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| Michelangelo painting "Last Judgement" in the Sistine Chapel |
In fact, while often unsaid, this image of "God" is also sort of like a vigilante. Vigilantes are those who "take the law into their own hands," and since "God" is often seen as the creator of these laws as well as their defender, this might not seem like a fit. And yet, the other aspect of the classic character of the vigilante is that they act as, "judge, jury, and executioner," and that is certainly part of this image of "God." Not only does this characterization of "God" police our every action, but judges -- often harshly -- every violation, and then condemns the accused to, in most cases it seems, eternal punishment.
There is perhaps no more famous example of this way of thinking that the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which was preached by the colonial preacher the Rev. Jonathan Edwards on July 8, 1741. It contains this rather memorable passage:
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider of some loathsome insect of the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath toward you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours."Actually, there is a modern example of such an understanding of "God" taken to an extreme in our own day. Some will certainly say that it would be to choose just one, but I think that the Westboro Baptist Church, under the leadership of Fred Phelps, is arguably the most hateful. These are the folks who show up at funerals to "share their message" of "God's" utter revulsion at, among other things, "LGBT people, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews, U.S. soldiers and politicians," to quote from the Wikipedia article about them. In fact, this "church" believes that "God" hates pretty much everybody. They wrote and recorded a parody of the rather remarkable so-called "charity song" produced in 1985 by more than 45 of the top musicians in the United States at the time, "We Are the World.". The Wetboro Baptists Church's version is called, "God Hates The World," and you should only follow that link if you have a strong stomach and want to see how truly pervert a view of "God" some people have.
If this is "the God you don't believe in," then I couldn't agree more. Yet this is not the only way that "God" has been conceived. The Universalists, whose tradition forms one half of the lineage of today's Unitarian Universalism (the faith tradition I serve) did not believe in this "God," either. Their name actually comes from the central teaching in their theology -- that salvation is universal. Not only doesn't God sit in eternal condemnation of humanity, but God's relationship with creation is like that of a loving parent and their child. God as "father" (or "mother") is one of the most common ways of talking about God, and if this truly is what God is like, then you have to ask what parent would ever condemn their child to eternal punishment no matter what they did. All you have to do to convince yourself that we are not born "in sin," predestined to suffer in hell, is to look into the eyes of a baby.
One might argue that Universalism was branded a heresy, and outside a proper understanding of Christianity. (I could argue the reverse -- that the kind of "Christianity" we're talking about here is the true heresy, and that Universalist Christianity is the proper understanding, but I digress ...) Yet even if I were to agree that Universalism is a fringe (which, again, I don't), there are many, many examples of a more Universalist understanding of "God" within mainstream Christian traditions. In fact, it's been said that one of the reasons the Universalist Church of America dwindled the way it did was that it essentially won the debate. Some form of Universalist theology is being preached in a great many mainstream Christian congregations today, so you no longer had to leave your Methodist or Presbyterian church to hear the message of God's love (as opposed to God's wrath).
As an example, look at Matthew Fox. Fox was a Catholic priest who was silenced by the Vatican and eventually moved to the Episcopal Church, developing what he called "Creation Spirituality." One of his books is titled, Original Blessing, and contrasts this concept with the idea of the centrality of "original sin" which forms the foundation of the kind of theology we've been talking about here. "And God saw that it was good," is recorded in the Hebrew Scripture of Genesis as God's first judgement of creation.
In one of his books on contemplative prayer, Fr. Thomas Keating gives what is by far my favorite expression of the antithesis position on God from the idea that God is some kind of Cosmic Cop (and judge, jury, and execution) It is a story that Cardinal Basil Hume, used to tell on himself:
When he was a child, his mother would take his brothers and him into the pantry where there was a cookie jar. She would tell them that God was always watching, and would know if they ever took a cookie out of that jar between meals. And, so, young Basil grew up thinking of God as some kind of Cosmic Cop, always on the lookout for even the smallest infringement of the rules. Even so – or, perhaps, because of this – he went on to become a priest.
But he remembers the day when in prayer he received what he considered a tremendous grace. He suddenly realized that if God had been watching him take one of those cookies, God would have said, “My dear boy. Why don’t you take another?"
"My dear boy, why don't you take another?" That is a God I can believe in.Pax tecum,
RevWik
