The Broken God

My version of God sat distantly in the sky UNTIL I sang a song and lifted my arms to coax Him down from heaven.

And when my version of God would decided to come down and let his presence visit me, he was 99.99% male and looked like Zeus—a white Zeus, too.
  
Nothing could separate me from the love of my distant-male-Zeus-God, EXCEPT when I was bingeing on food, masturbating over the years (the byproduct of early sexual trauma), or yelling at my husband—at which point He would abandon me until I got my act together. 

My distant-male-Zeus-God was good, but I really wasn't unless I was acting sinless.

My distant-male-Zeus-God was powerful, but not as powerful as sin, because he literally couldn't be around me if I was sinning.

My distant-male-Zeus-God would selectively pick His miracles based on how hard I prayed or believed, making me a hoop-jumping performance addict.

Christa Black Gifford - My journey into Atheism.

 I was struck again this last week by the deep hollowing-out of someone I know who had suddenly lost a parent. His raw response poignantly reminded me of my own response and feelings at loosing my own wife to cancer - the world becomes dreadful and there seems to be nowhere or no one to run to.

Christa Gifford's thoughts above were the result of such a time, and the entirely wrong response from Christians at the moment when her daughter died - 'god takes the best to himself.... it's his testing, and you have done well', and so on ad nauseam.

I was a little more fortunate. The dreadful positivity wasn't fed to me on the day of my wife's death by the church, but a counsellor who denied there was evil in the world (!), but I understand, only too well why there is no place at all for such drivel - Lewis' unvarnished cry in the first chapter of A Grief Observed should be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to begin to understand that moment.

Christa's honesty in the above quote is what really matters.

The God of  "churchianity" is so often indistinguishable to the 'Zeus' figure she describes - a figure who demands we do 'good' before we benefit, who orders moral perfection (because exterior morality really counts) and plenty of good works, constantly, if we're to earn our merits and count for something.

I've certainly attended churches where that's the line - do to live, or you're excluded (I ended up being excluded anyway, because I could never be good enough, thankfully, to be in the 'inner circle').

Christa reached the same conclusion as Luther in his monastery cell  - such a God can only be hated, because why would you worship a being so pathetic that he is entirely dependent upon requiring - demanding an absolute, unending servitude from such a broken, hollowed creature as you?

Is this the God we project to ourselves and to the world - a distant, cold and capricious creature, who obligates us to a life of cruel suffering and pain?

This is the broken god of religion, of no value to anyone who has discarded the worthless garb of self righteousness.

The God who holds us in our pain is broken in an entirely different fashion.

When Jesus faces the grave of his friend, he openly weeps. When Jesus faces the dreadful blindness of religious ignorance in Jerusalem, he breaks for those who will not draw close. When Jesus calls His people to be broken and poured out in this crushed world, He shares in their trial. The God who is there is a God equally marked by what we undergo in our pain and our sorrows.

In the new creation, the 'throne' at the very centre of life won't be something remote and at odds with the splendor of that new world - it will be the throne of the Lamb... defined forever by that very moment when God emptied Himself at the cross to take upon Himself all our dreadful severance from the life that comes freely from Him.

The joy of our present humanity, and our renewed existence is one and the same. God is with us, walking through all our trials along with us, never distant, never further than our wanting to speak to Him (and even closer than that in those times when we can't). God is here, and the cross forever defines the unimaginable depths of mercy and love - that is where we have to begin and end, and that's why I'm a Christian... Not because of what He wants of me, however good that is, but because He makes it all substantial, forever, purely by His unfailing love, which is far stronger  than my sin, or suffering or failure, or death. Christ is God's astonishing love made clear to us.

Facing that love honestly frees us from a false notion of God's nature and allows to truly begin to heal, to move towards the one who holds us and all things by the joy of the unity of Father, Son and Spirit.

It is this manner of love - a God who gives Himself wholly to heal - which alone can end our fear, our misery and finally, end our tears.

I live in expectation of the sure hope of that great day, and I can do so, confidently, because of what has been revealed at the cross and in the life of the one who gave Himself there.

What really counts, here and now, is not us putting on some pretense about what we are or what's happening to us - it's about seeing that we are held by a love that is in all of this, even when we are just too hurt to do more than shut ourselves away. Love so great, so unconditional, is the one precious thing that will, beyond this moment, slashed and torn, make the difference.