Who is God?

I am reading a MUST READ book right now:   

Frouse, Paul and Bader, Christopher.  (2010) America’s Four Gods: what we say about God--& what that says about us. Oxford University Press, New York, NY. 

It is so thought-provoking and I am loving the mind exercise it is offering.  The whole concept of the book is that Americans tend to view God in terms of two aspects of God (judgment and engagement) and where we fall on that spectrum impacts how we interact with God and religion.  It is fun to read about how people may consider God.  It helps me to understand how some people can believe and be uninvolved in religious endeavors involving church.  It helps me to see how I can understand and approach conversations with other people and meet them where they are.  A person can be devout while not attending any church if it is consistent with their belief about God but, if a person believes that God requires attendance and involvement in religion and simply doesn’t go, that’s a different scenario—outwardly the same, inwardly much different. 

“Relatively few Americans, about 13 percent were raised by families who attended church on a weekly basis.  Even fewer (7 percent) were raised in families who skipped church altogether.” (Froese and Bader 2010.  p.41)

“ Unsurprisingly, many atheists (33 percent) never attended church as children” (Froese and Bader 2010.  p.41)

“There are some clear and obvious trends here.  Yet what do they tell us about how belief in God develops?  Most likely, children who are taken to church all the time had parents who felt strongly about their religion and sought to instill it in their kids at an early age.  It is also likely that these parents felt that God demanded religious participation—a characteristic of an Authoritative God.  By contrast, children with parents who were more lax in their church attendance were introduced to Gods who were more lax and less engaged” (Froese and Bader 2010.  p.41)

The very simplified breakdown of the definitions they used for the four types of Gods within a range of two different criteria: judgment and engagement is as follows:

Authoritative: greater propensity toward judgment and engagement

Benevolent: lower tendency toward judgment but high levels of engagement

Critical: does not engage in the world but remains judgmental of it

Distant: neither very judgmental or very involved

Obviously,  no one definition is tied to any church, and one can probably find members of any one church congregation that could land at any of the four definitions. 

The labels for each type of God are an attempt to capture the unique qualities and do not imply that there is no cross-over.  For instance, a person that sees God as Authoritative still provided many stories showing His benevolence.  Even people that view God as Distant may still be able to provide examples of God’s intervention in their lives or believe that God may be angered at some world events.  

I find this book really interesting.  It supports my theory, in some ways, that when people step back from church or from their beliefs, it may be that they have outlived their childhood definition of God and need to re-think their religious practices based on their adult or changed view of God.  In my experience, this happens as people find they need to move to a more benevolent God and do not immediately find room for that in their current religious definitions.   Conversely, when people step up and step forward in their church service and religiosity, it is likely a result of a renewed and more refined understanding of God.  When people are mad at God or feel especially helped by God, they can become confused if their life experience doesn’t fit with their former definition of God.  The idea that one changes their views of God into adulthood is not necessarily addressed yet in this book, I don’t know if it will be, but, I believe that, when life experiences challenge us, it is often a crisis in our belief when our definition of God and how He operates is not hearty enough for what  happened in our life.  The idea that we have to be willing to keep looking for God, even when we think we have found Him and know Him is an idea that is lost among many in our culture.  It is an eternal pursuit to know God and His ways, when we drop out of the game early and make God fit our definition of Him, it erodes our ability to continue to draw close to Him

It would be fun to explore how someone’s definition of God is altered through life experiences and adult realities of pain and unmet expectations, and how some can take the same experience and tie it to goodness and learning while others get stuck and cannot move through the pain to get to the learning.  I wonder how to paint a picture through words and teaching that teach the concept  of a period of pain interspersed with and followed by learning.  If learning is our goal (or as the scriptures name it…experience) then it’s like running or anything else that we do, sure it hurts, sure it’s hard to breath, there are times in the middle of it when it’s not worth it and it feels like a drudgery, and yet, the end result is better than the pain of the middle.  The end result changes our very idea of who we are and what we can do. 

When running a 10 mile race, at mile 2, it’s ok, at mile 4, it’s ok but starting to be a bit uncomfortable, at mile 6 we are unsure why we are in this at all but have gone too far to turn back—should I walk, do I sit for awhile or, do I try to make it my best time so far?  Mile 8 we are becoming aware that the pain will end even though the pain has not let up and, in fact, it likely got worse, there’s a good chance that we can make it since it means 20 minutes at the most is left of the pain.  Mile 9 is simply hard but the last 200 yards we dig deep and find whatever energy reserves are left and give it all we have got. 

If we finish and put forth a decent effort, we can always say that we ran a respectable 10 mile race.  That can’t be taken from us.  We are now a person that ran 10 miles and we see ourselves as a person that could do it.  Before we did it, we thought we might be able to, but, once it is done, we know that we did it.  We know what it means to run through the 6 mile tedium, we know what it means to finish the last mile and we know what we would do differently if the opportunity arises again.  We will be able to offer advice and cheer for people that are in their own race in a different way than we could before.  The payoff is the finish and the knowledge of who we are.

How do we stay in that mind frame in life?  How do we recognize and appreciate the learning in the middle of the learning?  How do we remember that we are building toward the kingdom of God by choosing how to react and how to prioritize rather than seeing the hardship in the learning? 

Happy Sabbath!

Love,

Karen

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