December 11, 2002

• Saving Grace

  
  

  Yesterday's post prompted some great discussion in my comments section and on my phone, and over my dinner table.  So now I'm in the difficult position of trying to decide how to begin today's thought. I'm not sure that everyone heard what I intended to say yesterday, so I want to say some of it again for my own sake.  Please give me a paragraph of patience on this. 

  
  

  No one is "saved" by religion.  Theology is what happens when people who've had experience of God attempt to translate that experience into language that other people can understand.  Religion happens when people come together and translate their worship from a private into a corporate experience.  Intellectual assent to the theology and participation in the ritual of religion are both valuable things, but they do not equal direct experience of God.

  
  

  One of my favorite Christian author/speakers wrote a book a few years back entitled "We Have Met the Enemy and They are Partly Right".  (If I ever get published I hope I have someone who can think up cool title's like that for my stuff.)  I'm not much about correcting theological error.  I've been on the receiving end of well-intentioned but ultimately harmful efforts by people who just wanted to set me straight often enough to have lost whatever taste I might have had for engaging in such activity myself.  And, I've learned that it's just as rare for someone to be all wrong as for me to be all right.

  
  

  I am very much about asking questions and being willing to hear a hard answer.  Christians have a lot of it right.  Two things we understand is that people are saved by faith and that it is through God's grace that we are given faith.  There is nothing any person can do so summon the exact proper amount of faith to "win" a spot in the eternal in-crowd.  What we sometimes fail to do is carry our understanding all the way out to it's logical conclusion. 

  
  

  Faith is defined by theologians as the response of man to God.  I cannot respond to something that I don't believe exists.  I cannot form a relationship with someone that I have never met.  I can talk about a concept, or I can talk about a person, but to have faith is to have a relationship with God.

  
  

  There are all kinds of reasons, good reasons why a person may be unable to offer intellectual assent to theological constructs.  Some Christian evangelists out of well-meant desire to see people experience God have presented Him in such a way that the very people they are most concerned about are hurt and offended.  If you are one of those people who have been hurt in this way, I'm sorry.  The truth is that God in His grace doesn't require us to do anything to be His friend.  One of the Bible verses that we Christians love to quote reminds us that God reaches out to us before we ever consider reaching out to Him (and really when you think about it, what could we possibly offer to God to bribe Him into accepting us anyway?)

  
  

  I'm concerned for those who have been terribly wounded by religion or religious people.  I look in the Bible to see how Jesus and his disciples responded when they met people who fit this description.  I gave some examples of Biblical texts concerning pagans yesterday, today I'd like to mention another.  First there is the episode of Jesus meeting and speaking with the woman at the well.  This woman had all kinds of obstacles between herself and Jesus in the estimation of his disciples.  First off she was a woman, no respecting rabbi would speak with a woman.  The woman in question was a Samaritan, a despised ethnic minority.  In addition to having these strikes against her, she lived a life her community judged harshly.  She had bounced from man to man and was at the time living with a man who was not her husband. 

  
  

  Jesus did some remarkable things in this encounter.  He broke social convention by speaking with her, by asking for water from her dipper, and by raising the issue of her affairs.  Then she asked him for a definitive answer to a religious question - where is the right place to worship God?  His answer to her is one of the more fascinating passages I've ever meditated upon.  He said "You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.  But an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers.  God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth."

  
  

  As a teenager, I brought this verse to my Dad in a plea that he allow me to sit a little closer to the back of the sanctuary with my friends.  See he had this rule that I could sit anywhere I wanted in church as long as I would sit in front of him - and he sat on the third pew back from the front on the left side of the sanctuary.  So I mostly sat alone and felt all the eyes on the back of my head.  My Dad's answer was classic Don Chenault.  "It's true that you CAN worship anywhere, the question is not CAN you, its WILL you."  I don't know if the heady distraction of my friends would have prevented me from worshiping, I never got the chance to find out. 

  
  

  As an adult I've cone to understand that there are all kinds of layers in the passage from the book of John and in my Dad's answer.  See, I could be sitting on the front row, looking very attentive to all the people sitting around me, and not be worshipping at all.  Or I can be physically in the middle to the back row center section but in every other way I'm standing before the throne of God.  I can be sitting in a Christian church, a meeting of people exploring together the precepts of Buddhist meditation, a solemn celebration of seder, a state park, or at my dining room table and have the same experience of worship.  I have prayed aloud, silently, through dance, through song and through tears when I had no words at all.  I've met God through the spontaneous expression of worship in a charismatic fellowship and in the high ritual of mass.

  
  

  I believe that there are people who have met the Spirit of God, who have had their life altered by the experience and who are in a genuine relationship with the Creator of the Universe in response to His invitation who do not call themselves Christian.  I believe that there are Christians who show up regularly at church and go through all the motions and say all the words who have never met God and wouldn't recognize Him if he showed up at their doorstep with a nametag.

  
  

  I don't know which people are which.  I know only that God is real and is actively engaged in the business of inviting people to come into relationship.  Some places are more conducive to hearing that voice and responding to that invitation than others.  But, just as God is everywhere, those who respond to God are everywhere.  Only you can say whether the place you hang out makes it more or less possible for you to meet God.

  
  

  I believe there is only one God.  Everyone who has met God has met the same God.  But, every experience of God is unique.  We meet God with our mind, heart, body and spirit.  When we meet religion it's sometimes tempting to think that we've met God.  But, the two are only distantly related.  I believe the promise given in the Bible that anyone who seeks God will find God. 

  
  

  See now I'm preaching again.  I'm almost tempted to give an altar call and invite you to contribute to the offering plate because that's generally how we do it in the place where I worship.  How about this instead?  If you have a question about God as I know God, or if you have an experience of God that you'd like to share and you don't particularly want to put it out there in the comments section for everyone to dissect, I'd love to have you email me.  I don't have all the answers.  I don't even have all the questions.  I do have an open heart and a ready listening ear to hear your story.

  • 2:25 pm
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