God as (not) government
Angelika (my fiancée, aka Presbyterian Girlfriend) and I were talking yesterday about the demanding views people have about God. For example:
If God is so great and loving, why doesn't He fix all the poverty and suffering in the world?
If God is so understanding, why does He set up all of these difficult rules that humans can't obey?
God encourages us to be humble while demanding sacrifice and praise for himself. Who is this crazy egotist?
All of these seem like good questions - if we're thinking of God as an all-knowing all-powerful ruler: a very strong government. These questions assume that God's morality is our morality, that God's reason is our reason.
I used to ask all of these questions when I was on the outside of religion looking in, wondering how it was possible for people to give up their expectations of what was right and just in order to accomodate a powerful God who didn't seem to do much for His followers.
On top of that, a lot of what the Christian right pushes seems to encourage these kinds of questions. Insisting that the Ten Commandments appear everywhere possible that someone might make government decisions does tend to conflate government and religion, for example.
From the inside looking out, none of these questions quite make sense. God isn't a fascist regime or a democracy, a monarchy or an oligarchy. God is God, accessible but not comprehensible. Looking at these questions again, it seems that they might better be asked:
Why did God grant humans the privilege of making our own choices with or without help? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? And how can I encourage others to make better choices?
How can I learn from God to live a better life?
How could someone have a relationship with God and not want to worship?
Those are still difficult questions, but very very different.
Hi, Simon and Angelika!
Yours is an interesting way of approaching some very ancient difficulties in Judæo-Christian theology. I thought about it a long time.
Some thoughts I had:
1) The idea of God as explicitly being government is biblical. Perhaps the most important of the relevant biblical passages is I Samuel 8:6-18, where the act of rejecting the government of God is explicitly portrayed, both as infidelity to God, and as a great mistake.
I don't know that such passages require us to regard God as government. But I would not lightly reject them. As Friends, practicing waiting worship together, our relationship to God is explicitly that of servants waiting on a king. And our practice of being guided by the urgings of God in our hearts and consciences, explicitly presumes that such urgings are comprehensible commands.
2) The second question in your first set is answered by our Quaker doctrine of perfection, which declares that God asks nothing impossible of us. (To say that what God asks of us is impossible is, in George Fox's memorable phrase, "pleading for sin".) And of course, that second question is equally rejected by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount ("therefore ye shall be perfect").
3) The third question in your first set is answered by the example of Jesus, "who, [though] his constant, true identity was that of God, did not regard equality with God as a status he need cling to; but emptied himself, becoming wholly a servant, bearing the semblance of humanity, and being seen [to live] in the pattern of a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to [the point of accepting] death — the death of the cross." (Philippians 2:6-8) Here Jesus is seen as a God far humbler than most of us humans ever manage to be, and who, far from demanding sacrifice and praise, accepted a homeless and destitute life and an agonizing, ignoble death in the course of showing us the way out of our own sufferings. The Quaker philosopher Robert Greenleaf described this as "servant leadership".
Marshall - You're quite correct about Samuel, but I think it's also important to think about something I didn't emphasize here: our expectations of government have changed since biblical times.
That plays out differently at different ends of the political spectrum, with their different expectations. Nonetheless, I think what worries me most is the projection of human institutions onto God, followed by strange disappointment when it turns out that God isn't a super-powerful human.
Your answer to point 2 is powerful, but I fear it's an insider's perspective, not something folks on the outside would be likely to find. (Though maybe extreme humanists of a "Pelagian" bent...)
Point 3 is right on, and I think at least explainable to those on the outside, likely speaking to the condition in which they raise these questions. It's a key point differentiating Christianity from other belief systems, as well.
Thanks, as always!
Simon, thank you for your kind response.
I'd be interested in knowing how, in your opinion, our expectations of government have changed since biblical times. It rather seems to me that they're the same expectations as always.
The doctrine of (attainable) perfection, per Matthew 5:48, is taught as an answer to seekers' concerns about meeting God's expectations, not only among Friends, but also, in a different form, among Methodists, other Wesleyans, and Holiness Protestants. And there are many, many millions of Methodists, Wesleyans, and Holiness Protestants.
More broadly, all branches of the Christian faith answer concerns about meeting God's expectations by citing Luke 1:37. A Google search on the three keywords God nothing impossible will illustrate how many different branches of Christianity are making use of this verse.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, Marshall. I think the difference in our expectations of government has less to do with what government does - rule, in some form - and more to do with our relationship to it. As participants in a much more democratic government than any of the governments cited in the Bible, we are not just subjects. We expect government to reflect our desires, not just those of the rulers.
I think the impact that has on religious perspectives is better summed up than I can manage by Thomas Merton in Spiritual Direction and Meditation:
Is that any clearer?