Healing the Broken Relationship With God

Submitted by Randy Rowland

Derek Webb, formerly of Caedmon's Call, sings a song of hope for justice along with recognition that all of us help make up an unjust world.  The final verse of Webb's song "This Too Will Be Made Right" underscores how fostering an unjust world comes back on all of us:

     I don't know the suffering of people outside my front door.

     I join the oppressors of those who I choose to ignore.

     I'm trading comfort for human life

     And that's not just murder, it's suicide;

     This too shall be made right.

As we move forward in looking at justice, we move from a foundation rooted in God's plan for all of creation to be whole and properly ordered.  This state is called shalom.  We move forward with the conviction that God's plan of shalom has been severely damaged by networks of broken relationships in which we all participate.

We all populate networks of broken relationships at 4 levels.  We have a broken relationship with God.  We have a broken relationship with ourselves as we under-perform our true humanity.  We have broken networks of relationships with others that lead to a deeply disordered society and harmful systems of injustice and poverty.  And, we also suffer from a broken relationship with creation itself as we damage the planet, litter space with dangerous junk, and exterminated species of life God asked us to take care of.

The first layer in the network of broken relationships in which we participate is a broken relation ship with God, where God is ignored, or God's image is distorted in such a way that God's intention for creation is not fulfilled through us, His people.

The starting point for repaired and restored relationship is with God.  To that end, listen to God's word from Deuteronomy 6:1-12, There are the commands, decrees, and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing Jordan to possess, so that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping His decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.  Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.  Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  There commandments that I give you today are to be on your heats.  Impress them on you children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.  When the Lord your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, -- to give you a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant -- then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Key notes for righting relationships with God and clearing up faulty God-views:

     1.  SHEMA - "hear" - listen to God:  My grandma Rowland was really cool.  Every once in a while, I would be sprouting a bad way of thinking and she would not say, "No!" or, "Shut up!"  Grandma would say, "Listen to yourself."  Then she would quote me back.  Then it would wind up with me listening to her and really hearing what she was saying from the depths of her life to the heart of me.  This kind of encounter is a SHEMA event: Now hear this.
     2.  ONE GOD - The Lord is one - He is the center that must hold for all the other relationships to matter.  

          a.  There is no room for "a little religion never hurt anyone."  

          b.  Most of the religious damage done in the history of the world by Christians was done by those who had "a little religion" attached to their ambitions.

     3.  LOVE GOD - give one's self fully and sacrificially.
          a.  Heart - Intellect + Intuition

          b.  Soul - Emotion + Relational

          c.  Strength - Will + Resolve +Energy Spent

     4.  Create rituals and habits of remembering and listening.

          a.  Public Worship

          b.  Scripture study in depth

          c.  Prayer that includes listening and meditating on God's word

          d.  Small groups

          e.  Engagement in the Missions of God in risky ways

          f.  Remember that every success, entitlement, and achievement that comes our way is a temptation to forget God and crown ourselves as lord of the universe.

Application of Deuteronomy 6 as a tool for keeping our relationship with God fresh and responsive helps move us away from some dangerous and lurking faulty views of God that destroy shalom and cause us, as Derek Webb sang, To trade human life for comfort.

Here are some faulty and/or broken vies of God that can lead to an unjust world...

ANIMISM/MAGICAL -- This worldview may mot be prevalent among many of us, so I start here as an example...

A Christian relief and development agency attempted to improve crop yields for poor farmers in Bolivia's Alto Plano.  Although successful in increasing output, the impact on the farmers' income was far less than hoped for because of the farmers' deep reverence for Pachamama, the mother earth goddess who presides over planting and harvesting.  Seeking Pachamama's favor, farmers purchased llama fetuses, a symbol of life and abundance, to bury in their fields before planting.  At the time of the harvest, the farmers held a festival to thank Pachamama.  The larger the harvest, the larger the celebration was.  In fact, a large percentage of the farmers' income was being spent on the fetuses and on the burning of usable crops as sacrifices at the harvest festival, thereby contributing to the farmers' material poverty.  Furthermore, by increasing agricultural output without worldview transformation, the development agency realized it was actually adding to these farmers' idolatry, as the farmers were giving increasing levels of praise to Pachamama for her benevolence.  

That might seem primitive to some of us, but what about some of our faulty word-views?

THE  GOD COMPLEX -- Who needs God?  I can handle this.

Steve Corbett and Brian Fickert, authors of When Helping Hurst, say, Few of us are conscious of having a god-complex, which is part of the problem.  We are often deceived by Satan and by our sinful natures.  For example, consider this: why do you want to help the poor?  Really think about it.  What truly motivates you?  Do you really love poor people and want to serve them?  Or do you have other motives?  I confess to you that part of what motivates me to help the poor is my felt need to be needed.  The God complex excuses our poverty, injustice, and need for God and others and places ourselves in a role of spiritual, moral, social, and material superiority.  If you want to see what some of this looks like, look at the free distribution of baby formulas and pesticides and medicines to Africa that should be okay for them, but we wouldn't use here due to risks involved.

FATALISM -- God is out there somewhere, but I don't know where and I don't have any skin in this game.  I am just a spectator.

Walter Brueggemann has said that, The key pathology of our time, which seduces us all, is the reduction of the imagination so that we are too numbered, satiated and co-opted to do serious imaginative work.  I come to those works of imagination for the reawakening of the imagination, and such reawakening is so necessary, precisely because of the pathology that Breuggemann argues, The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.

The dis-orderedness and injustice of our world urges each one of us out of resignation and into "prophetic imagination and articulation" of a world that breathes, even oozes God's shalom.  This is where music, theater, poetry, and art become so important to us.  They fire the imagination and they kick against the darkness.

Singer songwriter Bruce Cockburn once said, Every totalitarian regime is afraid of the artist.

THE HEALTH AND WEALTH GOSPEL -- I have done all the right stuff and have claimed God's blessings and I have stuff and I am healthy.  That means I am good and you maybe could be good too if you claimed your blessing.

There have been versions of this "name it and claim it" theology around for many years.  It has roots deep in the belief in manifest destiny of nations and also in the American Ideal that hard work and good character result in material prosperity.

The health and wealth gospel hit its popular peak just a few years ago with the Prayer of Jabez where one prayer in Scripture is over-emphasized into a distorted view that God wants to increase my territory -- by the way, whose territory decreases when my prayer is answered?

The true view of God is that what He does promise to those who are faithful is:

     A meaningful place in the world and a contribution that matters.

     Enough days to do all that must be done by you and me.

     And, we are promised a blessed and loving relationship and union with God in our innermost being.

Examples:

• Jesus faithfulness on the cross for the salvation of the world.  His increased territory was spaced next to 2 ordinary criminals by who he would be crucified.
• St. Francis of Assisi who eschewed wealth and power to be among the poor and to work to restore the broken relationship with all God's creatures.
• Father Damien who sacrificed health and long life to work among despised lepers in the Hawaiian Islands where he too became a leper and died. 

The list is endless -- the increased territories of such men and women of God do not coincide with material wealth, financial prosperity or earthly health.  Yet, they are blessed among all people.

I AM/WE ARE THE ELECT -- God chose me to be special and I am!

This doctrine has confused many people in the Reformed Tradition who believe that Election has more to do with salvation than on calling to ministry.  And, this notion is further distorted by extreme expressions of double predestination in which it is believed that God actually creates some people to be poor, destitute, oppressed, enslaved, and godless.

A series of Reformed scholars at Oxford University were recently discussing election on one of my favorite podcasts, called Godpod.  Here is what they said, If you look at election throughout the scriptures story, election is not about salvation, but about a calling to bring salvation and wellness to all of creation.  Those who are elect are not on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of others.

• Abraham - to be the father of nations.
• Moses - to deliver people from slavery in Egypt like is referred to in Deuteronomy 6, and into a new and free land that he never sees.
• The Apostle Paul to bring freedom in Christ to non-Jewish converts, who, ruling the nation of Rome, beheaded him after a lengthy prison stay.
• Was Abraham Lincoln elect to free slaves?  If yes, the 15th president of the United States did that for others because his candle was snuffed before he ever saw the day!

I believe in and take seriously the true and un-sullied doctrine of elections...that we are selected and called by God to act on behalf of others.  We are invited to love Him fully and live for others.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, The church is only the church when it lives for others.  Yes, you count.  You are important.  But, you are important for the others for whom you live.  Who is that for you?  So what new orientations and perspectives become imperative to you as you ask the question, For what and to whom has God called me?  Asking this question in a shema (hear) posture, might just lead you to examine the following:

The alternative future lived in faith, hope, and love.

1. Radical monotheism
2. Active remembering of God in very context
3. Painful re-alignment of views that are in line with loving God wholly.
4. Behavioral repentance beginning with re-devotion to a God whose mercies are new every morning.
5. How must I live today to be true to my true love?

At the beginning of his short novel Remembering, Wendell Berry offers a poem:

     Heavenly Muse, Spirit who brooded on

     The world and raised it shapely out of nothing.

     Touch my lips with fire and burn away

     All dross of speech, so that I keep in mind

     The truth and end to which my words now more

     In hope.

Amen.