Getting Closer to God: Removing Obstacles

The scriptures referred to are Joel 2:1-2, 12-17, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10, and Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21.

I am fortunate that the first fandom I got involved in was that of Sherlock Holmes. Unlike a lot of fandoms, Sherlockians do not generally get into fierce arguments about the minutiae of the stories. They make trying to reconcile the contradictory details in the 60 stories into a game. Thus they come up with elaborate explanations of Watson's wandering war wound and they try to deduce Holmes' birthday. Once, on that birthday, January 6, Rex Stout famously presented a paper at the Baker Street Irregular's meeting in New York in 1941 proving that Watson was a woman. Since the meeting in those days involved lots of alcohol, the members picked up the reed-thin creator of Nero Wolfe, carried him outside, and dumped him in a snowbank. But they still honor that paper as a shining example of the Great Game. Because they know that the purpose of reading and writing about and watching depictions of Sherlock Holmes is to be entertained.

Not only did reading playful commentaries and articles on the Great Detective inoculate me against the silly but heated arguments that fans of Harry Potter, Batman, and Doctor Who can get into, it protected me from getting into the same arguments in Christian circles. I realized this when acting as a research assistant for one of my professors in college and noticed that in some theological papers, people were making the same kind of tenuous arguments Sherlockians do—but in deadly earnestness! And we have all seen people who get lost in the smallest details of the Bible or theology or liturgical matters and get into arguments that generate more heat than light. I was invited by a friend to a discussion group in a mosque on the Quran and one guy there was constantly interrupting the imam with bizarre interpretations of the text and side matters and making theological mountains out of molehills. And I thought, “Wow! I've had that guy in Bible study!” I am convinced that such people are not created by religion or fandoms but are a specific personality type.

And the problem is that just as rabid fans forget that the purpose of what they consume is to have fun, the folks who get all tangled up in the non-essentials of the faith forget that the purpose of it all is to help us get closer to God. Don't get me wrong: I love all the little details, large and small, about the Bible and theology and church history. But I know not to let them get between me and what is essential: Jesus.

This Lent we will be looking at ways of getting closer to God. And we are starting today with getting rid of obstacles to that. And this being Ash Wednesday, that means our sins, of course. In a few minutes we will pray the litany of penitence, so I don't think I need to elaborate on them.

What I would like to concentrate on are the obstacles to properly understanding God. If we want to get close to him, we need to know who he is. Unfortunately, through poor Sunday School lessons, books of bad theology and preachers with erroneous or incomplete takes on all manner of things, a lot of people are left with some major misconceptions about God. Let's look at a couple and get some correctives from scripture.

Like most things, ideas about God exist on a spectrum. And at one end is the Hateful God, who has innumerable rules, some quite picky, who is always angry with us for not being able to keep all of them and who can't wait to throw people into hell. A lot of us get this idea as kids and never quite shake it. And some of it, to be frank, comes from an uncritical reading of the Old Testament. God seems to be always mad at the Israelites for doing this or not doing that and warning them that his wrath will come down on them.

I have two observations on this. First, this view was influenced by a life without the generous margins of error some of us have today. Life was very harsh back then. We hadn't developed medicine, democracy, Social Security, human rights, international law, farm subsidies, disaster insurance, disaster agencies, police forces, or any of the safety nets we now have. To survive back then a society had to operate with military discipline and efficiency. Everyone had a job to do. If the fields were not plowed, planted, and harvested on time, you starved. If you didn't reproduce, when you got too old to work, you starved. If the elders of your town didn't enforce the rules, anarchy reigned. Punishments were harsh because you didn't have an elaborate corrections system. The ancient Near East was like the Wild West: an often hard and unforgiving environment, to which people responded with hard and unforgiving rules so that the community could survive. They wanted a tough God who enforced the rules and protected them from things outside their control. And yet the world in which we live today has changed largely through the idea of a God who is just and merciful and expects the same of us.

Second, when you look at the things God gets upset about, they are mostly things that make life worse. They are things we would get upset about. The prophets point out two main areas in which the people are failing to act as they should. One is their duty to God. They are following other gods, like Baal, a storm and fertility god, worshiped through orgies (Isaiah 57:3-8). Or Molech, to whom people sacrificed their children (Leviticus 18:21). People come to resemble what they worship. Except when they choose not to. The other fault the prophets saw was that when they worshiped God, the people were just going through the motions and not really changing to a more moral lifestyle. (Isaiah 58:1-5) Ironically people were more attracted to sexy or brutal gods than the God of justice and mercy.

The other main failing the prophets point out is people's neglect of their duty to their neighbor. They ignored the plight of the poor, mistreated and exploited them, oppressed the foreigner living among them, and did not take care of the sick and handicapped. (Isaiah 58:6-10; Leviticus 19:14, 34) Jesus summarized the whole law as consisting of loving God and loving other people. Would a loving God turn a blind eye to injustice? Wouldn't we be bothered if God wasn't angry at such blatantly unjust actions?

Which leads us to the other end of the spectrum. The opposite misconception to the Hateful God is the Sentimental God who is so loving and forgiving we do not have to worry very much about what we do. God looks at flawed humans and says, like an indulgent uncle, “Oh well, boys will be boys.” This kind of God just can't bring himself to come down hard on us. But he isn't showing love so much as benign neglect. And if he doesn't hold bullies and those who harm others accountable, then obviously he doesn't love everyone equally. There's very little difference between such a God and one who is blithely indifferent to human suffering.

But as we've seen, neither is a true picture of God. He does care for us. And he expects us to care for each other. He is rightly outraged by our mistreatment and neglect of the less powerful and less fortunate. And God is also upset about how we mistreat and neglect ourselves. He created us in his image. He knows what is good for us. The rules he gives us are for our benefit as well as that of others.

Writing during World War 2, C. S. Lewis used the example of the ship convoy to illustrate the 3 sets of ethical rules. Obviously the ships must all be going to the right destination as specified in their orders. They must also stay in formation, maintaining the appropriate distance and staying in good communication with each other, so they don't crash into each other or get lost. And finally, the ships must be properly maintained or they will sink or stall or, again, crash into other ships. These 3 types of rules relate to our relationship to God, our relationships with others and our self-care. We talked about the first two but we must not neglect the last either.

Right now we have an epidemic of suicide in this country and I think some of it is due to lack of proper self-care. Among the elements of suicidal thinking are a feeling that life has no purpose, that one is trapped and that there is no hope. Suicidal people usually withdraw from others. Following Jesus, on the other hand, gives one a purpose in life. It gives one hope. It gives one a community that cares. Obviously if a person has clinical depression or some other serious mental health issue, like substance abuse, they need to get professional help. Even so faith in God helps those fighting such problems. But let's say you don't have such mental or emotional issues. Let's say you are drifting through life rather easily. When you get hit by a serious medical illness, financial problems, relationship problems, and other personal disasters, if you are without a spiritual dimension to your life, you will have little to give you hope and comfort and strength to face the days ahead. When my arms, legs and torso were broken, when I couldn't rely on my body, thank God I had spiritual resources to draw upon.

There are other misconceptions about God which are covered in J.B. Phillips' excellent book, Your God is Too Small, but for this short time I think these 2 are the most important. We know that God does not hate us but loves us. He is however just and will not ignore how we treat him, others or ourselves. He is however merciful. As it says in the psalms, “For you, Lord, are good and forgiving and abundant in mercy to all who call upon you.” (Psalm 86:5) Yes, God is unhappy when we abuse or neglect others or ourselves. But he is ever ready to forgive those who turn from such things and turn to him for help in changing those aspects of our lives. Were he not, Lent would be a tremendous waste of time. God's call to repent is a sign of hope. It means we can change. We are not trapped in the patterns of our old life. Our past need not determine our future. We can do what we need to, with God's help.

Think of this time as analogous to your yearly medical check up. Lent is our yearly spiritual examination of ourselves. The purpose is not to beat ourselves up but to get closer to God. Yes, we have destructive and self-destructive habits of thought, word and deed, called sins, which we need to shed. That's because they are obstacles to our getting closer to our loving God. At the same time we also have various practices to take up. Think of them as doctor's orders from the Great Physician. And on the Sundays during Lent those are what we will look at.

I have a little suggestion to begin with. Start reading one chapter of the gospel of Mark each day, skipping only Sundays. It's the oldest and shortest of the gospels. When you're done, do the same with the last gospel written, the gospel of John: one chapter a day, and take a break from it on Sundays. That will bridge the time between today, Ash Wednesday, and Good Friday. Getting closer to God means getting closer to Jesus, God Incarnate, and this will reacquaint you with 2 different sides of him. It's an easy but meaningful Lenten discipline.

Right now, we are going to look at our sins. Let's rip the band aids off and cleanse our wounds.