The Fight Over God

Last Sunday I preached about Harold Camping’s prediction that Judgment Day is coming on May 21st, 2011. While a part of me didn’t want to give him or his right wing fanaticism any more airtime than he is already getting, the other part of me is convinced that the progressive Christian church must learn how to speak out in the fight over God. Don’t we, as progressives, care that one man has proclaimed a God to millions of people that is a foreign God to us?
The progressive Christian church exists, to some extent, in reaction to the claim on truth that right wing Christians have promulgated. Progressives shy away from anything that sounds like dogma because even if it’s liberal, it’s still dogma. So how will we ever have a voice in this fight?
Okay, I get that most people don’t like the word “fight” when it comes to conversation about God. Perhaps “war” would be a more fitting term. My experience has been that an army of people are trying to take over the country we call God and most of us are sit idly on our porches or ducking into our houses as it happens. My pondering over this has left me with two questions: Are we so unsure of what we believe that we won’t even enter into the fray? Or, are we so afraid of becoming “like them” that we won’t stand up for anything?
While I don’t wish to be dogmatic, I can certainly speak from experience. The God I have experienced throughout my life and all of its twists and turns is a God who is long on mercy and short on judgment, is concerned more about those who are hungry and sick and oppressed than about individual salvation, is able to work in ways and through people that are surprising to us, is intent on a world community in which there are no insiders and outsiders, and is not interested in being the God of America only.
One of my favorite professors in seminary was teaching a class on good and evil and he began the class by saying, “This is what I believe today. You may see me 6 months from now and I might believe very differently. God continues to reveal and I continue to be open to such revelation so I will qualify everything I say by saying I am always open to further revelation. So here is what I believe today.” And then he went on to teach the class. He was different than many professors in that he genuinely listened to the students in the class rather than simply trying to transmit his own knowledge. He modeled for us how to be open to further revelation.
Perhaps that is an option for the progressive Christian churches to join in the conversation and the fight over God. Perhaps we simply need to say, “This is what we believe today and we also believe God continues to reveal each and every day so we continue to listen.”
I think I can honestly say it’s not my competitive streak that makes me want to join the fight over God. It’s a result of sitting with so many people who have been deeply wounded in the fight. If I can do anything to prevent the wounds from happening, I will do it and it seems as if speaking up is one of the ways to prevent the wounds. Will you join me in speaking up so God is not used as a weapon against all kinds of people?