Category Archives: Theology

Articles exploring the nature of God and/or the interaction of God with his creation.

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Christian Pessimism

Last week, I was listening to several ministers respond to college students’ questions when a particular metaphor struck me. Regarding issues such as prayer and the question of gender in ministry, a few of the ministers spoke about “the lenses we bring to the Bible” and how our presuppositions often prevent us from recognizing what a certain chapter and verse actually means.

This comes as no shock to the majority of us. Christians, Jews, Muslims and even atheists the world over have encountered proof-texting in some form. It especially seems the natural pastime of many Bible-thumpers, to see how many random Bible verses they can apply to issues within our society today. These are the same people who say things in general conversation like, “I have a verse for you,” or even “God spoke to me this morning about you.”

"Really? I wonder why I didn't hear from Him directly. I guess I was in the shower."

“Really? I wonder why I didn’t hear from Him directly. I guess I was in the shower.”

Even mediocre English teachers are quick to correct students when they offer a sweeping analysis of The Great Gatsby‘s themes based on half a chapter, or when they attempt to interpret “Mending Wall” solely from the line, “‘Good fences make good neighbors.’” However, those scruples rarely find their way into Bible studies and small groups. Context is one of the first things to be rejected when it comes to the applying Scripture to one’s life. Most of the time, it’s just more convenient to jump straight to personal analysis.

There are numerous problems that are born of careless reading of the Bible, but perhaps the most pervasive is the damage done to a person’s theological mooring. If the words of Scripture are so easily manipulatable to any given situation, you can end up with an incredible spectrum of conviction when it comes to particular issues and divisive matters in one’s culture. It’s why you might see Westboro Baptist Church members picketing gay marriage on one side of city street, and find members of another local Baptist church standing on the other side of the street picketing the picketers.

It's a mad mad mad mad denomination...

It’s a mad mad mad mad denomination…

Lenses

There is much to protect when it comes to freedom of interpretation, but we must be careful how quickly we apply both the Bible and even fundamental theological arguments to our present situations. This has to do with those “lenses” I mentioned before. Christians are very often as guilty of bringing a pre-established assumption about life to their reading of Scripture as a high school freshman is to assuming Fahrenheit 451 is about literary censorship.

Over the past decade or so, we have been bombarded with evidence that the world in which we live seems to be grappling in the dark. Liberties are being stolen away and evil is on an unprecedented rise. We have multiple twenty-four-hour news networks that pour over the minutia of injustice and alleged tyranny. We spend hours and hours every week clicking around the Internet and reading comment section after comment section in which vitriol is spewed and conspiracies are blamed. We sit down with friends for coffee and spend the majority of our time complaining about federal encroachment, the decline of public schooling, the supposed threat to the institution of marriage, or any number of issues. Whether we are aware of it or not, all these things fill us with a deep sense of pessimism and distrust.

Whatever happened to the old adage, "If you can't say something nice..."?

Whatever happened to the old adage, “If you can’t say something nice…”?

Christians believe solace can be found in reading the Bible and in prayer, but the irony of such disciplines is that we drag all of this angry, fearful baggage right into the middle of our times of study or meditation. We spend the vast majority of our weeks embroiled in all the problems and regrets of our society, and it becomes impossible to separate these worries from genuine times of theological reflection. Thus, what most often happens is that we turn our Bibles into a litmus test for our particular culture and give no thought to the extensive history that has unfolded since those scriptures were first spoken and later transcribed. Our times of prayer are saturated with begging God’s deliverance – for him to roll back this pervasive darkness that has apparently spread itself over every aspect of life.

It’s no wonder most people don’t see anything appealing about the Christian faith. On a day-by-day basis, how many of us exude authentic hope and unbiased joy?

Theological Suicide

In the song “Hopeless Wanderer” by Mumford & Sons, a repentant line rings out, “I will learn to love the skies I’m under.” Unfortunately, I think the concept of embracing the world we live in – actually loving it – seems an impossible task for many Christians. Why? Because we are beset on every side by voices crying BEWARE! and LOOK OUT! and DON’T TRUST HIM and THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU!. It takes a very centered person to hold all the fear-mongers at bay and truly keep the faith. It’s hard to transfer our faith away from a political ideology or an economic policy or a gun license. Solo fide in an all-knowing, almighty God is scarce these days.

I’ve written before about Mike Huckabee’s now well-known response to why the Sandy Hook massacre took place last December. His response is just another example of this kind of pessimism and the dangers of presuppositions when it comes to the Scriptures. Huckabee seems to believe that human lawlessness and the deletion of government-sanctioned prayer in public schools can effect the proximity and attitude of an almighty God. Many others who were emotionally swayed by his argument are quick to agree that the Bible reveals such terrible things can happen when people reject God. The logic seems to click – you kick God out of schools, God won’t protect you when you need him.

But a careful reflection on this thought process ends up making God look like the Little Red Hen who didn’t share her bread with the duck and the cat and the dog because they didn’t help her pick the grain and make the dough. It’s theological suicide. A person who believes this has, in their minds, effectively put to death an immovable God who perseveres in love, and has instead erected the idol of a vindictive, karmic god who has no qualms about people getting what they (apparently) deserve. Grace goes out the window. What is more, there is no evidence the God of the Bible ever acted in such a way or was ever willfully absent from any historical tragedy. In fact, the Old Testament prophets take great pains to communicate that in even the darkest and most violent moments in history, God is present and active.

"I've got a tee time with Enoch, Noah and Methuselah. Tell those Babylonians to call on that Marduk fella. I'm out the door."

“I’ve got a tee time with Enoch, Noah and Methuselah. Tell the Babylonians to call that Marduk fella. I’m out the door.”

Cleaning the Lens

So what do we do? How can we avoid such small-minded, misguided readings of Scripture? How do we free ourselves from pessimistic prayer? How do we treat the darkness we see in our world in a way that does not overshadow the hope we have in redemption and our responsibility in this “the ministry of reconciliation” (2nd Corinthians 5:18)?

Like many problems of addiction, the first step to solving the problem is admitting there is one. And Christian pessimism is certainly an addiction – a lifestyle that is difficult to escape. The second step would be to practice as much patience as possible, and to remind oneself that the news and the Internet and the complaints of other fearful people are mere opinions, and that truth is much bigger and goes much deeper than what they can touch. They will never acknowledge the full story of this life unless we limit ourselves solely to their pronouncements.

"I'm not listening. La la la la la la la la!"

“I’m not listening. La la la la la la la la!”

Finally, in addition to patience, we must seek to understand humility. Not just practice it, but understand what it is, at its core. And we must approach Scripture and prayer and even the most general of theological conversations with that healthy sense of humility. That meekness that acknowledges that we were never meant to be the end-all purveyors of truth, nor is God’s character meant to be interpreted solely by one culture in one time period other than the time of Jesus Christ on earth. If you’re going to start anywhere, start there.

And maybe, if we can calm ourselves and slow down, we will begin to see the true nature of a God who has, thankfully, never abandoned us to our waywardness. It turns out he’s been standing right beside us all the while.

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Blind Spots (Mike Huckabee’s Flawed Theology)

Attachment-123973

I used to think like Mike Huckabee.

When I was an awkward teenager and an only slightly less awkward college student, I spent a lot of my free time in church youth groups and university ministries. I was surrounded by like-minded people who generally agreed with things that I had to say regarding God, the Bible, basic Christian principles and the like. And I typically agreed with them. Conversations about the nature and character of God were rarely challenging. I think this was because these conversations took place among people who had similar backgrounds – people accustomed to Sunday School and church camps and small group Bible studies and receiving My Utmost For His Highest as a graduation gift.

We didn’t spend much time on the blind spots in our theology. There was little need for revision because critical ears were scarce.

Eventually, I wandered out of these close-knit, homogenous groups and into the outside world, which I quickly found teeming with people unafraid to voice their dissatisfaction with a lot of my views on God and Christianity. Most argued with me harshly, but a few were gentler. Of course, every time I encountered an idea that ran counter to the “truth” that I was so sure I was right about, I was faced with a choice. Continue reading →

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Resurrection-minded

Our culture teaches us that everything out there is hostile. We have to compare, dominate, control, and insure. In brief, we have to be in charge. That need to be in charge moves us deeper and deeper into a world of anxiety. As with our attachment to the system of producing and consuming, this anxiety gets worse as we get older. - Richard Rohr (Everything Belongs)

I stopped posting to this blog back at the beginning of 2012. The reason for this hiatus was that I was deep into a long job search and my wife and I feared that certain church search committees would find my freely expressed views too controversial and toss my resume into the recycle bin. I still believe it was a good kind of caution. When you get right down to it, who would you want heading up ministries in your church (if indeed you belong to a church)? A wide-eyed contemplative with a seemingly never-ending list of questions about the very faith he professes, or a minister whose cyber footprint is more professional and whose articles adhere to a straightforward, amenable style? Let’s be honest – nine times out of ten, you’re opening door number two, and that one remaining time, you’re hoping nobody’s home behind door number one.

"Yeah, I found this guy's blog - what a nutjob! Next."

Now that I’m over a month into my new job and free to blog carte blanche again, I’m reflecting on this decision. And then, this morning, my wife gave me the standard once-over before I headed out the door and, as is sometimes necessary, commented on the outfit I had chosen to wear. It wasn’t her favorite. At the core of her displeasure was the polo shirt I was wearing, which was a recent Goodwill acquisition and one she had intended for more casual occasions. As I drove to the church, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the plan to hold off blogging during the job search stemmed from the same general issue as my lamentable cluelessness with clothing.

Comparison. Whether we mean to or not, we have all been swept up in a worldwide system of comparison. The quotation above adds more words to this system, such as domination and control. It might seem a bit drastic for me to state such a thing, but the more thought I give to the idea, the more I recognize that this is indeed the firmly fixed reality in which we operate. Especially Americans. So much of what we know about ourselves – what we would call our “identity” – comes from what/who we compare ourselves to. Physical appearance is a given, but this grand form of comparison goes much deeper than the merely cosmetic. Often even our religious convictions are born out of a desire to be right, to be in control, or at least to feel in control. Our identity rises and falls based on our sense of judgment.

This changes everything.

No wonder it is so hard to truly, authentically, unconditionally love other people. In such a cruel, status-obsessed system, I can hardly believe the notion of love still exists at all. It’s a dreadful realization, and figuring a way to escape it seems pointless. It seems to me that we will never find a way out of such a system on our own. There’s no hope for escape, really. Only rescue.

“They found the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body” (Luke 24:2).

The world, with its system of shrewd judgment, power-grabbing, comparing, grasping, dominating and securing will always call belief in the Resurrection foolish. It’s pathetic wishful thinking. A half-baked myth. An opiate for the masses. A waste of a mind. A pipe dream. Then again, if the Resurrection is true (and I believe whole-heartedly that it is, crazy as it sounds), it makes sense that such a system would spurn it. Because the Resurrection means that all the comparing and controlling and dominating has been squelched by a God who is about the business of redemption and reconciliation and mercy. And love. Real love. Before such radical grace, even the starkest comparison or ruthless reach for control crumbles to dust.

“Thy will be done on earth at it is in heaven.” Dare we choose such a radically new way of life?

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God-willing, You’ll Read This Post

Let’s talk for a moment about this nebulous yet paramount Christian concept known as “the will of God.”

You may have heard the term used before in a variety of situations, but most often it is yanked from its holster when someone is trying to determine how to properly prepare for his or her future, or perhaps when people are discussing a specific turn of events in someone else’s life. “Well, you know, if it’s God’s will, you’ll get that promotion…” “There’s nothing more I can do – we’ll be together if God wills it…” “He’s in the hospital right now, but I suppose, God-willing, he’ll get better…”

"Look, a 14-point, and right in my line of fire. It must be God's will!"

It’s a kind of fate-and-fortune catch-all, really. If something happens, it happens because God willed that it should happen. If something fails to happen, it is generally considered to be “outside of” God’s will, i.e. what he desires to take place in the course of human history. A lot of religious folks – including most Christians – use this as the all-inclusive explanation for why some things happen and other things do not. However, problems arise when we attempt to apply the explanation to misfortune or difficult circumstances. The greater the trial, the more this explanation seems platitudinous and disconnected from reality. As a result, God’s concern for, and activity within, human experience is attacked.

For the last eleven months, I have been searching for a position on a church staff. I have applied for all kinds of associate positions that seemed like a good fit, as well as student ministry positions that gel with my ten-year background in church work. I have even sent my resume out to a few dozen churches looking for lead pastors. All in all, I have applied to almost one hundred churches. As of today, however, I remain unemployed. Occasionally, an acquaintance will ask me how the job hunt is going. Early on, I was optimistic that a good job was right around the corner, and I answered as the same vein. After eleven months, however, my optimism has almost completely dissolved, and in my mounting frustration, it’s hard not to fill that vacancy with cynicism and anger.

"What's it like to not have a job? It's like spending a whole day in a dirty, smelly deer stand and not being able to kill something majestic!"

These days, I respond honestly – that the search is not going well at all and times are very, very tough. The response I receive from people is almost always the same stock response I hear every time (whether I answer with positivity or negativity); it’s one of the Christian subculture’s greatest hits, and it is, in essence, the thoughtless application of this thing known as “God’s will.”

“Well, I just know God’s got a place for you.”

Thanks.

Care to venture a guess as to where that might be, or what I’m supposed to do in the meantime, or why he has chosen not to reveal this secret location over the past eleven months?

Like I said, cynicism is hard to avoid.

Let us dissect this ambiguous concept of God’s will, shall we? Especially why God apparently feels the need to play his cards so close to his chest. To give our analysis some form we can clearly recognize, let’s think of it in terms of dating. Now, the abiding belief in our culture is that there is one special someone out there for everybody (not counting the people who we brush off as unfortunate souls cursed into singleness like the remainder in a long division problem) and one of the main priorities of life is to identify who exactly this is. Dating is, in essence, sleuthing. Gathering evidence to solve the mystery known as “Who is my soul mate?”

By Jove, Watson! She's perfect for me!

Don’t want to accept this? Consider every romantic comedy you’ve ever seen. How many times did one of these movies end with Jennifer Aniston realizing this chiseled yet sensitive dude with perfect teeth wasn’t ”the one” after all, but rather only one possibility in a thousand? How many times do eHarmony or Match.com testimonials feature a guy talking about how perfect five different girls were followed by footage of him walking in the park with a blonde, then sharing a drink with a redhead, and then visiting a carnival with a brunette, and so on?

It’s hard for some people – whether they are single or already married – to hear that the idea of that one special someone might be bogus, that there might be hundreds or thousands of special someones out there for them, and the determining factor in finding who they will commit to boils down not to the magical hand of God (in non-religious terms, “fate”), but to the choices they made that landed them in a certain place with a certain set of circumstances (“free will”).

Am I rejecting the notion that God has a purpose for our lives? I am not. Does this imply that God is not involved? It does not. On the contrary, I’m trying to elevate our level of personal responsibility in the lives with which we have been blessed. God gave us the ability to choose, to make decisions, to sometimes effect change according to our level of effort. Most of us would agree with this. We would never fully discount the existence of free will. But when, for better or for worse, we want to validate something (or someone) as having a distinct purpose, we tend to stick the “God’s will” decal on it in an attempt to authenticate the experience.

Unfortunately, like a sixteen-month-old left unattended in a scrapbook store, we’ve become sticker-happy. We slap the “God’s will” explanation on everything from finding a spouse to finding a good parking space at Target. We’re as comfortable using it as a reason for category five hurricanes as we are for our minivan breaking down.

"Whataburger's selling the All-Time Favorites again! It must be the divine will of Jehovah Jireh!"

Is God to blame for why I have spent eleven months searching for a church position with nothing to show for it? And if the people who point me to his lofty plan are correct and he does have a special place somehow set aside for me, am I supposed to sit on my parents’ couch in the meantime watching Sportscenter until I get the portentous phone call or e-mail? I mean, if it all boils down to God’s will – unalterable fate – do I even have a role? Or am I just the receiver waiting for the quarterback to spot me and toss-up a pass?

BAD PUN ALERT: It would be a "Hail Mary." Get it? (Yeah, I'm watching too much Sportscenter.)

I realize I’m dancing around the bang-your-head-against-the-pew-rail topic of predestination, specifically the age-old “vs.” debate: fate vs. free will. But my interest is not in opening that can of unconditionally elected worms. Rather, my goal is to remind all of us – especially Christians – that while it is possible for God to purpose something outside of humanity’s involvement, he does not work that way. He chooses to interact with our own choices. He wants us to make the effort, rather than wait for him to do the work.

Think of the most defining, pivotal moment in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. There he is in the little hillside garden called Gethsemane. He is kneeling in prayer, face to the ground. He is so anxious and fearful of what he has discerned is coming that blood seeps from his sweat glands. He’s crying. He’s struggling. He’s asking God – who remains silent just like he so often is with us – if there is any way for his will to play out differently. Would the Father please devise another way for humanity to be reconciled to its Creator? In the end, and I’m sure the words were some of the most difficult Jesus ever prayed, he blinks away more tears, clears the phlegm from his throat, and says, “Not my will, Father, but yours be done.”

What did Jesus recognize to be God’s will? Was it not that God desired to fulfill his purpose through humanity rather than separate from it? The divine work of reconciliation was to be intimately wrapped up in human choices no matter where it may lead, even to the point of physical torture and death. Could God have devised another way? Some of us might believe that, yes, he could – after all, he’s God. But because he is not one who stands far off from our world and our experiences, he rejects doing things another way. He subjects his will to the choices of humans, because he knows us well enough to know that his purposes will be fulfilled eventually.

He places Jesus’ safety in the hands of a betrayer who chooses to sell out his master. He subjects Jesus’ sentencing to Pilate’s jurisdiction, who chooses even against his better judgement to condemn him to death. What if Judas had relented before leading the temple guard to the garden? What if Pilate had heeded the words of his wife? Did God force them into one specific course of action? Frederick Buechner writes of free will, “The fact that I know you so well that I know what you are going to do before you do it doesn’t mean you aren’t free to do whatever you damn well please.”

What if I never find a ministry job? What if what I interpreted as a call to ministry finds me working in a university office or as an English teacher in a public high school? I’ve already begun looking for employment in those places, because the reality is that I need a job. I need to support my family which will very soon increase by twenty-five percent. I need to stop waiting on God to do all the work, and start making decisions I trust to be the right ones. I won’t throw God for a loop. If anything, I’ll give him more opportunity to get involved.

"Hey, guys. He finally turned off that Walking Dead marathon! Let's get to work!"

These days, when I think of God’s will, it’s not as some unascertainable force that influences us like a manipulator does his marionettes. Instead, I think of God’s willingness to trust me, even when I act in untrustworthy ways. I think of the faith he has in me to find a job even when I collapse in despair from rejection after rejection. I think of the confidence he has in his purpose for me, even when my own confidence is shattered, duct-taped back together, and then shattered again. I think of the way he doesn’t fault me when my prayers turn into rants and I question his concern for me.

I’m not saying it’s always comforting to think this way, nor is it easy to face failure when I know God could step in and nudge a situation into working out a bit differently. I haven’t learned how to find joy in this interaction between God’s holy will and my own fitful capabilities, and I’m not sure I ever will. I suppose accepting the mysterious cooperation, though, is a good first step.

Sometimes, though … Ah!

It is a terribly irksome thing to be so trusted by God.

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Seeing the Big Picture: A Review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins

It's a nice corner, though, right?

Years ago, when I would discuss certain issues with my father, at some point he would accuse me of “not seeing the big picture.” Typically, what he meant by this was that in the process of arguing my side or seeking to understand the purpose of doing some specific thing or considering some concept in a specific way, I had lost sight of the inherent reason for, or reality of, the situation. “You’re focusing on only a tiny little corner of the painting, son. You’re not seeing the big picture.”

I hated it when he would say that, mainly because he was right. It was a true assessment. I had lost sight of the big picture in order to defend or explain one small detail. It was like trying to put together a puzzle one piece at a time, but with no thought to the picture on the box – the end result. The goal.

I was continually reminded of this while reading Rob Bell’s newest book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Most folks are aware that before this book even hit shelves last spring, the Internet was ablaze with Christians – some well-known, many unknown – attacking what they believed to be an intriguingly disguised case for Christian Universalism, which, on a basic level, is the belief that all human beings will ultimately be reconciled to God and be saved from hell. Of course, the book has had its defenders, but what I found so unsettling was how quick some folks were ready to pass judgment on the book before they even read it! The spark that lit the fire was the video promo for the book, which many people believed was evidence enough that Bell had slid too far down the slope of heresy. Take a look for yourself…

There you have it. Rob Bell practically says it all right in the promo. No need to read the book – the guy leaves room in heaven for Gandhi! Can you believe it? Who’s next? Che Guevara? Hitler? bin Laden?

Hide yo' kids!

There are two problems with this assumption that Bell is a universalist and that Love Wins is merely a faulty manifesto of non-biblical ideas from the fringes of “emergent” psuedo-Christianity.

See? They won't even let them into the store to buy Bell's book!

First, to assume that because Bell is not ready to count Mahatma Gandhi as one of the damned he must be a universalist is like assuming that because I sympathize with the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank I must therefore be an anti-Semite. The conclusion requires a jump that would shatter all Olympic records. Sure, if you take the two-minute sound-bite as the whole argument, it is easy to discredit Bell. However, as he points out at more length in his book, whether or not Gandhi is in hell is not the point. The real point is how quick Christians are willing to stand in place of God when it comes to matters of who gets in to heaven and who doesn’t. Time and again in the scriptures we are reminded that it is Jesus Christ who will be the final, ultimate judge of this world. Christians are not the judge, and despite the way in which some people speak and conduct themselves, neither do they sit on the jury.

The second problem, that which concerns the outright rejection of the book, is that what Bell has written in Love Wins is not an argument for the non-existence of hell at all; however, the only way to know this is to… wait for it… read the actual book! Those that do read despite the forewarnings of becoming corrupted by a contagion of heresy (I finished the book a few days ago and, so far, I’m feeling fine) may be surprised to discover that only one of the eight chapters is concerned with hell, and at no point does Bell reject the existence or concept of hell. Instead, they will find that Bell is not offering universal reconciliation as the “right” way to understand God’s will. Instead, all he seems to be encouraging is for Christians to consider why it is they believe what they believe, and what those particular beliefs reveal about their concept of who God is. In other words, Bell is not arguing one little corner of the picture, but trying to get his readers to step back and take in the whole thing. If anything, he wants us to remember that believing in God means starting with the big picture – that God does indeed love us. All of us. Even with all our confusion and misdeeds and mistakes and dark secrets, he loves us. Not despite our imperfection, but rather in light of it.

Peer into the face of demonic heresy!

Make no mistake, Love Wins is concerned with theology. It is a challenging book, and it does offer a paradigm shift when it comes to how we think about God and our relationship with him. But if there is any reason to read the book, it is not so we can have answers for people wondering why God lets some people into heaven but sends others to hell. As Bell continually reminds his readers, God is so much bigger than these concerns, and his love is much, much greater than the way in which so many Christians have grown up thinking about it. What is most important, and the reason I believe people should read this book, is it forces us to consider the world – our friends, our enemies, our ancestors, our children, our children’s children – no longer from our limited, human perspective, but from God’s eternal perspective. It is a point of view that can be hard to fathom, but this is nothing new. God once spoke through Isaiah the prophet, saying, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways.”

For many years, I was guilty of considering salvation from a very limited, corner-of-the-painting perspective. My understanding of salvation in Christ was akin to a business deal. Sure, most of the work is done for me, but, at some point, I have to close the deal lest the relationship never be officially forged and the benefits rendered null and void. I think a lot of us have viewed “coming to Christ” or “getting saved” or being “born again” in this way, where some form of the Sinner’s Prayer constitutes our signature on the contract that is drawn up and offered freely by Jesus H. Christ, Esq. Heaven becomes that primo retirement plan waiting on us after we slogged our way through this labor-intensive life. As for hell, well, maybe if those folks had just worked a little harder. After all, it’s not as if they weren’t warned that they could be downsized at any moment, and, c’mon, who wouldn’t want a pension this valuable?

Available now wherever books are burned...

What a joyless, impotent way of thinking about my relationship with a holy God, the creator of all things. There were years when I walked church aisles time and again because, in essence, I was afraid my signature had been too illegible.

Whether you’re a Christian who thinks you’ve got a pretty good handle on who God is, or a person who has rejected belief in a God because the people who profess him seem so small-minded, I think we all need to step back and consider the bigger picture. God is so much bigger than the pundit preacher they’re interviewing on CNN or Fox News. He is so much greater than the moral absolute at the heart of a candidate’s political platform. He is so far beyond the scrawled opinions of the picket signs.

And we can know him. We can know this God. All it takes is a willingness to look past our own limited views of him. We’ll find him waiting there for us with open arms. We’ll find him here. We’ll find him now.