What Does Your God Look Like?
The Apostles’ Creed begins with the simple statement, “I believe in God.” I believe in God. Easy enough to say, but how do you know that there’s a God to believe in? Can you prove it?
Of course, there’s evidence of God’s existence—from the minute mitochondria in living cells, to the vast reaches of space, there is order and organization. The evidence of a great mind behind it all. People everywhere in every time have reached out for God, searched for God, hungered for God. That too is evidence of God’s existence. The Bible tells the story of people’s experience with God. Then there’s church itself, and the persistence of that body of believers that we call Christians. But it’s all just evidence, and two people will look at the same evidence and come up with two differing conclusions.
The first Russian cosmonauts went up into space, looked around, and came back saying that they had looked, and there was no God. They couldn’t see God up there, so God didn’t exist. Others who have gone into space have been so moved by the experience that their faith in God has been confirmed and strengthened.
The hard reality is that you can’t prove that God exists. At least not by the scientific method. You can’t check God’s DNA, or take God’s fingerprints. You can’t make a recording of God’s voice and analyze the sound waves or make God stay in one place long enough to capture God on film.
When the writers in the Bible talk about God, they speak in metaphors. The experience of knowing God is inexplicable in normal human terms—we don’t have the language for it--so they speak of fire and light, of huge thrones and God’s robe filling a gargantuan sanctuary. Mysterious creatures like the seraphim surround God. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. There are intimate metaphors as well, God as a father or mother, God as shepherd. But there is no one single picture that can contain who God is. They are just glimpses. Hints. Clues.
To believe in God is to buy into a mystery. To believe in God is to accept that God is beyond human understanding and stands outside of any human definition. To believe in God is to take a leap of faith.
Can you prove that God exists? No. As Frederick Buechner says, “In the last analysis, you cannot pontificate but only point. A Christian is one who points at Christ and says, ‘I can’t prove a thing, but there’s something about his eyes and his voice. There’s something about the way he carries his head, his hands, the way he carries his cross—the way he carries me.’” (Wishful Thinking, 32)
To believe in God is to take a leap of faith. It’s also a choice. It’s a free country. You can believe in God, or not. But there is a cost whichever way you go. A price for believing, and a price for not believing.
What does it cost to believe in God? Like Noah, you may find yourself being laughed at when you say that God speaks to you. Like Abraham, you may find this God of mystery calling you to go to a place you’ve never dreamed of. Like David, you may find God challenging your moral choices and decisions. Like Mary, you may find God bringing to birth something in you that is both frightening and miraculous. Like Andrew, Peter, James and John, you may find this God challenging you to leave your current line of work for a job with an uncertain future.
I suppose the biggest cost related to believing in God has to do with that old control issue. If you buy into the mystery, you have to let go of having to control everything. Surrender. Live with some unknowns and gray areas.
Don’t ever let anybody tell you that it’s easy to believe in God. Or that believing in God is a “crutch.” Believing is tough work.
But what does it cost if you choose not to believe in God? Think of it this way: If you don’t believe in God, what’s left to believe in? Remember what I said last week about believing. We all believe in something. If we refuse to believe in someone that we cannot see, then we worship the things we can see—but what we get along with that is all the limitations of those things. A stock market that crashes, friends and family that fail us, fame that fizzles, loved ones who move away or die, a house that burns to the ground.
Our basic question shifts, then. Instead of asking, do I believe in God? We need to ask what kind of God do I believe in?
Well, what kind of God do you believe in?
People throughout history have believed in all sorts of gods. Hollywood made a very funny movie a number of years ago about an aborigine who thought a Coke bottle was a god. The title of the movie was “The Gods must Be Crazy.”
What does your God look like?
Your mother? A card dealer in Atlantic City? Is God a cosmic cop? A soft-hearted codependent friend who’ll do anything for you? A manipulating, abusive, distant monster? Is God a puppeteer, designing every move that you make? Is God distant and uncaring, like the uncle you never hear from at Christmas?
The god that you choose to believe in will determine what your life will become. If God is a harsh judge, you will live your life in guilt, if God remains only distant and unapproachable, you will experience cosmic loneliness. If God is a bully, you’ll live your life in fear. (see Joan Chittister, In Search of Belief, 22)
The God that you choose to believe in will also drive your emotional life. (Remember what Jesus said: Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.)
Two stock market investors were discussing their strategies in the stock market. One investor had diversified his stocks and had recently taken some minor losses. The second man had invested heavily in tech stocks and had lost two/thirds of his entire investment within a year. The first investor asked the second one how he was doing emotionally with all those financial losses. The guy said he was sleeping like a baby. His friend was kind of amazed and asked for an explanation. He said, “Well, every night it’s the same thing. I sleep for about two hours, then I wake up and cry for an hour.” (story file, 17.4.8)
All of the gods you create will fail you, because they are made of finite stuff.
And in the end, what you are left with, is the person staring back at you in the mirror. If you cannot believe in God, then you are truly on your own, and the obvious move is to begin to make God over in your own image. To project onto God your own limited values, needs and desires. And to desperately try to find the right formula that will make life work.
Not too long ago there was a study that showed that people in New Jersey get less sleep than anybody else in the country. I believe that, because I know that I get less sleep than I used to get when we lived on the West Coast. Here’s my question. What is it that we are trying to prove? Do we believe that we are alone in the universe? That it’s up to us to take care of everything, fix everything, control everything? That the world would stop spinning if we would go to bed and get a decent night’s sleep?
While we say we believe in God, are we truly living as if we believed in ourselves more? So we sleep less, and just stoke up on more coffee?
Any caffeine addicts in this room? I recently read a list of signs that you drink too much coffee. Here are just a few of them:
You answer the door before people knock.
You have converted your car’s radiator so you can brew a pot on the way to work.
When someone asks, “How are you? You reply, “Good to the last drop.”
Juan Valdez names his donkey after you.
Your coffee thermos is on wheels.
You chew on other people’s fingernails.
You speed walk in your sleep.
You can photograph yourself from ten feet away without a timer.
You can ski uphill.
You have to watch videos in fast forward.
You get a speeding ticket even when your car is parked.
(story file, 17.3.5)
What are we trying to prove with this 100 mile an hour lifestyle? Are we trying to pretend that we can do it on our own? That we don’t need God?
A Catholic priest was teaching a class one day and asked one of his students: “Do you say a prayer before meals in your house?” And a young boy, Sean, replied, “We don’t have to, Father. My mother is a good cook.” (story file, 17.1.2)
I said that we could choose to believe in God or not. But I want to modify that just a little bit. Our choice is not whether to believe in God or not. We will believe in one God or another. The choice is this: Are you going to be driven through life by the gods of your own making, or are you going to surrender that need to control and let God (the real God) take you by the hand and lead you into life and hope?