When God Is Not "User Friendly"
Sermon
LIVING ON ONE DAY'S RATIONS
First Lesson Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost
Someone has suggested that if we simply posted the Ten Commandments on the wall in every school building, it would surely help to improve the moral climate in our schools and counteract the terrible and tragic tendencies of youth to resort to drugs, guns, and violent behavior. It has been said that if we would all simply follow the Ten Commandments, the world would be a much better place in which to live! But the Ten Commandments are not simple to follow. The Ten Commandments are not a collection of "user friendly" rules and regulations that are simple to understand and easy to put into practice. In fact, the Ten Commandments provide ample evidence that in many ways God is not a user friendly God who makes it as easy as possible for us to do whatever God wants us to do.1
Take, for example, the first and second of the Ten Commandments. God says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the house of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2--3). This is a God who abruptly says in the strongest, loudest language possible, "Listen here, O Israel! I am your God who rescued you from slavery in Egypt. And I am not asking you, I am not pleading with you; I am telling you and commanding you - you shall have no other gods before me. This means that you shall not make for yourself a cheap idol to worship as an easy way out from my demands and my commandments. No ifs, ands, or buts!" This language is really strong stuff! This God could care less whether or not the people of Israel find their relationship with God to be comfortable, cozy, and user friendly.
And it makes sense for God to spell out the laws of the Ten Commandments like a stern father or mother laying down the law to children who need a dose of firm discipline. The people of Israel out in the wilderness had behaved too often like whining, bellyaching, unhappy campers. Instead of trusting God to take care of them, they had complained and complained to Moses that they would have been much better off back in Egypt than to be stranded out in the wilderness with no obvious supply of food or water. When we realize the people of Israel repeatedly behaved childishly out in the wilderness, we can understand why God set forth the Ten Commandments and laid down the law using the strongest language possible: "I am the God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt, and don't you dare turn to other gods or try to escape my demands by creating and worshiping a handcarved pagan idol which is less than God."
In many ways we may want our God to be a God who is 100 percent user friendly with no awesome dimensions of mystery, holiness, and power that cause us to feel uncomfortable or experience growing pains. Now it is good when certain things are user friendly - for example, a set of written instructions inside the box that tells us in plain and simple language how to assemble the various parts, pieces, and sections of the product - a set of bookshelves, a child's tricycle or scooter, or a plastic gadget known as a hose reel for storing rubber hose we use to water our flowers or wash the car. And we have good reason to get upset when certain things are not user friendly - for example, the fine print details of a contract for buying a new car or an insurance policy, or the complicated instructions that the IRS often expects one to follow in doing one's taxes. But to want our God to be completely user friendly is to want a God who is less than God, a God whose instructions and commandments never challenge us to change our ways or grow in maturity and character.
All too easily the God we worship in church can be only one of the many gods we worship. If we put so much into our job that we have very little quality time left to spend with our children, then we are making financial security the god that controls us and dictates to us. If our charge card accounts are typically greater than what we can pay off completely in a month's time, then perhaps the god that controls us and dictates to us is our enormous appetite for all the expensive goodies and gadgets the American economy can offer us. What does it say about us if we frequently look anxiously in the mirror to be on the watch for new wrinkles as signs of aging, or if we volunteer year after year to be the head honcho of a fund--raising drive that drains our energy but surely looks good on our resume and always gets our name in the newspapers, or if we continue to stash away in our overstuffed closets the very latest fashion styles that the "in crowd" says are an absolute must? All this says that perhaps the god that controls us and dictates to us is a "golden boy" or "golden girl" self--image very similar to the pagan golden calf that the Israelites worshiped instead of the one true God. But the one true God insists, in the strongest language possible, that we throw all our golden idols and all our cheap user friendly gods out in the trash heap where all useless junk belongs.
The third commandment continues to make it clear that we are to give full respect to God and take seriously just who our God is. The third commandment has something more in mind than simply a prohibition against cursing and profanity when it says, "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God" (Exodus 20:7). The people of Israel came to understand that to speak of God by name, to utter the holy name "Yahweh," was to call upon God to be fully present and powerful in the midst of the life of the people. Wrongful use of God's name means using God's name in a way that shows lack of reverent respect and lack of full regard for the God who is holy and supreme by calling upon God to do something that is not in character with God's purpose. For example, the familiar, obscene, angry cusswords that literally call upon God to condemn something or someone are words literally asking God to give powerful support to our petty, spiteful desire to vent our anger and our frustration toward something or someone. The third commandment makes clear that God is not a convenient, handy means for accomplishing whatever goal or purpose we have in mind.
The wrongful use of God's name can actually start very innocently at an early age. When a child prayed, "O God, make Philadelphia the capital of the United States," the listening parent asked, "Why did you pray that?" The child replied, "Because that's the answer I put down on my history test." Now certainly what the child said may not seem absolutely horrible, but from the earliest age on up we need to be taught what are the right ways and the wrong ways to call upon God by name. We indeed use the name of God wrongfully if we ask God to help our favorite football team defeat the team from another school, a team whose fans also may be asking God to help their team defeat our team. And it certainly would serve everyone right, if the game were to end in a tie, regardless of any overtime period designed to be a tie--breaker! The third commandment makes it clear that it is absolutely wrong to call upon God by name either in a way that is grossly profane or in a way that is crudely trivial and cheap.
The familiar saying, "Let go and let God," comes to mind as we reflect upon the meaning of the fourth commandment to "remember the sabbath day and keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8). We are to let go of our workaholic tendencies to keep busy, busy, busy. We are to make time to worship God and let God have our undivided attention, and we are to let God have time to recharge our drained sources of energy. Contrary to what the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus' time tended to think about the sabbath, the main purpose of the sabbath was not to maintain a strict system of sabbath "blue laws" and prohibitions regarding what was acceptable or not acceptable to do on the sabbath. Even though it made the scribes and Pharisees absolutely furious, Jesus healed a man's withered hand on the sabbath and asked his enemies, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?" (Luke 6:9). And so in accord with how Jesus made the sabbath a time for healing, the sabbath is time set aside for a deep level healing of the hurts we have picked up in life's jungle warfare. Our spiritual batteries get a deep level recharge on the sabbath so that we are made ready to travel onward in the next stretch of whatever wilderness journey is in store for us in the week ahead. Churches today are offering Saturday night worship and other opportunities for spiritual renewal besides the traditional Sunday morning hour, especially when there is no simple user friendly sabbath solution for those who must undertake weekend work assignments in law enforcement or at hospitals, ski resorts, or real estate agencies. The sabbath commandment may be regarded rightly as not at all user friendly when, regardless of how demanding your workload is, you are being told you must do somehow what truly may be very hard to do, and that is - you must take time somehow for physical rest and spiritual renewal. Certainly the sabbath commandment offers absolutely no flimsy user friendly excuses for those who insist on organizing children's soccer games on Sunday mornings during the same hours when church school is in session.
The remainder of the Ten Commandments were given by God so that the people of Israel would have some important guidelines for community life. The fifth commandment, "Honor your father and mother" (Exodus 20:12), has been grossly misinterpreted to mean "obey your parents no matter how unreasonable or outrageous this may be." The original intent of this commandment was this: take your parents seriously, give due weight to the lessons to be learned from their life experience, and do not abandon or abuse your parents in their old age when they are vulnerable and unable to be totally productive and independent. Maintaining a healthy relationship and two--way dialogue between older parents and the younger generations was regarded as absolutely essential. Only if the previous heritage of God's covenant was remembered and honored and passed along from one generation to the next, would the people of Israel continue to live in the Promised Land God wanted to give them.
The sixth commandment, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13), maintains that human life is indeed precious to God, and although Israel understood that this commandment applied to respect for life within the community, it did not apply to the people of Israel engaged in warfare and conflict with other peoples in the struggle of Israel to take possession of the Promised Land. The seventh commandment, "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14), recognizes that sexuality is a wondrous gift from God but is enormously dangerous and must be upheld within covenantal relations that are life--giving, nurturing, enhancing, and respectful. The eighth commandment, "You shall not steal" (Exodus 20;15), has in mind that a life of dignity for the people of Israel depended upon having certain material goods and possessions in order to thrive and survive, and therefore, it was prohibited for anyone to steal and deprive persons of the essential goods needed for daily living. The ninth commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16), refers specifically to legal testimony in a court of law where it is absolutely necessary that the truth is told and upheld. The tenth commandment, "You shall not covet" (Exodus 20:17), is more specific than prohibiting the simple feeling of desiring something to which you are not entitled. What this commandment has in mind is the destructive desire that results in someone taking action to reach out for something off limits - the neighbor's house, wife, slave, ox, donkey, or anything belonging to the neighbor.
The Ten Commandments are not user friendly in the sense of being easy to follow or easy to apply to the complex and confusing demands of our community responsibilities. There is a wide range of opinions today regarding issues such as what is the proper care of aging parents, whether capital punishment is legalized murder, or what patterns of sexual relationship should be defined as adultery. And so we must let God be God without trying to water down God's demands or to eliminate the growing pains that are essential to achieve spiritual maturity. It's not easy to let go and let God be a God whose "tough love" commandments are designed to bring out the best in us. The Israelites told Moses how terrified they were when God spoke and there was thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and smoke pouring forth from the mountain. And Moses reassured the people that they should not be afraid because God's "tough love" was intended only to test the people and to put reverent fear and respect in their hearts so that they would not sin. Only when we let God be God will we be in a position to receive the tough love that is not user friendly but indeed is strong enough and truly adequate to bring out the best in us, helping us deal wisely, creatively, and effectively with life's toughest issues and life's most urgent concerns.
____________
1. See Walter Brueggemann, The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 1, General And Old Testament Articles, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus "The Book of Exodus: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections" (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 843. "The truth of the matter is that the biblical God is not 'user friendly.' "
Take, for example, the first and second of the Ten Commandments. God says, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the house of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2--3). This is a God who abruptly says in the strongest, loudest language possible, "Listen here, O Israel! I am your God who rescued you from slavery in Egypt. And I am not asking you, I am not pleading with you; I am telling you and commanding you - you shall have no other gods before me. This means that you shall not make for yourself a cheap idol to worship as an easy way out from my demands and my commandments. No ifs, ands, or buts!" This language is really strong stuff! This God could care less whether or not the people of Israel find their relationship with God to be comfortable, cozy, and user friendly.
And it makes sense for God to spell out the laws of the Ten Commandments like a stern father or mother laying down the law to children who need a dose of firm discipline. The people of Israel out in the wilderness had behaved too often like whining, bellyaching, unhappy campers. Instead of trusting God to take care of them, they had complained and complained to Moses that they would have been much better off back in Egypt than to be stranded out in the wilderness with no obvious supply of food or water. When we realize the people of Israel repeatedly behaved childishly out in the wilderness, we can understand why God set forth the Ten Commandments and laid down the law using the strongest language possible: "I am the God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt, and don't you dare turn to other gods or try to escape my demands by creating and worshiping a handcarved pagan idol which is less than God."
In many ways we may want our God to be a God who is 100 percent user friendly with no awesome dimensions of mystery, holiness, and power that cause us to feel uncomfortable or experience growing pains. Now it is good when certain things are user friendly - for example, a set of written instructions inside the box that tells us in plain and simple language how to assemble the various parts, pieces, and sections of the product - a set of bookshelves, a child's tricycle or scooter, or a plastic gadget known as a hose reel for storing rubber hose we use to water our flowers or wash the car. And we have good reason to get upset when certain things are not user friendly - for example, the fine print details of a contract for buying a new car or an insurance policy, or the complicated instructions that the IRS often expects one to follow in doing one's taxes. But to want our God to be completely user friendly is to want a God who is less than God, a God whose instructions and commandments never challenge us to change our ways or grow in maturity and character.
All too easily the God we worship in church can be only one of the many gods we worship. If we put so much into our job that we have very little quality time left to spend with our children, then we are making financial security the god that controls us and dictates to us. If our charge card accounts are typically greater than what we can pay off completely in a month's time, then perhaps the god that controls us and dictates to us is our enormous appetite for all the expensive goodies and gadgets the American economy can offer us. What does it say about us if we frequently look anxiously in the mirror to be on the watch for new wrinkles as signs of aging, or if we volunteer year after year to be the head honcho of a fund--raising drive that drains our energy but surely looks good on our resume and always gets our name in the newspapers, or if we continue to stash away in our overstuffed closets the very latest fashion styles that the "in crowd" says are an absolute must? All this says that perhaps the god that controls us and dictates to us is a "golden boy" or "golden girl" self--image very similar to the pagan golden calf that the Israelites worshiped instead of the one true God. But the one true God insists, in the strongest language possible, that we throw all our golden idols and all our cheap user friendly gods out in the trash heap where all useless junk belongs.
The third commandment continues to make it clear that we are to give full respect to God and take seriously just who our God is. The third commandment has something more in mind than simply a prohibition against cursing and profanity when it says, "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God" (Exodus 20:7). The people of Israel came to understand that to speak of God by name, to utter the holy name "Yahweh," was to call upon God to be fully present and powerful in the midst of the life of the people. Wrongful use of God's name means using God's name in a way that shows lack of reverent respect and lack of full regard for the God who is holy and supreme by calling upon God to do something that is not in character with God's purpose. For example, the familiar, obscene, angry cusswords that literally call upon God to condemn something or someone are words literally asking God to give powerful support to our petty, spiteful desire to vent our anger and our frustration toward something or someone. The third commandment makes clear that God is not a convenient, handy means for accomplishing whatever goal or purpose we have in mind.
The wrongful use of God's name can actually start very innocently at an early age. When a child prayed, "O God, make Philadelphia the capital of the United States," the listening parent asked, "Why did you pray that?" The child replied, "Because that's the answer I put down on my history test." Now certainly what the child said may not seem absolutely horrible, but from the earliest age on up we need to be taught what are the right ways and the wrong ways to call upon God by name. We indeed use the name of God wrongfully if we ask God to help our favorite football team defeat the team from another school, a team whose fans also may be asking God to help their team defeat our team. And it certainly would serve everyone right, if the game were to end in a tie, regardless of any overtime period designed to be a tie--breaker! The third commandment makes it clear that it is absolutely wrong to call upon God by name either in a way that is grossly profane or in a way that is crudely trivial and cheap.
The familiar saying, "Let go and let God," comes to mind as we reflect upon the meaning of the fourth commandment to "remember the sabbath day and keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8). We are to let go of our workaholic tendencies to keep busy, busy, busy. We are to make time to worship God and let God have our undivided attention, and we are to let God have time to recharge our drained sources of energy. Contrary to what the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus' time tended to think about the sabbath, the main purpose of the sabbath was not to maintain a strict system of sabbath "blue laws" and prohibitions regarding what was acceptable or not acceptable to do on the sabbath. Even though it made the scribes and Pharisees absolutely furious, Jesus healed a man's withered hand on the sabbath and asked his enemies, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?" (Luke 6:9). And so in accord with how Jesus made the sabbath a time for healing, the sabbath is time set aside for a deep level healing of the hurts we have picked up in life's jungle warfare. Our spiritual batteries get a deep level recharge on the sabbath so that we are made ready to travel onward in the next stretch of whatever wilderness journey is in store for us in the week ahead. Churches today are offering Saturday night worship and other opportunities for spiritual renewal besides the traditional Sunday morning hour, especially when there is no simple user friendly sabbath solution for those who must undertake weekend work assignments in law enforcement or at hospitals, ski resorts, or real estate agencies. The sabbath commandment may be regarded rightly as not at all user friendly when, regardless of how demanding your workload is, you are being told you must do somehow what truly may be very hard to do, and that is - you must take time somehow for physical rest and spiritual renewal. Certainly the sabbath commandment offers absolutely no flimsy user friendly excuses for those who insist on organizing children's soccer games on Sunday mornings during the same hours when church school is in session.
The remainder of the Ten Commandments were given by God so that the people of Israel would have some important guidelines for community life. The fifth commandment, "Honor your father and mother" (Exodus 20:12), has been grossly misinterpreted to mean "obey your parents no matter how unreasonable or outrageous this may be." The original intent of this commandment was this: take your parents seriously, give due weight to the lessons to be learned from their life experience, and do not abandon or abuse your parents in their old age when they are vulnerable and unable to be totally productive and independent. Maintaining a healthy relationship and two--way dialogue between older parents and the younger generations was regarded as absolutely essential. Only if the previous heritage of God's covenant was remembered and honored and passed along from one generation to the next, would the people of Israel continue to live in the Promised Land God wanted to give them.
The sixth commandment, "You shall not murder" (Exodus 20:13), maintains that human life is indeed precious to God, and although Israel understood that this commandment applied to respect for life within the community, it did not apply to the people of Israel engaged in warfare and conflict with other peoples in the struggle of Israel to take possession of the Promised Land. The seventh commandment, "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14), recognizes that sexuality is a wondrous gift from God but is enormously dangerous and must be upheld within covenantal relations that are life--giving, nurturing, enhancing, and respectful. The eighth commandment, "You shall not steal" (Exodus 20;15), has in mind that a life of dignity for the people of Israel depended upon having certain material goods and possessions in order to thrive and survive, and therefore, it was prohibited for anyone to steal and deprive persons of the essential goods needed for daily living. The ninth commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16), refers specifically to legal testimony in a court of law where it is absolutely necessary that the truth is told and upheld. The tenth commandment, "You shall not covet" (Exodus 20:17), is more specific than prohibiting the simple feeling of desiring something to which you are not entitled. What this commandment has in mind is the destructive desire that results in someone taking action to reach out for something off limits - the neighbor's house, wife, slave, ox, donkey, or anything belonging to the neighbor.
The Ten Commandments are not user friendly in the sense of being easy to follow or easy to apply to the complex and confusing demands of our community responsibilities. There is a wide range of opinions today regarding issues such as what is the proper care of aging parents, whether capital punishment is legalized murder, or what patterns of sexual relationship should be defined as adultery. And so we must let God be God without trying to water down God's demands or to eliminate the growing pains that are essential to achieve spiritual maturity. It's not easy to let go and let God be a God whose "tough love" commandments are designed to bring out the best in us. The Israelites told Moses how terrified they were when God spoke and there was thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and smoke pouring forth from the mountain. And Moses reassured the people that they should not be afraid because God's "tough love" was intended only to test the people and to put reverent fear and respect in their hearts so that they would not sin. Only when we let God be God will we be in a position to receive the tough love that is not user friendly but indeed is strong enough and truly adequate to bring out the best in us, helping us deal wisely, creatively, and effectively with life's toughest issues and life's most urgent concerns.
____________
1. See Walter Brueggemann, The New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 1, General And Old Testament Articles, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus "The Book of Exodus: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections" (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 843. "The truth of the matter is that the biblical God is not 'user friendly.' "
