Sunday, February 01, 2009
Sunday Reflection: The Hidden God
On Friday night, I had the great pleasure of going to hear Dallas Willard speak at Truett Seminary. After a beautiful (as usual) introduction by Hulitt Gloer, Dr. Willard challenged his audience of ministers to look at the Bible in a new way. Specifically, he challenged them to see it as something that does more that reinforce power structures-- in fact, to see the Gospels as something that often opposes our power structures.
As part of this talk, he was brave enough to talk about the parable of the banquet guests, in which Jesus teaches us NOT to seek the best seat at a banquet, but to sit in the back. This is a risky speech to give at a banquet.
More importantly to me, though, he spoke of the "hidden God," the God that is hard to find for many of us at one time or another. He countered that thought with the idea of how large, how big, even the idea of God is. If there is a God, then He is so large that all around us is His. It's like the hidden Earth. We know that little bit around us, but nothing of nearly all of it; perhaps that is "hidden," but it does not mean the rest of the Earth does not exist. We know it does: we stand upon it. Yet so much more is unknown and never seen by us.
As the best sermons are, it was quite humbling.
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Willard's ideas sound very appealing . . . they make me think of one way in which I still struggle with the idea of God. Five or six years ago as I was joining a church for the first time in many years and contemplating my own ideas about God, I became really angry that God had always been presented to me as male. Very very male. And that I was completely unable to imagine God as non-male. That image of the old man with the white flowing beard looking down on me would just not leave my head.
I still have some residual frustration at that: that I can't widen my notion of God to something that is beyond male and female..In part that's due to the language always used to talk about God--he with a capital H--and I admit I use it internally myself. I even think some of the newer non-gendered language used in hymns makes God less personal. So I am complicit in this idea of God as male myself . . . but I get frustrated that I still can't imagine I'm praying to a woman or to a non-gendered entity or to a force, or something, when I pray.
I don't know the answer, but it sounds like Dallas Willard's speech was an attempt to answer such a concern.
I still have some residual frustration at that: that I can't widen my notion of God to something that is beyond male and female..In part that's due to the language always used to talk about God--he with a capital H--and I admit I use it internally myself. I even think some of the newer non-gendered language used in hymns makes God less personal. So I am complicit in this idea of God as male myself . . . but I get frustrated that I still can't imagine I'm praying to a woman or to a non-gendered entity or to a force, or something, when I pray.
I don't know the answer, but it sounds like Dallas Willard's speech was an attempt to answer such a concern.
# posted by 
: 8:09 AM
: 8:09 AM
And I am in favor, by the way, of using non-gendered language to talk about God. It's a step in the right direction.
But every Sunday when we sing the non-gendered version of the Doxology, the last line "Praise triune God whom we adore" instead of the old "Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," it feels completely un-anchored in anything.
I guess we need concrete, recognizable images when we talk about God. It's just that all the images I've ever been given have been male.
I know, I know: I sound like a cranky old feminist, but it honestly bothers me. I can't deny it.
But every Sunday when we sing the non-gendered version of the Doxology, the last line "Praise triune God whom we adore" instead of the old "Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," it feels completely un-anchored in anything.
I guess we need concrete, recognizable images when we talk about God. It's just that all the images I've ever been given have been male.
I know, I know: I sound like a cranky old feminist, but it honestly bothers me. I can't deny it.
# posted by : 8:18 AM
: 8:18 AM
I think God feels hidden to us for one of several reasons:
1. We're trying to hide from Him.
2. We're not seeking Him.
3. We're looking for Him in the wrong place.
4. We're willfully ignorant. That is, we know there is more, and we may even know where to look. But because we are either too comfortable where we are or are unwilling, for whatever reason, to go where we know He is, we don't find God.
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1. We're trying to hide from Him.
2. We're not seeking Him.
3. We're looking for Him in the wrong place.
4. We're willfully ignorant. That is, we know there is more, and we may even know where to look. But because we are either too comfortable where we are or are unwilling, for whatever reason, to go where we know He is, we don't find God.
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