Get God Right


Dear Eugene,

There was a time I'd read a lot of theology--and I still do, for being a layman, I suppose--but with the sole purpose to get things right.

It is not a bad purpose; in fact a very important one.  Now, to this mind, Western, rational, it's clear when one gets the wrong idea everything else follows can't be right.  I can afford to be wrong about other stuffs but when it comes to God I don't want a second opinion but the best.  No, not even that--I need the Truth, the one single idea, or one single set of ideas about God that gets God right.  There must be some core stuffs that I can't get wrong about God or would risk eternal damnation.

The line is pretty straight, you see: God leads to salvation.  At times I might love him more and others I might care about him less.  But to secure my place in heaven (which is what I've been told to be the final and most relevant payoff to receive the "Good News") I'd better get things in writing.  I need correct theology done by right theologians so that I would have faith in my faith.  As Celine Dion puts it, "Don't give up on your faith!"

I've been talking to people who have unhealthy ideas about God.  I mean, they got it all right, mostly, but then there were some claims that are just, you know, "out there."  Going back to the time that I mentioned in my first sentence, you know what I would do?  I would worry about these people.  I wouldn't despise them, because, you know me, I am all about compassion (please get the joke, Eugene).  But I would genuinely worry about them and that's the truth.  I would want to try my best, without being insensitive of course, to suggest to them the right ways to look at God.  Being honest and caring enough about their eternal destiny is the least I should do for my friends, in the name of "evangelism."

I've been going at it this way, for decades.  I had doubt about my approach and the general outlook of the neat picture in my head, and I came up with simple answers to kill my curiosity.

What doubt?  Such as how, in the Bible, everyone who seemed to get Jesus and long to be with him were losers and whores and bandits and murderers, dickheads and dipsticks, who either had not a grain of "theology" in the head or subscribed to a kind that is dangerously erroneous.  Now Jesus loved them, not only as a way to finally push a tract over to set them right, pull them into church, conscript them into a religious lifestyle, but he truly enjoyed them, like they were real friends to him, someone to laugh and cry with, someone to show his vulnerability and nakedness.  It was the Pharisees, those who had all the right ideas about God, the churched folks, that Jesus reserved his bitterest venom to serve them well and send them off.

I had a simple answer to this: well, it is clear, that the Pharisees didn't get God right, either.  In fact, they got God really wrong, and that's why they acted really really bad.  The wronger the idea the badder the act, and that is further proof we need to get the right ideas about God.

Still, my simple (and simple-minded) answer did not answer the real question about how Jesus would relate to those sinners, who not only had not the right theology but also if they had wouldn't care to stick to it and live accordingly, giving them a place around his table already before they had figured out the right ideas about him, like they were true friends, people closest to his heart of heart.

This letter is getting long.  I shall stop here.  What I really have in mind if I am to speak it I will need to triple the length so far and miss my volunteer shift.

But I will need to say something, not as a conclusion, but to share a simple yet most profound realization.  I told you lately I've been talking to people and some of them have wonky ideas about God.  I looked at their mouth moving and I realized they were speaking to me, about the poverty of my own remarks, my neat, well-organized, little ideas about a very little God, in my head.  These people are true theist, that the very fact they are struggling to speak about a God they can never pin down or get right is a testament to their longing to be a true friend of God.  They long to relate to him in everything they do.  It is me the church dude, the deist who has on his shelf books with brilliant ideas about God but hardly sees God's activity in ordinary daily life who is in need of some serious help to find my way back to God's table and laugh with Jesus a little, cry with him too, and pay attention to his loving presence.

Yours, Alex

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