Skip to main content

Taking God Seriously


There is a great line in the movie “Levity” where Morgan Freeman, a wildly free-spirited and wounded preacher named Miles Evans, says to Manuel Jordan, a broken man recently out of prison and played by Billy Bob Thornton: “You think God talks to me?  We argue maybe, but He don’t participate.  It’s all right.  I’ll see Him one day.  When I do, I’m gonna whip His holy ass.”

I have never forgotten those words.  So honest and human.  So full of the courage of a man who takes God seriously.

Today, God isn’t taken seriously.  Not really.  God is used.   God is toyed with.  God is disgraced by the worst kind of cowardice.  God is betrayed by sanctimonious windbags who brag on themselves and pretend the praise is coming from God.

Religious people can be some of the most annoying people in the world.  They are often full of crap.  They talk big but then act petty and small.  They quote scriptures not as guidelines for good living but as weapons to defend their rigid beliefs.  They bully others.  They look down their noses at the rest of the poor slobs who don’t buy into their con.

I have spent my entire life trying to find God.  I looked in church.  I looked in seminary.  I looked in the Bible.  I looked in the four spiritual laws.  In the sinner’s prayer.  I looked in fundamentalism.  I looked in the Spirit filled life.  I didn’t find God in any of that.  Not in any personal way.

I don’t believe God can be defined or confined.  God transcends our paltry descriptions.  God long ago walked out of the pages of the Bible.  If you worship a book you don’t worship God.  The religious can be so wrong.  Just flat wrong.  About God.  Because God doesn’t fit into clean lines and perfectly squared boxes.  And all attempts at owning God by anyone or any group or any clan or click or crowd or political party becomes an exercise in arrogance and pride.

If you’re going to take God seriously you’ve got to question and struggle and fight with God.  Where the hell is God in this glorious but tough life, in this beautiful but crippled world? 

God is not in anyone’s hip pocket or King James Version or jazzed up church or partisan political spiel.

God better damn well be bigger than any of that stuff.  And a lot more personal.  And human.  And loving.

Only those who take God seriously care enough to confront God—those who want some answers—and not a bunch of driveling clichés and phony platitudes.

God is not a success story.  God is not the path to financial abundance.  God is not a political partisan ideology.

That thinking trivializes God.

If you want to take God seriously you have to be willing to have a one-sided argument and say into the silence that God has a lot of explaining to do.

© 2012 Timothy Moody
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We are Made for Human Connection

There are words from Brandi Carlile’s song, “The Story,” that I might sing, and perhaps you, too. “All of these lines across my face Tell you the story of who I am So many stories of where I've been And how I got to where I am But these stories don't mean anything When you've got no one to tell them to” You don’t have to be single or alone to feel the depth of those words. Someone in a longtime marriage or relationship might feel them, too. The voyage through life takes each one of us through an assortment of experiences. Some of them ennoble us. Some crush us. Some lift us beyond ourselves and carry us into the lives of those who need us. And some carry us to those we need. Some experiences are burdens. Others ease and encourage us. Some leave us baffled and unsure. Some build confidence within us and are so affirming that we grow in substance, in courage, in tenderness, and sympathy. As we age, the lines in our faces can represent the hurts we have not yet resolved. Or t
Post a Comment
Read more

If I had five minutes to evacuate--what would I take with me?

If I was told there was a bomb in my building and I had five minutes to evacuate my apartment I’d grab a grocery bag and quickly toss these items into it: 1. A photo of my grandparents, Mom and Pop and me, when I was 15 years old. I learned what love is made of from them. I learned what it is to be kissed on and hugged in arms so tender they felt like God’s arms. I discovered self worth from those two angels in human flesh. Of all the people in my life, they were the ones who made me feel I counted. Honestly, whatever capacity I have to love others came from them. 2. A sentimental, dog-eared, stars in the margin copy of Pat Conroy’s, “The Prince of Tides.” It is a book I have read three times and often return to for its wisdom. It is a harsh, profoundly tragic novel, the story of a family so broken and tortured by such flawed and wounded people that it is sometimes difficult to turn the next page. And yet it is the story of such Herculean courage and endurance that you want
9 comments
Read more

Remembering Dr. Bill Craig

In Memoriam  Dr. Bill Craig January 1, 2020 In the Hebrew Bible, we see from the life of Moses, and the Psalmist, Isaiah and others , concern for the problem of living rather than the problem of dying.   Their primary interest was not how to escape death, but rather, how to sanctify life. Bill modeled that kind of wisdom.  The brilliant novelist Louis L'Amour, who wrote bestselling books about the American West, what he called “frontier stories,” basically said the same thing. He wrote, “The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail.” No one attempted to sanctify life and get more out of the trail than Bill Craig. He was a deep thinker, a gifted veterinarian, a rugged and unbreakable man with the kindest heart and the purest motives.  He was a loving and devoted husband, father, and grandfather. Karen, Shalor and Melissa, Kellan, Nolan and Carter, were his world. They meant everything to him. I guess he had faults, but I don’t remember any of them.  There was o
Post a Comment
Read more