Wednesday, October 6, 2021

“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s.” (1 John 4: 16 -18, The Message Bible)

                 A Baptist colleague who writes a semi-regular column for the local weekly newspaper opined in his last week’s, post-election article that we need a God-centred governance. “A God-centred view of everything from economics, the environment and social needs of the day would result in radically different realities than the ones proposed by any of the major political parties.”

                It is a noble sentiment. I don’t disagree with it.

                But it begs the question in my mind whose God should be at the centre of our political systems?

                Never mind, for the moment, the atheists, agnostics and secularists who don’t want any god of any sorts anywhere near their institutions. I am asking whose God among all the types of believers, religions and faith groups  should be at the heart and soul of our governments?

                I am pretty sure the Taliban are imposing their version of a God-centred government. No thank you. That’s a god full of cruelty, violence, murder and hatred of one’s enemies.

                Even if we limit ourselves to some sort of Christian version, the question remains.  The very conservative, religious right wing of the church would welcome a God- centred government.  But this version of God seems very narrow-minded, judgmental, punitive and restrictive.  I do not feel very warmly towards such a god as they portray.

                Neither am I totally comfortable with the so-called progressive Christian version of God. This God sometimes comes across as too demure, too passive, too grandfatherly, too ethereal.

                My version?  You probably wouldn’t be happy with that God either. Jesus and I sit around and drink whisky and smoke cigars, chewing the fat and arguing theology and life.

                Scriptures, always the Christian’s sole/soul source for understanding the mind of God are not as helpful as we might think or hope. The God of the Bible is complex, multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, and frankly, sometimes, down-right moody.

                The common denominator in all these varied ideas of God is that they are very human-influenced. It has been said that humankind has created god in our own image and there is truth in that.

                But that doesn’t mean we give up on the question what it means to have a God-centred governance.

                God is love. This is a very poignant, specific, political statement.  Chapters 3  and 4 of the First Letter of John clearly and unambiguously outline the kind of society, culture and political policies of God’s Love which should  and needs to abide in our world. If we respect the truth that God is Love, then “love has run of the house”.

Decisions, policies, actions,  choices, behaviour become centred in the Love of God working in our lives and in our world. None of us would go wrong if we practiced the Love that Jesus Christ embodied.  It would re-define justice, poverty, business ethics, political morality, and confront evil and hatred and prejudice and the like with a clear alternative to all that is contrary and in opposition to that Love.

                But even that depth of Love depends on us, sons of Adam, daughters of Eve, who quickly ruined the Garden of Eden, to embody and articulate and live out that Love each and every day. God can’t do it for us; we must love as we are loved.

                “The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.” (1 John 4:21, The Message)

Dale