Seek
Hello, it's Saturday evening, 6:06 PM and the day has slipped, or slept, away. Maybe slept, because I had two naps, a morning nap and an afternoon nap, both long and goofy enough to have dreams. Morning naps are pretty much free-for-all, but if an afternoon nap goes to five o'clock Linda wakes me with a vigorous back rub. Which makes the entire nap process worthwhile.
There's a gnat in here. Inside 7H, I'm in the living room. We seldom to never have flying insects up this high, which has been a pleasant blessing these ten years in 7H. No flies, no mosquitoes, only a gnat now and then. But I know they are out there, because sometimes there's a wild, darting swarm of dragonflies, mosquito hawks, flitting about just off 7H porch evenings. But, oh, if I cook steak and open the doors to air the place out, we may attract a fly or two.
No roaches either, the HOA contracts with someone who comes round a few Times a year and smears something under a kitchen counter drawer or two. But I'm a born and bred Southerner and I know roaches, nomesane? At the Old Place I had a contract with a pest control service, the man came once a month to spray, and within a treatment or two all the roaches were gone. I never knew why my father didn't have a pest control service, because when I took over the Old Place, there were roaches.
Jiminy Jeepers, who'd ever think I started this blog because of God. Or because Sean of the South has a blog about God this afternoon. Copy and pasted below (scroll down). Interesting theology. We are strange creatures: we insist, "Oh the Muslims believe in the same God we do, there's only one God." Well, there isn't, there are as many gods as there are belief systems, and each of us believes our God is the only one. Remember those folks who used to travel distances to picket funerals of military folks killed in war? Their signs said, "God hates fags," rationalizing that God hates America because Americans embrace LGBTQ people, and therefore God hates American service members killed in wars. They have a different God from me, my God doesn't hate. If your God hates, we have different Gods.
When I was growing up, Mama used to tell me about growing up at East Hill Baptist Church in Pensacola. The sermons were against dancing, alcohol, playing cards, and going to the baseball games on Sunday afternoon; those were sins that their God hated. That's not my God, my God is concerned about our hateful treatment of other people - - back to Jesus' parable of The Good Samaritan again, eh?, who is your neighbor?, your neighbor is whoever you don't like because they're different from you.
And don't tell me, "God hates the sin but loves the sinner," which is stupidly glib nonsense. My God doesn't hate. If your God hates, we have different Gods.
As my theology professor used to say: "our God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that's not the Jewish God or the God of Islam." But we like to insist "it's all the same God, because there's only One God." As Sean Dietrich lays it out so beautifully naive below, my God isn't the same God as lots of other folks' God. I will confess that my God has changed, or changed me, big Time, over the course of my lifetime. "Seek the Truth, Come whence it May, Cost what it Will," and it's been, and continues, quite a search, extravagantly costly, and gloriously freeing.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
Sunday morning PS: I'm far from the sharpest college football fan, but now I'm sorry we turned off the TV after Georgia took the lead over Alabama last night, because the best was yet to come and we missed it. GA 34 AL 41 with a 75 yard touchdown pass and 2 point conversion. I may pretend to love everybody, but as a Florida Gator these seven decades and counting, I only love Alabama football when they're playing Georgia, and I'll only love Georgia football if they play Ohio State.
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The emails came after I wrote a 500-word prayer for Hurricane Helene victims. I had no idea my words would invite so many different opinions on God. I received emails from exotic places all over the world including Illinois.
“Sean, you’re an IDIOT!” writes one emailer. “How can you believe that your prayer will help anything? God is a fake!
“Your God is a tyrant,” said another.
“How do you reconcile the Christian faith with all the terribleness in the world? A pastor friend tells me that, ‘you just have faith.’ I say BS.”
“A prayer?” one person wrote. “Seriously? Didn’t YOUR sociopathic God send Hurricane Helene? …I agree with the previous commenter—you’re an idiot.”
But I’m not offended. Namely because these people can’t hurt me; I grew up with Rapture Anxiety.
I was raised by staunch evangelicals who did not believe in buying life insurance because it was considered gambling. In fact, the God these emailers are referring to is the American Evangelical God.
It took me years to figure out that my screwed-up idea of God came from American evangelicals
And Americans are colonists. We descended from colony-building ancestors. We’re always building stuff. It’s who we are. Americans are the only people in the world who can look at a virginal Appalachian valley and say to ourselves, “What a great spot for Pigeon Forge!”
We’re like ants. We colonize, then we boss other ants around. That’s how it works. And that’s sort of how we see God.
Always building colonies. Always growing. Like a small business.
But never mind. Colonialism also means we MUST have rules. That’s how manmade stuff works—to “rule” things you need “rules.” No rules equals chaos. Thus, American towns have laws. American neighborhoods have HOAs. Schools have dress codes. Interstates have highway patrolmen. Our government has the IRS. And we associate God with a bunch of rules.
Even our churches have rules. They have to because WE built them. Thankfully, church rules are pretty simple. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. No premarital relations because this leads to dancing.
The problem is, of course, God isn’t an American Evangelical. He’s not a colonist, either. Moreover, He’s never been much of a rule follower. God is a wild and crazy guy. He is unafraid of chaos. In fact he invented chaos.
Remember, for example, that one time God told a 90-year-old Hebrew guy to cut off the foreskin of his you-know-what? You don’t think THAT’S chaos? Imagine attending a family reunion and your nonagenarian grandfather hobbles out of the kitchen brandishing a bread knife, saying, “Hey guys, guess what God told me to do!”
I bring all this up because I freely admit, I know nothing about God. In fact, the only thing I know about God is that I am clueless.
God is a great mystery. To me, God is physics. He is chemistry. He is biology. He’s is art. God is not Algebra II.
I do not believe, however, that God is a celestial Santa Claus, rewarding good little boys and girls, and punishing all who maintain a regular subscription to M.A.D. Magazine.
I believe God is more than that. He’s the pH of our soil. He is photosynthesis. He is in the electrical impulses of each heartbeat. God is in the eyes of each newborn. He is in the death of a loved one. He is present in every trauma. Even hurricanes.
He is not distant. He does not live in outer space. He is here. Right now. He is in the floodwaters and the earthquakes. He is in the midst of every war.
He is present in the midst of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and human trafficking. He is in the hands of every rescue worker. He is the smile of every helper.
God is love. This is all I know. This is all I want to know. If I could understand him, He would cease to exist.
So I guess it’s a good thing I’m an idiot.