God is relative, there are no absolutes, and that is the good news. Succinctly stated, that is the theme of this blog. I reason from this duofold major premise: the biblical statement that God is love, and its theological corollary that Christianity is a trinitarian monotheism.

The practical purpose is to return Christian thoughts and feelings to our responsibility–our sole responsibility–to love God and to love our neighbor, to turn our thoughts and feelings away from the notion that our responsibility is to obey the rules if we are not to face the terrors of a despotic God.

Edmund Morris, in Theodore Rex, quotes President Roosevelt I: “. . . of one thing I am sure . . . the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man.”

What Roosevelt says next is a good statement of what I think and how I feel about the “God Is Relative” blog: “. . . it may be that I am wrong, but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong, and my whole way of looking at life is wrong.”

John Said:

God is open. Incandescent. Welcome mat out.
Is that what follows
or what will or might follow?

Logic is the study of what follows.
Maybe. Probably. Certainly. Impossible.
Could be, who knows? Non sequitur.

Maybe it is possible, after all.
God created it, but cannot lift it--
without our help.
Somewhere, in all of this,
there is a big, big rock.

And it is falling,
gathering moss and souls
and nations and centuries.
Can it be stopped?

Not by Sisyphus.
Not without the holy dynamis

Is He in it with us?
Did it hit him?
Or is it
the other way around? Or . . .

What do I know?
God knows.
But what does he know?
And when?

Open question.
Curtain opened,
not completely.

Unintentional Saboteurs of the Christian Faith

They were in the coffee room, upperclassmen, three of them, preparing to become Christian ministers. My office was just around the corner so I heard everything they said. It was midmorning, September 12, 2001. It was not just their words; I could hear their posture, gesture, tone, and attitude. These were Christian Studies majors (Christ-ian Studies).

I have read all four accounts of the Jesus story. I have taught Christian Studies for thirty-some years. I taught "The Life and Teachings of Jesus” for more than twenty years. Jesus did not get his words and attitude from his surrounding culture. These fellows did. They sounded just like their surrounding culture.

They were venting. I wasn't at all surprised by the response of the typical citizen. It was in complete accord with the character of their culture, their socialization. It was what patriotic emotion deemed appropriate. But these guys called themselves followers of Jesus; they claimed to be believers.

There was a disconnect. And they were not the only ones in the Christian community saying things like this.

We ought to nuke Afghanistan back into the Stone Age.

Yeah!

We ought to bomb Afghanistan off the map.

This did not come from Jesus. They were not following the one they called their Lord. Claiming to be, studying to be, and training to be God's representatives, they misrepresented the God who came to us in Jesus Christ, "God among Us," "Immanuel."

September 12, 2001 is not the only time God's "representatives" have misrepresented God. For a variety of reasons, and to the undermining of Christian faith, this kind of unintended and unconscious sabotage has a long and widespread history.

Don't look at or listen to them. Pick up a Bible; read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Look at, look to, and listen to Jesus.