“God is the
one throwing the party and everybody’s invited and that includes you.”
This quote,
from a former pastor from our area, sums up his thoughts about God.
Old notions
of God are so…….well, old.
Creeds,
historic statements of faith, confessions? Those are just leftovers of a “tribal
church” mentality, a church for “us” and against “them” (that is, those who are
not us).
This new,
inclusive, fun-loving god is the sort of god people can relate to. After all,
who wants a God who is loving and just?
Who will believe in a god who holds people accountable for their behaviors? Who
will worship a god who respects human persons for the responsible image-bearers
that they are?
This new, re-imagined
god loves everyone. . . .except for those who still believe in the God that the
church has professed for more than 2000 years.
This new god,
like his followers, accepts everyone just the way they are. . . .except for
those who still believe that God created the world with a moral order that
reflects the created order, those who still believe that a holy God is loving,
yet to be feared. Those who believe that God is, as the beavers said about Aslan,
good but not safe.
In other
words, this god is not really all that inclusive after all. Nor are this god’s
followers. This god’s followers are really rather capricious, including only
those who agree with them and whatever they have decided is ‘truth’ this week,
something they accuse those who don’t agree with them of being guilty of. The beliefs
of this god’s followers are, in other words, inconsistent, self-referentially
incoherent, in fact.
Which is what
one might expect from those following a god who is anything less than the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the god who is not the Tri-personal God who emptied himself in order to repair
what his creatures had broken; the God who is not “man” said with a loud voice.
This
party-throwing god might be fun, but is certainly not deserving of our worship,
praise, and love. Only the one true God – the Triune God of mystery and majesty
as revealed in Scripture and testified to by the holy catholic church – is deserving
of that.
Be careful who
you worship.
