The Idolatrous Worship of God.

Facebook is generally a very bad place for the exchange of ideas that rise much above the level of idle chatter.

I don’t want to be misunderstood: I like FB. Facebook is fun—people post funny cartoons, travel photos, cute puppy videos, little inspirational posters, right-wing rants, left wing rants, and non-wing rants—and some of this stuff is actually interesting and rewarding. Without FB, friends and acquaintances I had known years ago would have been lost to me forever. I have been surprised and gratified to learn that people remember me kindly and to realize that many people I didn’t much like “back in the day” turned out all right after all. And one of the most powerful messages I ever received came via FB, a shared inspirational quotation (from whom, I do not know) that said: “Be kind. Every person you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” A pithy reminder to love my neighbor as I wish to love myself.

Having acknowledged the pleasures I have derived, however, I have to say that if you’re looking on Facebook for the kind of live exchange that increases your understanding of humankind, the nature of God, and God’s relationship to humankind, you’re going to be disappointed. That sort of exchange is just not what most people go on FB for, and I doubt that it was ever designed for that sort of deep, “meaningful” exchange anyway.

Not that I don't keep trying. I’m always posting something provocative or “serious” and I’ll get—maybe—a few “likes” and—maybe—a brief comment or two. Frustrating. Or, sometimes, I'll post a link to my latest blog entry—now there’s an exercise in humility. My blog posts, most (not all) of which I really labor over and, I think, are at least worth reading, are just flatly and not-quite tee totally ignored. (I have a blog follower—I don’t know who and I don’t want to know—and not even my follower reads me!. Why go to the trouble of signing up as a follower if you’re not going to follow?) I don’t know if it’s me (in darker moments, I just know that people aren’t interested in what I have to say because they loathe me) or if people get home after work and just want to relax and not have their brains overly engaged or if it’s something else. I’ll never know, because there’s no way I could ever approach someone and say, “Hey! Why don’t you read my blog?”

Today, however, I enjoyed an interesting exchange. The Progressive Christian Alliance (one of the groups I “like”) posted the following: “God is our comforter, redeemer, husband, mother, fortress, father, provider, shepherd, and teacher. When you think of God, what do you see?” The responses ran from “sta-puf marshmallow man” to “Hands holding me safely, keeping me warm, guiding me, no matter what happens. I just have to be aware of the presence.”

So, after 490 words (by Microsoft Word count), I reach the real subject of my blog entry. I have been reading a lot about the emerging church movement, especially Peter Rollins, lately, and I’ve been struck by Christian Wiman’s book, My Bright Abyss, as well. Their ideas about God coincide, to agree, with some things I’ve read by Thomas Merton. I’ve learned enough to show how ignorant I am, but I think I’ve picked up a few gems along the way.

My response to the question was this (not an exact quotation): God is incomprehensible, beyond language and ideologies (doctrines). It is counterproductive to try to distill him into one image, or a set of images, or into even a set of beliefs. Images and ideologies are boxes, and, no matter how beautiful a box or it’s contents may be, God doesn’t exist in boxes. Ideologies exist in boxes. And when we create an ideology about God or an image of God we begin to worship the ideology or the image—not the God who transcends ideologies and images. In other words, we are worshipping the golden calf; we are committing the sin of idolatry. I think the closest we can come to describing God with language is to admit that he is indescribable, but also he is there.

Someone responded to me by saying (again, not an exact quotation): “And yet, ideas and words are the only way we have of communicating ideas about God.”

How utterly wrong that statement is! I minored in Interpersonal Communication (in the Speech & Drama Department) as an undergraduate, so I’ve had some exposure to this: there are far more ways—and better, more reliable ways—to communicate about God than by the mere use of language. (There was some saint—St. Francis?—who once said, “Preach the Gospel continuously. [Only] if necessary, use words.”) Nonverbal communication conveys vastly more information about matters of the heart and spirit than words ever can. Matters of the heart and spirit—and god is, if nothing else, surely a matter of the heart and spirit—are simply not subject to quantitative analysis or “reasonable” deconstruction (I have no idea whether I’m using that word correctly). The facts of God and Christ—and I believe they are facts—are not the sort of facts that are subject to analysis and proof by the scientific method (which, by the way, is why those poor spiritually crippled rationalists who cannot conceive of a world outside their senses become atheists). Too, neither God nor Christ can be defined in words, no matter how polished, reasoned, or eloquent, though some of the best minds in history have tried.

So, I know nothing about God save that I can never know him, and I celebrate that uncertainty as part of my faith. But I can say this: the simple act of sitting quietly in the dark with a friend who is in pain, just holding their hand, conveys more about God’s nature and presence with us than all the volumes written by Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, or Rudolph Bultmann.