Article 04 - Unlearning.

CONFESSIONAL

Okay folks, it's time I came clean on a few things.



I am ashamed to admit that I have misrepresented my Father.
The truth is, in comparison to the scale and awesome power of God, we are all slathering, slobbering, pant-wetting, little babies. Even at our oldest and wisest point in life, we are like incapable newborn babies in the arms of our Father. Our big words are like babble. Gobblety-gook. Flism flasm. Our proudest accomplishments look like drool, dangling from our chin. Our mistakes amount to diapers... full of the most foul-smelling glop. And yet, He scoops us up and cradles us in His arms. He cleans us. He relishes our blabbering. He delights in our drool. But all of His affection is not given because we do anything for Him. It is not because we deserve it.

He does it just because He's a good daddy. He's our daddy.



What else would a good daddy do?
After all He's done for me, you would think that I could manage to develop a positive image of this ever-loving Father. But alas...

The one who cradled me when I was vulnerable... I have consistently believed the worst about Him. The same one who raised me from the ashes... I have unknowingly slandered Him. The one who worships the ground that I walk on... I have defiled His name. The one who accepts me like no other... I have embraced Him exclusively on my own terms, with complete disregard for who He really is.

I have stood in front of crowds of people and described Him in lurid detail as nothing short of a sadistic dictator (the likes of Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein), assigned Him glory for that sadism, and felt proper for doing so.


I have glibly pranced and raised my voice under the utter conviction that torture was as much a part of God's character as love, mercy, and grace.

I have actually believed with all of my heart that I was better than God without even knowing that I was doing it. *I'll explain in a later article.

In fact, in almost every case I was saying what I considered to be positive things about my Father. I genuinely believed that I was paying Him a compliment.


But I was not. Instead, I was doing what those who have gone before me have done; I was breeding the disease. I was allowing lies to fester and grow by doing nothing more than believing in them myself. I wasn't cringing when I should have cringed. I wasn't offended when my Father was hailed by others as a war hero. I just smiled and agreed. I liked to think of Him as having kicked a few asses and taken a few names. He fit me better that way. He was my hit man. He took up for me when people did me wrong. He had my back. And I was "winning" and you were "losing" and that was fine.



Where did I get such a crazy ideas?

Where did I go so tragically wrong?
I suppose that I could blame the bible. But to do that would give the bible too much credit. After all, I do believe that it's just a book. A good book on many levels (I'll grant you that)... but a book all the same. If I am unwilling to credit the bible with God-like authority, then I likewise tend to shy away from giving it the power of grand deception. It's the extremes that pop tires, melt iron, split atoms and start wars.

As I see it, books are written by fellow slathering, slobbering, and pant-wetting little babies (humans). Folks, neither you nor I have ever met one person who was capable of passing the unspoiled word of God through his or her brain without screwing it up. Half the time, I can't understand my wife or remember to get milk for her at the grocery store. I know folks with PhDs, have eaten dinner, lunch and breakfast with the poorest of the poor and multi-millionaires alike, and have traipsed around the globe meeting countless volumes of different and interesting people... none of whom was capable of the sort of selflessness required for writing precisely what God wants written. It's always has our spin.

You jump back several thousand years and strip away nearly all of the scientific enlightenment, accumulated human experience, and philosophies that the ages have brought us and you are left with folks who think that thunderstorms and earthquakes and erupting volcanoes and meteors falling from the sky are all direct acts of a worked-up God, hell-bent on punishing some city for the gays that live in it.


The folks who wrote what now amounts to your bible didn't know about red blood cells or protein or printing presses or the solar system or the chemical breakdown of water or viruses or gene sequences or cold fronts and low pressure systems or lake-effect-snow or sperm or friction or chemotherapy or caffeine or shuttle launches.

Is it any wonder then that God was given so much direct credit for things that had no known explanation? Sure He created everything, but does God necessarily reach down and move each flock of birds south for the winter or cause each individual wave to splash upon each and every shore? Without science to explain the effect of the moon's gravity on the sea or the climate-related effects of the earth's proximity to the sun in relationship to the migration of certain birds, primitive mankind drew up different models. In these models, God was directly responsible for each and every puff of wind, each and every wave, each and every sunrise, and the list goes on.


I know, I know, some of you still put it all on God's direct control. Every breath is the result of His hand pulling on your diaphragm. Every drop of water from a dew-soaked leaf is actually being held by Him and not falling at all. That's fine. Personally, I like to think that part of creating is imparting some degree of functionality to your creations. Making things that require your constant attention seems insecure to me, and "insecure" is something that God is not.


From where I sit, I think that God is as involved in His creation as any loving Father would be. There's a daily interaction. There's much needed nurturing. But, just as I do not sit around and wait on my children to tell me how great I am, God's need to have creation tell Him how great He is seems fool hearty to me. If I did sit around waiting for my kids to appreciate me, you would rightly call me selfish, insecure, and conceited. Certainly, my lingering in wait of gratitude would not be characteristic of selfless-love.

Admittedly, I have had my moments of selfishness. I have longed for the gratitude of my children. There's a good chance that it's because I am a child myself. I am human. I am needy. But this is where earthly fathers (like myself) and our creator God respectfully part ways. God is no one's child. God does not ever need a single, solitary thing that we may have. In a very real sense, if God had such a need, it would undermine His "godhood" altogether. After all, the supreme being of all beings cannot be in want of anything... certainly not something that the lesser beings can provide. For crying out loud! If we did have anything to offer God, it would only be because God gave it to us in the first place.


Am I the only one who finds our present place to be extremely problematic? Are we not infatuated with our traditions, our processes, and our manuals? I hear people saying that the Emperor is well-dressed. I see them bowing and complimenting his fine garments. I hear the chitter-chatter between friends. We are all so very strung out about belonging to the majority that we are unwilling to say what is on our very hearts and clasping to the tip of our tongues. Everybody who's looking can see that the Emperor isn't wearing any clothes. He's just naked and that's just that. His wiener is flopping from side to side. His ass is flapping in the breeze. His belly rolls are jiggling for all to see. But we smile and we bow and we compliment his "garments" as he passes.

If you hear nothing else... at least hear this...

God is the standard by which all things should be measured.
Instead, the bible is the standard by which we measure God.
We are explaining God's character with the words we find in the bible when we should be explaining the bible in relationship to the character of God that we have experienced for ourselves, first-hand.
To put it another way...

For most of us, the bible is NOT in question. It is absolute. Who God is then becomes the question. For many of us, the bible answers that question and thereby leaves us with a picture of who God is.

I submit that quite the opposite is needed.

We must FIRST seek to know who God is through a personal encounter with Him and THEN judge the bible (and every other book that comes along) based on that encounter... NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

God is the standard by which all things should be measured.
Instead, the bible is the standard by which we measure God.
We measure God against the bible.
That is vulgar to me.

You don't think that you measure God against the bible?
Here's a test...

Even though the bible says so, I do not believe that God told Abraham to kill Isaac. If you believe that God did tell Abraham to kill Isaac, then it is likely because the bible says that's how it happened.

Your willingness to accept God as a Father who would ask one of his children to slaughter another one of His children likely exists for no other reason than "that's how the bible says it happened." Therefore, you are willing to accept the image of a God who requires human sacrifice more than you are willing to consider that the persons involved (and therefore the resulting writings) might be the ones who are flawed.

I, on the other hand, have experienced God very differently for myself. On top of that, I too am a father. I am no longer afraid to recognize this commonality between myself and God as being highly trustworthy (since God made me this way) and worth putting some weight on.


I most certainly believe that Abraham was convinced that God was telling him to kill Isaac. That is precisely the reason that Abraham's story was passed along as it appears. The catch is, I think that Abraham was mistaken about the character of God. Perhaps his culture placed him at this disadvantage. Violence and justice were as much bedmates in Abraham's day as they are now (if not more so). Thieves got their hands cut off for stealing. Adulterous women were pummeled with stones until they died. Rebellious children could even be put to death.

Without a doubt, the world of Abraham's day was an intolerable world by our standards. Today's human rights criteria would simply not allow such inhumanity. And yet, while most of us would vehemently disapprove of the cultural conditioning that shaped the world in Abraham's time, we are eager to accept the man that came forth from those very conditions as though he were like us. Guess what... Abraham wasn't like us. He was a different man from a different time. So much so that when Abraham thought God was asking him to kill is own son (Isaac), Abraham actually set out to do it! I dunno about you but if I awoke one morning to the distinct thought that God wanted me to sacrifice my child, I would immediately dismiss the thought as insane and clearly not of God.

Abraham was not like us. Most certainly, he was not like me.


Based on my experience as a Father, I would NEVER ask my son to slaughter his firstborn. Not in a trillion years. Nor do I think that God (if He truly is a loving Father) would ask for the same. This is something I feel absolutely certain of. It is a truth that is burned into the eyes of my children. And I use my certainty as a gauge by which I measure incoming information, thoughts, or ideas. When an incoming stream of information slams up against this certainty... I then quarantine the incoming information. I set it aside for further research. I return to it when I have time to meditate upon it and sift through it. All the while, the certainty remains intact. It is poised and ready for the next filtration. Throw your talmud, qur’an, or book of mormon up against the certainty and they will all receive the exact same scrutiny as the bible. Why? It's simple...

THIS IS NOT BIBLE BASHING! THIS IS TRUTH LOVING. ANY book, idea, painting, movie, sermon, or college textbook can contain lies about our Creator and Father. But I also believe that all of the aforementioned things can contain glimpses at the truth about our Creator and Father just the same.

By understanding the character of a loving Father FIRST, I find most religious books about God (not just the bible) to be extremely wanting.


If you find my position to be difficult to swallow, then it is likely because you have measured your understanding of God's character against your "book" and not the other way around. It's difficult to swallow because that's not what your "book" says. But if you could just calm down and breathe... then be honest... I think that you would have to admit... there's no reason to consider it sane to ask your children to slaughter their children. Not then, not now, not ever. Human sacrifice is a violation of love. If God is perfect and if God is love, then human sacrifice cannot be on His wish list.

Sadly, many are left accepting lunacy as though it were righteousness.

"My book says what it says... that's how it happened... and God must follow suit; God must match my book."


And so, as a result of the unwavering distortions and in an effort to maintain them, some must now mis-define words like "holiness" and "justice" to mean what they want and need for them to mean. The whole thing gets screwed up. One bad apple spoils the whole bunch. In the end, an imperfect and stained image of a perfect and pure God emerges.

What happened to us all?
Where did we go so wrong?

- sigh -


I submit that if we had started by understanding the character of God FIRST... we would have known immediately when the authors of our various books were hearing from God and when they were acting out their cultural program. We would be directly linked to an infinite God and not a book that is bound by the forces of gravity, ruined when dropped into a swimming pool, or burned on a cold winter night in Walnut Grove. We would know what it is like to be more offended by violence and hatred and less offended by people like me. We would be free from the fear of "getting it wrong" and finally be free to love as we are loved.

I believe that God's character is unwavering. It is without blemish. It is perfect. God is perfect. God is love. Love does not order killing. That's just that. As such, every book that says He does... is far from authoritative (in my humble opinion). God is the standard and it is the books that fall short. So the books lose points. God remains intact.

I believe that God should always be the standard by which the bible (and all other things) are measured and NOT the other way around.

I'm done for now. More to come.