A possibly apocryphal story has a Western reporter asking one of the first Russians in space about the spiritual meaning of his voyage. The dutifully atheist cosmonaut replies that he looked all around up there, but didn’t see any God. It is not hard to recognize the logical flaw. There are actually two possible explanations for this failed search: it could indeed be that there is no God, but it could be that he was looking in the wrong place.
We should learn from the example of our cosmonaut comrade. Our fallible minds develop conceptions of what God is like. But God transcends human understandings and expectations, so if the ways we think we should see God aren't the ways God chooses to reveal himself, then we'll miss God, and it will be our fault.
This lesson applies not only as we seek God's presence in our own lives, but also as we try to point others to God. If we tell our neighbors wrong places to look (either directly or in the things they see us say and do), they will be disappointed, and may make the cosmonaut's conclusion that God isn't to be found at all. In the interest of preventing such outcomes, I will offer a few thoughts on wrong places people look for God.
The God of the Philosophers
The French genius Blaise Pascal, no slouch as a philosopher, famously declared his encounter with the "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers …" For centuries, philosophers have debated the existence of God. Christians have often put great stock in such arguments; the famed medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas constructed five separate arguments for the existence of God, some of them rather dubious. St. Anselm made the silly argument that God must exist because we can imagine a greatest being and not existing would be less great. Others have tried to deduce God from study of the natural world (more on that below). Whether any of these arguments is compelling is not relevant here — what is relevant is Pascal's rejection of the "God of the Philosophers."
Pascal's point, it seems to me, was that it is insulting to identify the Christian God with the abstract deities constructed by philosophy. We worship not some generic Supreme Being, but a specific, personal God who interacted with Israel and who is most fully revealed in the person of Jesus. At best, human philosophy might get you to theism, belief in some god who could as easily be the god of the Moonies as the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. Philosophy will never get you to Jesus, and if you don't get to Jesus you haven’t gotten anywhere at all.
Some Christians are obsessed with arguments for faith, as though they are the main place to find God. While few people are ever argued into the faith, there can be value in reasoning that removes barriers that might keep people from Jesus. But too often these arguments ignore Jesus, as though the job is finished if people find some abstract God of the Philosophers. Extended arguments about the existence of God can distract from what should be the goal of apologetics, which is God revealed in Jesus. From a Christian perspective, Jesus-free arguments for a God of the Philosophers are no place to look for God.
The God of the Gaps
The God of the Gaps is a particular species of the God of the Philosophers. It is common in some circles, particularly among those enamored with "evidentialist" apologetics, to embrace alleged gaps in nature as the basis for theism. They find some phenomenon in the natural world (usually in biology), claim that science has no way to explain it, and then conclude that God (or an anonymous Designer) must be the cause. Christian physicist C.A. Coulson coined the phrase "God of the Gaps" in the 1950s to describe the view that such gaps were the place to find God, but over a decade earlier Dietrich Bonhoeffer used similar language, warning "how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know."
I do not mean to categorically reject all "design" arguments for God. While arguments in the area of biology have consistently crumbled in the face of scientific knowledge (and have often been motivated by unwarranted aversion to evolution), it is not impossible that science might provide evidence for the Creator. I have some sympathy for arguments based on the structure of the universe, which seems to be fine-tuned for life to evolve. What I reject is the tendency (particularly in the "Intelligent Design" movement) to make finding such gaps foundational to faith, such that lack of scientifically detectable gaps equals lack of God. The implicit assumption is that God is present in gaps, but not in things that have "natural" explanations, making finding gaps a theological necessity (this feeling of necessity may be why so many bad gap-based arguments are made). Sound Christian theology insists that God is present in the entire fabric of nature, both in the things we don’t (currently) understand scientifically and in those we do. The God of the Gaps is a puny substitute for the Christian God who is Lord of all creation, including its natural processes.
Before moving on, we should look at Romans 1:20, which is often invoked in this context. In arguing that all people are in need of redemption, Paul says Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse. Is Paul advocating that we look for God in nature? Maybe in part, but not in the way God of the Gaps proponents do. First of all, this is not about scientific detection of gaps — Paul is talking about the grandeur of creation evident in his day, not about things that science would discover 1900 years later. He has in view stars and sunsets and forests, not the bacterial flagellum. Second, Paul does not endorse this as a path to God. After noting how people fail to correctly see God in creation, Paul does not advocate better scrutiny of creation. Instead, he points to Jesus as the solution for human failure to see God. The creation may show us God's eternal power and divine nature, but it can't show us Jesus. The anonymous god of Romans 1:20 is merely a God of the Philosophers.
The Paper God
A defining feature of Fundamentalism is its elevation of the Bible to the center of the faith. This is also in part a God of the Philosophers, since the idea of faith based on a perfect book owes much to Enlightenment philosophy (it also has much in common with Islam's view of the Quran). One can point to examples that flirt with idolatry (I once saw a church elder insist that the Bible be given equal status to God, and I have heard of churches adding a 4th section on the Bible to the Trinitarian structure of the Apostles' Creed), but even many less extreme Christians think of the pages of the Bible as the main place to look for God. In this case, the Bible itself gives us words from Jesus about the error of looking for God in a book: You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39-40).
This is to some extent a matter of degree, since the Bible is vital to Christianity. After all, it is primarily in Scripture that we learn about the Jesus we are called to follow. But we must not forget that the Bible is not an end in itself, but rather is a means (albeit a very important means) to the end, which is Jesus. A good analogy is to think of the Bible as a treasure map. If we fail to pay attention to the map, we are unlikely to find the treasure. Yet it would be a great error to treat the map as though it were the treasure itself; the map is only a tool whose value lies in its ability to lead us to the treasure.
Looking for God in a book is a tempting shortcut, a way to domesticate God as though he were a device defined by an owner's manual. But the God revealed in Jesus cannot be confined within human language. God wants to know us personally, not just indirectly through words. A personal relationship with anybody, much less God, requires more work than merely reading about them, but it is also much richer and more meaningful. We should not settle for words in black and white when God offers us himself in living color.
The God of Correct Beliefs
Just as it is tempting to look for God in words on a page, it can be tempting to substitute having correct beliefs about God for actually following God. Sometimes we think that if we only believe the right things, we will have successfully found God. The language used in church can reinforce this — we talk about being a "believer" and use the word "faith" as though it simply means believing something to be true.
We should know that mere belief in statements about God is insufficient; James told his readers Even the demons believe – and shudder. (James 2:19). We find God in relationship and commitment, not in mere mental assent to propositions. The way we tend to read the words "believe" and "faith" in our English Bible translations does us a disservice; we would do better to mentally substitute words like "trust" and "allegiance." Knowledge about God is not a bad thing (we can be better followers if we have better knowledge of whom are follow), but it can't replace actually knowing God. The primary call of Jesus was and is "Follow me," not "Believe the correct doctrines about me."
A related problem is that we not only define our faith by belief in propositions, but we judge its strength by the certainty with which we hold those beliefs. Doubts and questions are equated with a weak faith, while we commend the faith of those who seem rock-solid in their beliefs. Church cultures exalt black-and-white certainty; this is particularly alienating for those of us with a more reflective bent, who see shades of gray and for whom certainty does not come easily. Some people will not find God unless they can honestly wrestle with questions, yet often the church does not seem like a safe place for that wrestling. If we give people the impression that God is only found in piety that is certain, many will leave disappointed. The true strength of our faith should be measured not by certainty, but by faithfulness in following Jesus even in the midst of uncertainty.
The God of Signs and Wonders
It is hard for me to write objectively about this one. I have baggage from my late teens, when for a time I was involved with people who followed a "name it and claim it" gospel based on the great things God would do for us if we only prayed with sufficient fervor and faith. This deeply unhealthy theology, in which the Holy Spirit is reduced to a force to be manipulated for our own ends, left me gun-shy and skeptical about claims of miraculous manifestations of the Spirit.
While I think the fraction of purported signs and wonders that are legitimately from God is far below 100%, I do not believe it is zero. However, when the signs and wonders become the main place people look for God, it creates many problems. First, it can give the idea that it is only in these flashy things that "God shows up," undermining the truth that God is always with us, in our suffering just as much as in a miracle. Second, it is not sustainable. A former pastor of mine used to say that we shouldn't base our faith on miracles, because the miracle that satisfies us today won't be enough for tomorrow. Chasing ever loftier spiritual experiences may be attractive to those with thrill-seeking personalities, but it is not a recipe for faithful discipleship.
Finally, signs and wonders can become idols. The purpose of a sign, whether on a road or in a church, is to point us someplace. It is fine if signs point people to Jesus, but sometimes they become an end in themselves. When the gifts eclipse the Giver, we need to step back and regain perspective, focusing on Jesus rather than on the signs and wonders. The Apostle Paul, no stranger to miracles, can be instructive here. At the end of his letter to the Galatians, he writes May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal. 6:14) He glories not in the many miracles in his life but in the cross, in Christ's humble suffering and death.
The God of Tribe and Nation
Humans are naturally tribal, joining those who are like them and avoiding (even hating) those who are not. We might justify this from the Bible if all we had was the Old Testament, with its laws about keeping God's people pure, although even there we have counter-testimony such as admonitions to welcome strangers. But Jesus rejected such tribalism. He came when many had nationalistic expectations of God's Messiah; Peter Enns has described it as "Make Israel Great Again." Instead, Jesus advocated a different kind of Kingdom. The Apostle Paul also described how the church should transcend distinctions of tribe or nation (there is neither Jew nor Greek).
There is a universal tendency for people to find identity in their tribe or nation. It is not an exaggeration to say that these groupings sometimes play a god-like role in people’s lives. Christian theology instead insists that above all we find our identity in the Body of Christ. If we tie following God with our national identity (or, God forbid, our racial identity), we are seeking God in the wrong place.
This problem is particularly acute in the United States, where "God and Country" sometimes become two equally important and intertwined objects of worship. Some churches even display the American flag in the sanctuary and sing patriotic "hymns" on Sundays that fall near national holidays. Not only does this border on idolatry, but it is missionally unwise in making it appear that non-Americans are less welcome in the church. Too often, the church becomes something that serves national or political identity rather than something that defines our identity over and against all other claims to our allegiance.
A major manifestation of this false god is Christian nationalism. This includes the myth that America is a "Christian nation" and that its Founding Fathers (few of whom were orthodox Christians) were great men of God. It grants the U.S. a special status with God that other countries lack — it is only a small step from there to the heresy that American lives have more value than others. It tries to restore a mythical time when the U.S. was specially Christian; in practice this usually means preserving the power of those who have historically been privileged. A nationalistic slogan is "America first," but American Christians should instead say "Jesus first" and, like God does, value the people outside our borders as much as we value those within.
We might ask at this point if there is any role for patriotism among Christians. I think there is, but only in a minimal sense. We should be patriots in that we obey the law (unless it directs us to sin), and in that we "seek the welfare of the city" in which we find ourselves (Jer. 29:7). But to go beyond this to a flag-waving nationalism that denigrates others in God's world and makes our country an object of devotion must be rejected. The phrase "Christian nationalist" should be recognized as nonsensical, like "vegan butcher."
Making God in our Image
The philosopher Voltaire wrote, "If God created us in his image, we have more than reciprocated." Voltaire was no Christian, but I think he was on to something. Many of our misdirected searches for God come from human-invented ideas of what God should be like, which often end up being the way we would do things if we were God. We should not be surprised that God is not to be found in these images we construct. As theologian Karl Barth put it, "You cannot speak about God by speaking about man in a loud voice."
If all these human images are wrong places to look for God, what is the right place? Jesus provides the answer: Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied." Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:8-9). Paul concurs: He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. (Col. 1:15). Jesus confounded (and continues to confound) human expectations of what God is supposed to be like. He comes to us not as a philosophical construct, or a cosmic engineer, or a tribal hero. He comes instead as a servant, teaching and exemplifying self-sacrificing love to the point of allowing himself to be crucified. If faced with the challenge "Show me God," our primary reply should not be to point to intricacies of biology, or to a book, or to a miracle. Instead, we point to the person of Jesus, whose life, death, and resurrection provide God's most complete self-revelation.
But we are not quite done. Showing people Jesus is not just a matter of pointing to the past, saying "Look at this person who lived 2000 years ago." In the present, God should be visible in God's people, individually but even more so collectively. Paul's frequent metaphor for the church is the "Body of Christ," meaning that we are the tangible manifestation of Jesus for the world. The community of Jesus-followers should exhibit the same sort of self-sacrificing love demonstrated by Jesus. If people don't see the character of Jesus in the church, then we are failing badly. If people looking for God can see Jesus in the Body of Christ, that will be a big step in the right direction.
| Disclaimer: The views expressed in this essay are the opinion of the author of this essay alone and should not be taken to represent the views of any other person or organization. |
Essay written early/mid 2018. Page last modified August 19, 2018
