Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The God I Know



I wonder if you know God.

Not religion-
not philosophy-
not dogma-

nothing cliche and nothing canned-

Brennan Manning once said something like this:

Dont tell me about the God you heard about or was taught about,
but only the one you know from personal experience.
Then reflect on what your Christianity is.

So I guess you could say I have a bone to pick with Christians.

Sometimes you can hear a lot about someone but never know them.
You can stare them in the face and not realize who you're looking at,
and who is looking back at you.
and what it means.

Its sound to say that if God is as the bible describes,
and as related by how he interacts with people like you and I,
we would search for him in our everyday lives.

What is my Christianity like?

It's complicated.

Sunday schools bore me to tears-
I've done the Christian college thing
and felt like a lot of it was a waste of money-

But if you ask me who is God-

I think of experiences first-
then I think of the Bible.

What good is the whole Bible anyways if
you can go your whole life without seeing the flash of God-
When you can say without the shadow of a doubt
HE IS REAL.

It's the fundamental difference.
The only difference that really matters.

And that is why the taboo in Christianity-
all the little made-believe social etiquette rules-
doesn't really phase me-
I'll go on loving God
long after the board disowns me
and Joel Olstein quits grinning from book covers and websites-
what does all that matter anyway?

I know God.


And He knows me.


And that's all that ever mattered.

2 comments:

  1. Good thoughts! Just one caveat- it is a must to remember our personal experiences our interepreted through a broken filter- our fallen nature. Therefore, our view of God through experience can be easily eskewed. The solution is to use the Word of God as the filter of our experience. In any experience we must first ask, Is my perception consistent with Scripture? If not, then my understanding, my interpretation of the experience has an issue. Jesus said,Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but My Word endures forever. Experience is a powerful testimony- I use it as often as possible, but only through the filter of God's established, faithful, inerrant Word.

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  2. This is true, however God is real and living. My relationship with him is in real life too- not just a book, let alone the Bible. You can come to know Jesus through real life because he is not bound by black leather and red ink. Just like the people in the Bible did- through astonishing real life experiences with the God who walks with them every day.

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