Categories: uncategorized
Date: 30 July 2007 11:08:17
The most dangerous thing you can say. The greatest claim we can make.
I've been hearing a twinge for months now every time I hear someone use the words ‘our God'. And I've been trying to work out what the reason for that is. I've finally worked it out.
It's Spitting Image's fault. They did this song once called ‘My God's bigger than your God', featuring the puppets of Archbishop Runcie (yep, it was a while ago), Ayatollah Khomeni, Pope JP II and others. The song talked about how my God has chosen me, and so the rest of you heathens can burn. It must have made an impression, because I can remember the tune despite only hearing it once: I was an adamant atheist at the time, and it helped me to mock the religious and their foolish talk of God.
Twenty years have passed since hearing that, and I've been converted, baptised and discipled in the meantime. But the song still strikes a chord, and I feel uneasy anytime I hear the words ‘My God' or ‘Our God'. Not because I'm a relativist who believes that all religions are equal, but because of the implications of the statement.
‘Our dog', ‘our cat', ‘our kid' (for the Mancs out there). Things in your possession. Things over which you exert an element of control, and that are thoroughly Safe. Our God. Manc accents to the fore: ‘Alright, Our God?'
More dangerously, Our God turns into a pet deity. Our God justifies our acts, because he's ours. And though I try to keep out of the tribal Christian left-right debates, I do feel that the religious right are particularly guilty on this front. As are the Zionists, as are the Islamists. Communism and fascism apart, Our God has been responsible for the greatest acts of slaughter known to man. Our God is a tyrannical bastard, because we make him in our image.
And yet...
It's the greatest claim we can make. ‘I will be their God, and they will be my people.' At the heart of Christianity is this claim that we can draw near to God, that he can be ours and we can be his. Abba Father: Our Dad. We belong to him.
God defies our attempts at ownership. But he longs for us to belong to him, and him to us.