TAKING TIME FOR GOD
In his recent book, The Year of Living Biblically, A.J. Jacobs tells of visiting the New York City Atheists Club. Yes, one actually exists———some thirty people meeting in the back room of a midtown Greek restaurant. The group sponsors a weekly atheist cable access program, and holds a weekly film night where they discuss movies that support their cause. They fire each other up with the need to confront believers with the message of atheism.
Hearing about this group reminded me of what American journalist, Heywood Broun once wrote: "Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist there is no God." It’s true. The atheists club in midtown New York was spending more time thinking about God than the people hurrying along the street outside their gathering place.
What about you? Do you think about God much? If you’re like most people, you don’t think much of God at all. Why, you’re so busy with the ordinary pressures of life that there isn’t much time to let your thoughts soar to heaven. Thinking about God? You’re too busy thinking about whether that funny noise you hear when you accelerate on the highway is your transmission about to drop out! Thinking about God, you say to me, is a job for philosophers and theologians—not ordinary people! But I’m not so sure. Ignoring God is really one of the most risking things you can do in life.
Recently, I received an e—mail from someone who’s working with me on an important project. Frankly, this project is high on my ‘to do’ list. But I told him that the project would have to wait a few weeks. I was neck—deep in matters that needed attention NOW—if not already yesterday! "The urgent is driving out the important," I wrote back. "I hope to get back on track by next month."
That, I fear, is where many of us are at when it comes to God. The truth is, God IS important! In fact, he is the most important thing in life! But in the world of the everyday, there are so many things that become so urgent. You’re behind on the bills. Your work is giving you headaches. You’re a middle—aged ‘tweener’ caught between raising kids and caring for aging parents. You’re so tired at the end of the day that thinking about God doesn’t even make the top ten on your ‘to—do’ list. And God doesn’t necessarily rewrite that list to include himself, does he? God doesn’t necessarily impose himself on you. He isn’t as demanding as your boss, who barges into your office and wants to know why the marketing project is a week past the deadline. He isn’t like your ten—year—old, pulling on your sleeve as you clear the dinner dishes, telling you he forgot to let you know that his science project is due tomorrow morning. God may be important—but he isn’t always demanding! That’s why we can find so many ways of putting him off. He doesn’t call you into his office on Monday morning, wanting to know whether you thought about him over the weekend. He doesn’t spam your in—box because you haven’t talked to him in prayer during the past month.
So, maybe just because God is so easy to ignore, it would be good to give him a little time right now. In fact, getting serious about God might help you put all those other urgent issues of life into perspective!
GOD OPTIONS
But who—or what—is God anyway? Thinking about God isn’t so easy, is it?
I was reading recently about what happened in Denver some years ago. When the American Atheists held their national convention in Denver in 1987, Madalyn Murray O’Hare stood up and declared to the delegates: "There is no God." Soon after, Shirley MacLaine visited Denver and declared: "I and everybody else, is God!" Then Billy Graham came to town, and told the people of Denver: "Jesus Christ is God."
Well, there you have it. Three "God—options." No God. Everyone as God. Jesus as God. What’s going on? Who’s right? Who’s wrong?
Here’s the truth: Those three God—alternatives that have been around for a long time. Madelyn Murray O’Hare speaks for atheism. God doesn’t exist at all. He’s a myth—like the Easter Bunny or the Great Pumpkin. God doesn’t exist. Of course, if God doesn’t exist, then a lot of other spiritual realities likely disappear too. If there is no god, then there’s no reason to believe that there are demons, angels, or even souls, for that matter. The world that you take in with your senses—that’s the only world there is.
Billy Graham, of course, gave expression to the historic Christian faith. We’ll come back to that later.
THE "EVERYTHING" GOD
But then there is that third option. Shirley MacLaine offered what might be for many of us a new way of thinking about God. But should you buy it? Shirley MacLaine——divine? And for that matter, everyone else divine as well? Fifty years ago, most people would have dismissed such talk as nonsense—if not pure spiritual arrogance. But now, a lot of people aren’t so sure. Actually, MacLaine’s thoughts about God have become pretty common today in what we’ve called the New Age movement. The technical word for this thinking about God is pantheism. Pantheism is the polar opposite of atheism. If atheism says NOTHING is God, pantheism says EVERYTHING is God!
Now, I don’t know whether you have ever heard the word pantheism before. But you’ve likely met up with this way of thinking of the divine. And not by cracking open a book on theology or philosophy. But just by walking into a movie theater—or buying a set of DVDs. Anyone who has sat glued to their seat, watching Luke Skywalker duke it out with Lord Vader, has heard articulated pantheistic philosophy. Star Wars is one of the great action—adventure epics of the last 30 years. But strangely enough, it’s also making a philosophical statement about the nature of God!
Listen to one of the most famous pantheists of the past century: ""For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is … its energy surrounds us and binds us … Luminous beings we are. Not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you … Everywhere … even in the land."
Who said these words? Gandhi? Some renown Buddhist teacher? No, these words were spoken by one of the most famous muppets of all time. Master Yoda. A guru with a light saber. And we have heard the infamous Star Wars benediction he and others pronounce: "May the Force be with you!"
Now, Star Wars is science fiction. Taken as Sci—fi, it’s merely a rousing good story. But many people took it for something more. George Lucas himself said he created Star Wars as mythology for the twentieth century. In fact, Lucas was quoted as saying: "I put the Force into the movie to try to reawaken a certain kind of spirituality in young people… I see Star Wars taking all the issues that religion represents, and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible context." How’s that for a religious claim? "All the issues that religion represents … distilled down into an easily accessible form." In Star Wars? It’s enough to make you laugh. Except that many who watch Star Wars saw it as a new foundation for religion. Movie—goers didn’t just think of it as a fantastic story. They considered it a piece of theology. In fact, some people today are so hungry for spiritual truth that they understand it as proclaiming spiritual reality. Sir Alec Guinness, who played Obi Wan Kenobi in the series, was rather appalled when after Star Wars was released, he noticed that people were actually BELIEVING in the ‘The Force." Alec Guinness was quoted as saying: "I am a … Christian, so to that extent, yes, I do believe that something like the Force exists. But not as experienced in Star Wars. "
But what Guinness didn’t believe, many New Agers do. God is the all—encompassing Force that pervades the universe. Star Wars offers a New Age definition of deity. All is God. And God is all.
You see, for the New Age movement, SPIRIT is the ultimate reality of the universe. How far you want to push that idea is up to you. Some forms of new age thinking go so far as to claim that the material world doesn’t exist at all. The very notion that you have a body——that you exist in a physical world—is illusion. Your body? It’s an apparition. What you think are solid objects only exist in your mind. But New Agers who don’t go so far as to deny a material world still will tell you that beyond the physical world is a unity of spirit. That unity of spirit makes everything one. And that oneness, that unity is god.
Of course, it doesn’t make much sense then to talk about that god in any personal way. The notion that God speaks to you, and that you can speak to him—all that becomes rather nonsensical, doesn’t it? God becomes nothing more than some transcendent energy that fills the universe. God becomes, well, "THE FORCE." If that’s your definition of God, then you certainly can’t know God face to face. It makes no sense to think that you can stand before God, like Moses at the burning bush, and hear him call you by name. God is everything. And everything is God!
SO WHAT?
Now, there are those, and perhaps those of us who are listening today, who are rather impressed by this description of God. I mean, what could be more complimentary than a spirituality that considers ourselves to be sparks of the divine. It sounds as though New Agers have an idea about human identity that is bigger and better than the Christian faith. Christians talk about being in the image of God. They talk about men and women as the children of God. But New Agers are willing to go the bold next step—and declare our very divinity! Isn’t this announcing our spiritual ‘coming of age’? Doesn’t this mean that we are veritable gods and goddesses?
So declares Shirley MacLaine. Remember that personal name God offered to Moses? Well MacLaine claims it for herself. "I know that I exist, therefore I AM," she says. "I know the God—source exists. Therefore IT IS. Since I am part of that force it follows that I AM THAT I AM." There we have it. MacLaine’s claim to personal deity!
And her voice is echoed by many others in the New Age camp. The Maharishi, who brought Transcendental Meditation to America, writes, "Be still, and know that you are God."
Or the Swami Muktananda who says: "Kneel before yourself. Honor and worship your own being. God dwells within you as YOU."
Or consider the words of Steward Band, who wrote in The Next Whole Earth Catalogue, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it."
Sounds impressive! But is it? Think about it. Yes, if you buy into new age definitions of god, you can claim deity. But that’s not a huge compliment. After all divinity also belongs to the termites you’ve been trying for so long to root out of your basement. Yes, if you’re a pantheist, you can claim to be divine. But you also have to bestow deity upon the crabgrass you’ve been trying to exterminate in your front yard.
The fact is, pantheism doesn’t have a very good track record when it comes to transforming society and making this a better place to live. No, when we seize divinity, we really don’t climb to the heavens. When we seize divinity, we end up denigrating ourselves——to the level of mere animals and sometimes even worse. When we lose our true place in God’s creation, we rob ourselves of the dignity that God intends for us.
That happens because with new age thinking about god, we destroy the very foundations of morality. Yes, I know that New Age doesn’t necessarily intend to destroy a sense of right and wrong. But logically, that’s what happens. As Shirley MacLaine says, if you spell evil backward, you get l—i—v—e. LIVE. Evil, she tells us, is just an inferior way of viewing life!
Or listen to Charles Manson—the famous mass murderer who plunged himself into Eastern Religion has been quoted as saying: "If God is all, what is evil?"
Or consider Yen—Men, a great Eastern guru. He teaches, "If you wish the plain truth, be not concerned about right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind."
That’s where you end up when you embrace the god of the New Age.
A WORD FROM GOD ABOUT THE DIVINE
But now, think about God another way. Instead of thinking about God as some hazy divine ‘everything,’ think of God as the one who meets you face to face in his Scriptures. Listen to him speak through his prophet Isaiah. When you do, you’ll tune in his critique of new age thinking. Writes Isaiah:
To whom, then, will you compare God?
What image will you compare him to?
As for an idol, a craftsman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it with gold
and fashions silver chains for it.
A man too poor to present such an offering
Selects wood that will not rot
He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple.
(Isa. 40:18—20)
For Isaiah, the very notion that you can blur the line between the spiritual and the physical is nonsense. Many in Isaiah’s day did just that. They believed that their gods and goddesses had taken up residence in physical objects. Your god or goddess could be identified with a wooden idol or a carved statue. "But that’s nonsense," says Isaiah. "It’s nonsense to carve your god out of a log, bow down to it, then turn around and burn the left—over scraps to keep warm. It’s nonsense to think you can drag God down to the level of the physical world."
But that is what New Age does. The car I drive is both my transportation—and the god I worship. The house I live in is both my shelter and a manifestation of the divine. The gravel that lines my driveway is both drainage after a downpour—and an expression of godhead. The tree in my backyard is both my shade from the summer heat—and a manifestation of the Universal One. Says God through Isaiah: "That’s NONSENSE!" "God says, take me seriously! Know me as I really am!"
UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH GOD
God declares in Isaiah 40:5: "I am the first and I am the last and apart from me, there is no God." Before history began—God is. And when this age has run its course—GOD is. He is the eternal! God is bigger than this planet, bigger than time and space. He is no mere force, no mere energy field. Instead, he is the intensely personal God. He is the God who created you and me. He is the God who looks you in the eye and invites you to stop playing games with him—stop putting him off. Stop pushing him aside. He is the God who calls out to you—"Come to me, walk with me, find your life in me!"
You see, this God takes a deep personal interest in your life. He is wonderfully concerned that you know him. So much so that you wouldn’t have any deep peace, any real quiet in your soul, until you understand him, appreciate him, relate to him more closely than two best friends relate to each other.
And why can I say that? Because this great God has come up close to us in his Son, Jesus Christ. Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians, chapter 2, that Christ was in the form of God, yet emptied himself of his divine glory, in order to take the form of a servant, in order to be born into the human race. Jesus Christ, says the apostle John in the first chapter of his gospel, is God with us. He has moved into our neighborhood. God has done this because he wants to be part of your life. So if you want to look into the face of God, look into the face of Jesus. In fact, Jesus said to us: "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Looking at Jesus we see what God is like. We see his amazing love, his infinite compassion, his immense wisdom. Taking time for God means taking time for Jesus. It means responding to Christ’s audacious call to faith and discipleship, believing his claim: "No one comes to the Father but through me."
This, my friends, is a very different god than the one you meet in the New Age movement. Very frankly, New Age is the devil’s attempt to make us look like fools. It is the devil’s attempt to rob us of a personal relationship with the divine.
But when you read the Scriptures, you meet up with the TRUTH. The transcendent God, who made you, wishes you to know him. He desires to reshape you—remake you to look more like the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. The personal God wants you to come face to face with him. And know him and walk with him forever.
I don’t know about you, but the God of the New Age holds no attraction for me. An impersonal force cannot love me, cannot hold me in the hollow of his hand. "The Force" cannot do that for me.
But the God of Scripture can do that. He can hold me, he can hold me close to his side. A.W. Tozer once said that no religion can rise higher than its conception of God. He was right. Pantheism? It never gets an inch off the ground. Only the God we know in Christ Jesus can open for you the door of the divine Kingdom and usher you into the presence of the God of peace and comfort.
Robert Heerspink
Rev. Robert Heerspink is a native of west Michigan. He completed his undergraduate studies at Calvin College and holds the degrees of Master of Divinity and Master of Theology from Calvin Theological Seminary. He has also received a Doctor of Ministry degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Bob was ordained a minister of the Word in the Christian Reformed Church of North America in 1979, and has 26 years of parish experience, having served four churches throughout west Michigan. He was appointed the Director of The Back to God Hour in 2006. Bob has written several resources related to congregational stewardship, including the book, Becoming a Firstfruits Congregation. He is a regular contributor to TODAY, the monthly devotional of The Back to God Hour. Bob is married to Edith (Miedema) and they have three children. His hobbies include reading fictional and historical works, watersports, and occassional golfing.
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