Designer-gods (everybody’s doing it)

An invisible, inaudible God stirs up in us an almost irresistible desire to put a familiar face on Him and put our words in his mouth. It’s a bit like when I have to pop down to the office and I get back to my classroom unannounced. I hear young voices shouting, “But Mr Hulley said that I must hand the books out!” “No he didn’t, he said from last week already that it’s my job!” Of course when they turn around and see “Mr Hulley” standing right behind them, one of them inevitably flushes bright red. Ha ha ha!

Well there is definitely a shouting match going on amongst us adults as well. Jesus left the classroom two thousand and thirteen years ago and there are so many interest groups liberally referencing the “absent” God for the exploitation of their own causes. It just sounds so much more legit’ if we can attach a pithy quote from “God” to lend some weight to our claims (and his endorsements come free of charge!) What grates me the most though are the people that dabble in religion only to tap into the public sentiment while they themselves have absolutely no religious bent at all. They use words like “God” and “love” and all manner of religious jargon purely as rhetorical devices in order to appeal to the ‘ignorant’, ‘uneducated simpletons’ that are still clinging onto the notion of a “God” and “absolute truths” ‘till grim death.

The saying is true that “God made man in his image and man has returned the favour.” A quote from Dawkins was a rude reminder for me of this unfortunate tendency that we mere mortals have. He was speaking about “the kind of God I might be tempted to believe in”. His personal taste was not the incarnate God of the Christians, but a more aloof kind of “force” who created the planet but then stepped back and remained emotionally detached from it. The attitude that he expressed about God called to my memory all the other times that I have heard people say things like, “If this is the kind of God that you worship then I am not interested!”

What a curious attitude to have! As if God were canvassing for votes! Since when has he ever needed our nod of approval to boost his rankings in a cosmic popularity poll? What muddies the waters I think is this nonsensical notion that “all religions ultimately worship the same God” and that we therefore have the option of choosing whichever religion suites us best. As if God would sacrifice his only son to provide yet another convenient way to provide atonement for our sin and imbue us with his righteousness. This pluralistic notion has produced a plethora of designer-god’s suited to every taste.

The sad consequence of this religious outlook is that choosing a religion has become very much like choosing a political party. People evaluate the merits of different religions not according to their legitimacy in claiming to represent the truth about God but rather whether their “manifesto” accommodates the personal preferences of the “voter”. Viewed in this light John 3:16 might read more like this: “God loved us so much that he gave his only son to die for us, so vote for Jesus because He will give you eternal life, free housing and equality for all. Viva Jesus viva!”

From reading the Bible (the revealed truth about God), I learn that, although God would love very much for us to put our faith in Him and to bring us into His kingdom, he does not need our vote, we need Him! We need Him to choose us! He is not an elected official, he is the king of the universe. He will still be king, even if he gets no votes. Our task as citizens in his country, breathing his oxygen, using his resources, is to find the truth about him through his son who came with the express purpose of revealing this truth to us. He never gave anyone permission to “find my own path” or “believe my own truth” or, for that matter, to decide whether I would be Armenian or Calvinist. Our task is simply to get to the bottom of what he has said and what he is saying. I get a shiver down my spine when I think about how these audacious pretenders are going to feel when Jesus re-enters the classroom and interrupts them mid-sentence. Even if he is invisible and his voice is mostly inaudible, we would do well to remember that he is God after all, and he created us. He spoke and we came into existence. If we want his endorsements on our words or on our cause the safest bet is to repeat what he really said and do what he has already said we should do.