God as Cosmic Vending Machine…

(This is the 2nd post in a series 6)

A recent article by Princeton Seminary professor, Kendra, Creasy Dean asserts that many teenagers today (and I would add, many in our culture!) hold to a certain unofficial creed when it comes to religion. This creed, while popular and even Christian-sounding, meshes Christian truths with popular sentiments in a way that ultimately waters-down what it truly means to follow Jesus and live the Christian faith in an authentic manner.

Each day this week we will look at one aspect of this unofficial, widely-held ‘creed’ and offer critical reflection on it.

Here is today’s portion of the creed:

A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth

It is the final portion of this statement that is most at odds with Scripture (and the part that has to do with vending machines!), but let’s get there in a moment.

The first half of the statement certainly offers some truth. The Bible affirms that God created, orders, and sustains the entire universe. In fact, Scripture affirms that not only did God create, but that this creation was and is a deeply good reality (Genesis 1). Sometimes we affirm this truth when our children in Sunday school sing, “He’s got the whole world in His hands!”

This truth also tells us something about ourselves. Think about it: If creation is proof of God’s creativity, of God’s shaping chaos into beauty – then what does that mean for us who are “made in God’s image” as Scripture puts it?

At least this: every endeavor of ours where we take chaos and form beauty out of it is an expression of our creative God. To order a jumble of figures into an excel document, to order an array of paints onto a palette, to order a host of ingredients and bring them together to form a meal, to order a service of worship and give praise to Jesus Christ….all of these and more give expression to who God is. So long as the ordering brings about good (and that requires a longer discussion on how the Bible goes about defining deep ‘goodness’), we honor God.

Perhaps the most beautiful expression of this is when we see God show that He is still in the business of creating and re-creating.   It is a beautiful thing to witness God take a wandering, chaotic, uncertain life and transforms it into a redeemed and renewed life by the power of His Holy Spirit. In the church, we sometimes call this “being saved” or “getting baptized in the Spirit.”

As previously mentioned, the final part of the statement is problematic because it stands in direct opposition to the entire witness of Scripture. God does not “watch over life on earth’ as if God is somewhere in the sky, like a benevolent grandparent to whom we turn in times of need or reassurance.

In the Old Testament, one of the distinctive features of the Hebrew God was His presence among His people. Most gods worshipped by the pagan religions were distant and even vengeful figures. The God of the Hebrews is famously (and somewhat frequently) compared to a shepherd who walks with His people in good times and through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23). Other times Scripture offers lines like, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). Again, we’re invited to an immediate, sensory engagement of the God who is remarkably present.  At times, God’s holy presence is so near that is overwhelms humans (see the story of Job!).

In short, the Old Testament reveals that God’s presence is rich and immediate – and transformative.  God’s immediate presence means that everything around us has something to do with God. This truth invites our consideration about how God might be moving amid and among our lives and in every situation.

The New Testament is the capstone witness to the truth of God’s abiding presence.  God’s immediate presence is made known in Jesus Christ, who the Bible asserts was and is God (John 10:30).

In Jesus, God came to earth and walked among human beings. Jesus coming to earth is the ultimate expression by God towards humanity that God is not above us in the sky, but fully and deeply present with us. He walked this earth and knows our condition, our temptations, our fears – he even experienced our greatest fear in death that those who follow him would never know it as the end. After Jesus rose from the dead, he left his followers with the Holy Spirit – which we have moving through us today (John 14:26). That Spirit is a constant reminder that God is not somewhere in the cosmos above, but moving in, through, and among us.

Why is this important? If we hold to a distant, comos-abiding god – we certainly don’t hold to the God proclaimed in Scripture. Practically, it means we live life as if it were centered on us and up to us. If God is far away, then getting through life depends on my desires and my resources. God – at best – becomes a cosmic-vending machine to whom we offers prayers and expect, in exchange, for him to throw down a blessing when we put the prayer in the coin slot. In this scenario, the irony is that we become god.

We call the shots. We run things. We decide when and how we need an extra dose of blessing. We lack a guiding voice to speak love and truth in our lives (unless we decide to in our autonomy). And we certainly lack the transforming, eternal-life giving power of God in our lives.  In short, a distant god makes us god. Humans as god, however, have a long history of failure.

We were made to be in an abiding relationship with Jesus Christ by having his Spirit dwell with, in, and through us. We were made not to be autonomous, but a people in full communion with Jesus Christ and full community with others. Belief in a distant god makes us god. Our self-focus and self-love grows and we find ourselves running in opposition to the very way we were made: to love God and others.