September 2010
Dear Friends,
Jesus tells us an amusing story of the friend who came at midnight wanting to borrow bread for an unexpected guest. Though the man will not get up and supply him out of friendship, he will get up and give him what he wants to quieten the racket he is kicking up ! This, and stories like it, are told by Jesus to throw light on the character of God. Jesus is not saying that God is like the man in the story – pester him to such an extent that he will give you what you want just to get rid of you – no ! Jesus says the opposite – ‘if you, as bad as you are, know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him’ (St Matthew 7.11).
Have you ever noticed that Jesus uses people as models to teach us about the nature of God ? God, he says, is like the shepherd going to look for the lost sheep; the father going out to welcome the prodigal son; but unlike the man who only gives his friend what he needs to get rid of him. To what extent do you think of God in personal terms ? Faced with the vast complexity of our modern world do you find it unreal and rather childish to think of the creator of it all – if there is one – in such personal and simple terms as shepherd, father, king, and so on ? Furthermore, does it seem quite unthinkable to pray to whatever (whoever !!) is behind it all ?
Isn’t such a view a retreat from Christianity ? Our machines, mighty as many of them are and wonderful as others are in their intricate delicacy, are nothing more than things which we have made, all on a lower level of existence than ourselves. Surely the greatest and highest things of which we have any experience is human personality. If we are to use any models to help us when we think about God, and we must have such models, then surely the highest model we can find anywhere is a personal one. To use models based on machines or forces is to worship the work of our own hands, and that is the Bible’s definition of idolatry !
Today, it seems that individuality and personal values seem to be at risk. There is the rigidity and routine of shift work to accommodate the production lines; the small and personal community is replaced by the lonely anonymity of the large city and housing estate; the impersonal ‘feel’ of the huge hospital; the individual being a number and a category on someone’s computer system. Individuality and personality is threatened. No wonder we find it hard to think of God as personal.
I believe that the kind of society we create is a reflection of the kind of God we worship. If we ‘let go’ and think of God in terms of a force or a machine, nothing stands between us and life in a highly automated ant hill. Let us hold fast to the biblical ‘models’ of God as father, shepherd, king. In the strength of that faith we can respect the personality of every person, because in it there is something of God himself.
With every blessing
John Hartley