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.

Actions Make a Difference

“We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.” ~ Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Physician/Author Pictured here is Kikuko Shinjo, 89 years old, a survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast. As a 17-year old nursing student she helped nurse victims of the carnage back to health. Many of them died in her care. She says she holds no grudge against America and encourages interaction between the Japanese and Americans. She has devoted her life to peace, saying, “I want all the people around the world to be friends, and I want to make my country peaceful without fighting.” Today she makes colorful paper cranes and donates them to the Children’s Peace Monument at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

I Saw the Delicacy of Life

I was flying Across the deep And I saw the delicacy Of life Wrinkles on the faces Of the old So pure they glistened Like awards The joy of children Running with abandon Their laughter ringing Like chimes in the wind I saw the soft moving waves Across the sea And the trees releasing Their rainbow leaves Birds joined me on my flight And I saw the surface of their wings Adorned with patterns Glorious and unfurled I saw the tears of the sad And the smiles of the glad The suffering in mourning And the celebration of birth As I descended toward the ground Slowly, slowly, softly I saw the gentle grass of the field And smelled the fresh earth It was a perfect landing © 2018 Timothy Moody

A Losing Strategy

OPINION PAGE (c) 2024 Timothy Moody The Republican strategy to mock and judge others has passed into some form of insatiable, all-devouring nastiness. It is so poisonous and contemptuous that it is now just evil. Republican Governor of Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders, suggested to a crowd of Trump supporters Tuesday night that Kamala Harris can't be humble because she doesn't have any children of her own. When will Americans decide they don't want government leaders who are so arrogantly insensitive, as Sanders was, that they offend everyone? This crude, villainous rhetoric transcends political partisanship. It’s evil, dangerous, and insulting. The poet Ezra Pound’s brief lines are appropriate here, “Pull down your vanity, How mean your hates” To suggest that someone cannot be humble because they don't have children is not just a cheap political comment. It's an attack on a person’s humanity and worth. And that is now, and has been fo...

The Unclad Soul

Search This Blog