Your Brother Daniel
For more great blogs as
this one go to Daniel’s blog site at: www.Mannsword.blogspot.com
Searching
for the God of our own Creation
People tell me:
· Often, I have prayed to your God, but nothing
ever happened!
Tonight, at Washington
Square Park, a woman told me this very thing. I therefore responded:
· For years, I vainly sought after God. I had
thought that I was really searching,
but I wasn’t. Instead, I wanted God my
way. He had to be a Jewish God, a God who authenticated my Jewish ethnicity. I
would have nothing to do with Jesus. He was a traitor, and many Jews had been
killed in his name. However, that all changed when, years later, I lay dying,
bleeding to death from a severe chainsaw injury. Suddenly, I realized that God
was with me, and I was in ecstasy. Nothing mattered anymore, just that God
loved me and that I would always be with Him. For the first time, I prayed, “God, I really need to know who you are, even
if it costs me both hands and legs,” and I meant it.
I suggested to the woman
that perhaps she too wanted God her own
way and wasn’t truly open to who He is. I explained Jesus’ guarantee – that if
we seek, we will find (Mat. 7:7-8), but she would have to seek with all of her
heart.
Her face tightened:
· I can’t believe in a God who says that
homosexuality is wrong.
I tried to argue that
God wisely forbade certain destructive sexual practices like adultery and
incest, and perhaps homosexuality is also destructive.
I quickly realized that
I said the wrong thing:
· I can’t stand the way you Christians liken
homosexuality to adultery and incest.
She became inflamed, and
so I tried to change my tactics:
· Okay, let me take a step back. Are you saying
that you will not believe in a God whose worldview doesn’t line up with yours
in every way? It looks like you are doing the very same thing that I had been
doing – rejecting a God who doesn’t ascribe to all your requirements.
We wrongly expect God to
conform to us. Rather, it is we who must be willing to conform to Him, to be
open to accepting Him as He truly is. However, as long as we insist on
remaining the captain-of-our-own-ship, we essentially refuse to board His ship.
She looked very confused
and protested:
· I can’t believe in this God of yours!
I explained that I was
simply asking her to search and pray with an open mind. We cannot demand that
the ones we love endorse all of our beliefs. Instead, we have to accept them as
they are. How much more does this pertain to a relationship with God!
I don’t think that she
was able to see that it was she who
had erected the barrier between her and a relationship with God.
Our autonomy is so basic
to our existence that we can’t see it and how it interferes with our
relationships. Can the sea urchin see the water if that’s the only thing he’s
ever lived in?
I wasn’t able to see the
absurdity of claiming to be seeking for God, when I was merely seeking a God of
my own creation, one whose job it was to validate me. Sadly, this is what it
today means to be “spiritual.” It is to treat God as a smorgasbord table,
picking-and-choosing what appeals to us, without a clue that this is offensive
to God.
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