on quickly after she said the above.
DeleteI see my role in this study as more of setting the stage for discussion to happen rather than enforcing correctness. As a seminarian, what I think carries a lot of weight and could dominate the discussion, so I try to hang back and ask questions more than anything else.
To be clear: if she had brought this up in a one on one discussion and we had time to think about it together, I wouldn't respond with this post above (even if it hadn't taken me several days to think this through), but rather would try and hear what's behind her comment, which in this case is likely anger at the way "God" is used abusively to further a political agenda, among other things. Then, after all that, if it still mattered we could talk about this stuff and why I think it's good news that God gets involved.