Using God

You know, one of the things that really frustrates me is the miss-use of God to justify our actions and attitudes... the way God is used to validate personal opinions and fight individual battles. Oh, I'm not talking about Jihads or the Crusades or the Inquisition or anything as dramatic as that. I'm talking about the more subtle ways God is used and miss-used.

Sometimes I think those subtle ways are perhaps even more detestable to God. There's something about them that smacks of arrogance... of setting ourselves up as God's lone spokesperson... of making our opinion the one supreme authority all others must bow down to. There's something about it that just irks me... makes my skin crawl and my stomach turn.

Here's what I don't get. You've got one person--devote, sincere, passionate about following Jesus. And then you've got another person--just as devote, just as sincere, just as passionate. Both pray, both read the Bible, both go to church. Yet one of them seems to think that, somehow, they have the inside track on God. Somehow they think their opinion, their interpretation, their understanding, is "right" and everyone else who doesn't agree is wrong--or ever worse: is a heretic.

They justify themselves by saying, "I've prayed about this and God showed me."

No doubt they have (prayed that is).

But what if the other person has prayed also? What if the other person was equally assured by God? Does that mean God can't make up his mind? Or does it mean that perhaps the answer wasn't so clear? Or maybe one or both wasn't really listening. Maybe one or both went into prayer already set in what they expected to hear.

Here's what I'm wondering. How many times do we use God to express our own personal bias? How many times to we use God as a sort of all-powerful trump card--"Well God told me, so you must be wrong"? How many times do we use and miss-use God?

The answer, I'm afraid, is far too many. As a matter of fact, I would imagine it is one of the main fracture points within the church today. Oh, it's not that difference of opinion is wrong or bad. They are healthy and necessary. It is the tension that keeps us digging. It is the tension that keeps us wresting with Truth.

The problem is when we justify our opinion--when we try to validate ourselves--with "Thus saith the Lord." I think we need to be far more careful with how we do that. I think we need to be way more cautious in how and when we say "God told me."

After all, God is not a private God. God communicates most often, and most effectively, through community... a community that has spanned the centuries. There is a mighty stream of over 2,000 years Christian tradition that must temper any sort of private "God told me" interpretation. We have 2,000 years of Christian heritage we must listen to and connect with in order to keep us balanced.

Certainly God speaks. But more often then not God speaks in and through the greater body called the Church before he ever speaks through any individual. I just think we need to be way more careful than we are about how we use God's name. I just think we need to think twice, before we say "God told me." And I defiantly think we need to be extremely cautious in expressing our opinions as "Thus saith the Lord."