The thought that hit me was this: those people are genuinely seeking something. Sure, my ultra-conservative friends might claim that what those people are seeking is really just a religion that suits them, that they are in some way running from the “absolute truth”, but when all is said and done, it cannot be denied that these people are seeking some way to worship and/or understand God. So why is this worth mentioning? Well, the premise that a God exists who genuinely wants to be found requires a bit of inspection in the face of the fact of these people’s existence.
Reading the Bible, there were a whole lot of people that really weren’t in the process of “seeking” God who were nonetheless apprehended by Him. I think of Moses, of Saul of Tarsus, of Peter fishing and Matthew collecting taxes. I think of so many people portrayed in the Bible as just going about their daily business, people interrupted by God. I won’t delve into how the God’s presence and revelation in the lives of people who didn’t seem to be inviting it seems to contradict the tenets of free will. What I want to focus on, though, is that this same appearance doesn’t seem to occur for so many “God chasers”.
My dad kept Tommy Tenney’s famous, “The God Chasers” in a little basket in the WC for convenient reading times. In it, the author’s major premise is that there are certain people who love to chase after God Himself, who turns around and allows Himself to be “caught” at times just as a dad playing with his child would. The picture Pastor Tenney paints is one of a loving God who loves to interact with His children.
This whole picture bothers me, as I think of the flakes in the world. I see so many of them praying with passion to their crystal, or through hands clasped on some icon/relic, and I see in them an authentic desperation to hear back from the One to whom they pray. They aren’t asking for a new Lexus, or for a miracle healing…they just want some validation that they are finally using the right method to talk to Him. But by the very fact that they bounce from place to place, and from the fact that such people exist at all, we can ascertain that God is not easily “caught”.
Ask for a little interaction from the Big Guy, and you’ll be told you are “tempting” (testing) God. Forget that God let Himself be tested by Gideon and Elijah and a bunch of other folks…those were the days “before the Holy Spirit”. Quite odd, isn’t it, that the HS doesn’t seem to suffice like a nice clear sign from the heavens for most folks?
Why is it that God freely offered Himself to people who were going along their daily lives without Him, but supposedly people who are asking God just to talk to them don’t get an answer because they are “tempting the Lord [thy] God”…? Does that make sense to anyone else?
Sooo…that is the angel speaking from my shoulder today, a little flake with a lot to say.
[Originally posted 10-13-2005 on my website.]
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Technorati tags: Faith, God
