Tonight I received an email for a project called “I Pledge God” from a guy named Nathan Tabor. I know I subscribed to his mailing list, but I would be hard pressed to remember how that came about. Anyway, the email suggested that we have problems in society because of the way individuals and society views God. I completely agree. In Chapter 1, God is smiting people left and right. Chapter 2 has God saying to love your neighbors and advising people not to smite others. If I wrote a book with that kind of poor character development, everyone would take it back to the bookstore and demand their money back. Yet, the Bible is considered one of the greatest books of all time. The result of this schizophrenic portrayal is that people just don’t do the “religion” thing and become either Christians-In-Name-Only or out-and-out reject spirituality by embracing atheism. I’m sure this has some sort of impact on society, for better or for worse.
I actually thought about falling back on my marketing coursework and creating a marketing plan for God (and thus God’s followers). In the end, religion needs to serve the needs of individuals (the customers in this case). I don’t think my views would be that popular, since I would have to make a decision as to whether God is evil (the God of Chapter 1) or good (the God of Chapter 2). Either way, you can find some usefulness to the customer, I guess. My official stance is gnostic in nature, that God is good and any entity that has to write a book saying he is God (while killing off most of his creation) is the Devil.
The whole thought of another marketing plan makes me think of two things. The first is the “What Would Jesus Do?” movement from a few years ago. I’m sure that benefited someone who really asked that question. Other than loving God and loving others, it always seemed nebulous as to what the answer would be, notwithstanding amazing revelations from the Jesus Seminar. The other thing that I think about is an episode of the cartoon, King of the Hill. In that particular episode, Bobby gets all hooked up with Christian musicians, skateboarders and overly cool youth pastors. Christianity appeared really fun, something that a teenage boy would totally love doing after school. But in the end, Hank pulled out a box containing items from all the fads that Bobby embraced, warning Bobby that he didn’t want God to be put into that box. Eh, I guess it’s more poignant if you are a Christian.
While I’m not joining the “I Pledge God” movement officially, I would like to take a shot at an unofficial pledge: I PLEDGE TO MAKE GOD THE ISSUE… by not trying to name something that cannot truly be named or by not limiting something infinite to an “I believe in God” soundbite.
Amen.
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Does anyone really believe that God wrote the Bible?
Literally, as in God sitting there with a pen and paper? As odd as it might sound, I’m sure somebody does. I’m sure an even greater number of believers are people in the Bible-As-Divinely-Inspired-Work camp. I’ve studied too much of the Bible to believe the first claim, and I’ve studied too much of human history and behavior to buy the second claim (at least for the God-Is-Good tie-in to Chapter 1).
I once heard someone on the radio dissing a particular comedian. This comedian kept telling the crowd at his show that he was edgy. I always think about that when I read the way the creator is portrayed in the Old Testament. Hey, he’s telling me he’s edgy, so he must be edgy…