God in a box?!?!

One of the primary difficulties about reading so much philosophy is all of the thinking - or, at least for me it is. When I think too much I become melancholy. Anyway, I was reflecting on my views of God today as opposed to 18 months ago, and so much has happened in this last year and 1/2 that many of my views (or maybe I) have changed. I used to be more concerned with some of the more legalistic practices within Christianity, e.g. drinking, and though one ought not to drink if one is in a position of leadership within the church it is not something that people ought to break felloship over. I used to think that I really knew who God is [was], but part of this is relying upon what everybody tells you, especially our culture in the U.S. See, the problem with the evangelical culture in the U.S. is that we make God out to be who we want Him to be. The more conservative evangelicals make God to be somekind of divine rulemaker, listen to God so that your family, e.g. wife, and children will obey you. Usually for the conservatives, God is all about the family, God cares nothing about anything else but the family (though, maybe, sometimes, God wants us to preach the gospel, but family always comes first). The more moderate Christians focus upon God as love, God loves us and doesn't care what we do (often neglecting the fact that God is also just). We ought to emphasize the fact that God loves families and that God is love - obviously grace is greater in God than justice because if justice and grace were equal everyone would go to hell. There is a mixture of truth in both positions, but evidence that we only want to hear about the parts of the Bible that we agree with is a lack of preaching against divorce. Why don't we hear about divorce more in the church? Because most of the people in our churches are divorced, it's ok to preach on the sinfulness about homosexuality, but never on divorce. People don't want to hear about why they are sinners and what they have done wrong. Obviously all of us are sinners, but it's still important to correct the problems that we have - by the grace of God - as best as possible. Yet, people don't want to change for God because they want God to change for them! We don't want to worship a God that demands something of us, we want to demand something of God.

This last year beginning on April 16, 2003 my dad died, then four weeks later one of my best friends from high school committed suicide, in June my brother was found dead in his apartment (cause of death still not known), then about 3 weeks later one of the people that was at my church in Gainesville who I used to stay with died. All of these people I prayed for God to heal, I prayed for God to allow to live on this earth. Now some preachers, Rod Parsley, Joel Osteen, would tell me that God did not answer my prayers because I did not have enough faith and I did not pray right. (If I were to question their theology concerning this matter they would say "don't judge me" though it would be ok for them to judge my faith.) Why didn't God answer my prayers? I don't know, I honestly don't know. All I know is that God did not answer my prayers - and it sucks, it really sucks. Now I can come up with arguments about God such as Divine Hiddeness and not knowing God's reasons and that's fine, I still believe in God. However as the Quoholeth says in Ecclesiastes "God does as God wills." I cannot control God w/ my prayers, God is not a dog that I [or we] can train to do tricks and serve our will. So like Job I am just going to trust God.

So because of all this have many of my views changed about God. You bet they have, I think today I know less about God than I ever have before, but that's becasue I never knew God as well as I thought I did - I was like everyone else who put God in a box, I was using Scripture to suit my own needs and wants.