The last few months of my life have been a transition from a theoretical understanding of this principle of the activist God to a more genuine understanding of this principle.  I don’t say that as a point of pride, or as something of which I am proud.  I didn’t set out to end up here, and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to come here, but I am here nonetheless.  The transition from theoretical to practical can be summed up in a single word, uncertainty.  A life in which the things that were certain before become uncertain now, is the definition for this.

Before this period began, I could say with some measure of confidence what the immediate future held.  I could say that our bills were going to be met without difficulty.  I could say that our healthcare was assured.  I could say that I was a valued member of a team that made a difference in state government.  Today, none of that is true by default.  Each day carries with it a direct measure of uncertainty.  Today, and every day since this period began I am forced to confront the uncertainty that is incumbent in this situation armed only with the convictions of my faith.

I enter each day and have to reaffirm my faith that God is my provider, and that he cares for me and those he has entrusted to my care.   Each day I have to believe that this activist God has a plan, and that his plan is what is best for me.  Each day I have to accept, sometimes grudgingly and sometimes not, that God’s timing is perfect and that my timing isn’t his.  I have to dwell in the moment, and know that the God of Genesis 1:1 is working on my behalf for my best end, and I have to accept that no other end than this is what’s best.

Some days, like today, I find myself struggling with what God has promised and his timeline for fulfilling that promise.  I find myself, not unlike Sarah in the Old Testament, wondering when God is going to fulfill his word.  I find myself wondering about my value before and to this activist God.  And sometimes, I wonder if my prayers are breaking through the ceiling at all.  And on my worst days, I wonder if God has forgotten my number. 

And so it is on my worst days, like today, I have to struggle to believe in the activist God.  I have to struggle to believe that the God of the Bible still works that way today.  I have to struggle to believe in anything at all for that matter.  In a situation that from the outside looks bad trending worse, I worry, and I fear that it will never get better.  And the sum of those worries and fears become a smothering flood that threatens to drown me.

In the midst of those days, my solace, my comfort, my guide has become the knowledge that what I am experiencing is not uncommon to the human condition, and the human experience.  People before me have suffered this, and people after me will suffer this.  I have to recognize that this is a time in the crucible of life.  I am being exposed to intense heat right now; my distaste for this status quo notwithstanding.  I have to recognize the value of this time.  I have to somehow; as the writer of the book of James puts it, rejoice when I fall into trouble of various kinds.

And it has been in finding the joys of this time in the crucible that I have found relief from my fears and my worries.  It has been in being reminded of all that I have and how dear those things are to me, that the flood is swept away.  It is in participating in the simple joys of family life, that all that weighs upon me is relieved.  It is in watching my children find joy in playing cards, or watching a movie, or riding their bikes and scooters that I realize that things aren’t so bad.  It is in realizing what a wonderful woman I am married to, that I find the man I was meant to be.  It is the journey to becoming this man that God deemed it important to bring this time of woe upon me.  This activist God led me to this place.  And this activist God has deemed it important that I dwell here for a time, the exact duration of my stay is as yet undetermined.

I have found my place in the domicile that God has built up around me, and I relish it.  I have become actively involved in it, and it is a wonderful thing.  I have my good days, and my bad ones, but I love it for what it is.  And in all honesty, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

While surfing the internet, I happened upon the blog of an atheist who was asking the following question of her readers:

 “How many people would believe in a god if there were no rewards promised to the self for doing so?”

This rather loaded question is a complicated one. It is actually not meant to be a question, but rather an attack on the principles of Christianity. The atheist is suggesting that the Christian faith is a selfish one and insinuating that if there were no promise of Heaven, there would be few, if any, Christians. There is no chance I could ever answer the question to this particular atheist’s satisfaction because I suspect she believes she already knows the answer. Furthermore, I’m not sure there is a way to know the answer. Since there is a promise of Heaven, I have no idea how many Christians there would be if that promise was ripped out from under us. I suspect, rather sadly, there would be less. Possibly much less, but that is just a guess. I know that in my own experience, Heaven did not enter the equation. I chose to believe in God because I had an encounter with Him that began to make sense to me intellectually. I then chose to believe in Jesus Christ (and the Christian faith) specifically for an abundance of reasons – none of which were Heaven. I sort of see Heaven as the icing on the cake. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad the promise is there; but my faith doesn’t hinge on it.

I believe we can examine this question introspectively in a way that can help us examine our faith. What if today, we pondered the following question?

Would you still follow Jesus Christ if there were suddenly no promise of Heaven?

If our answer to this question is ‘no’, I would suggest that we may be on shaky ground spiritually. I spent the majority of life before Christ creating a particular version of God in my mind and then imposing those values on the real God. For instance, the God I created was all knowing and all powerful. He had created this world and then stepped back to see what would happen. He was a fair God who would allow pretty much anyone into Heaven provided they tried to live a good life (you know … paid their taxes, supported their children, didn’t kill anyone … that sort of thing). It was only when I humbled myself that I realized I had no right to impose my beliefs on God. If God were real, I had to allow Him to teach me about Himself and accept even what I didn’t understand. I had no business trying to invent God in my image. I had to understand and apply the old Axum that “Father Knows Best.” In other words, if God, in all His wisdom, suddenly decided there should be no Heaven, I would have to accept it – even if I didn’t understand it. I can’t worship God because of what He promises me, rather, I must worship God because He deserves it.

I am so thankful that my God has promised me Heaven. I also believe there is a hell. Hell, in my opinion, is proof that God loves us. How’s that you might ask? Well, if what we really want is a place that is free from the presence and influence of God, he will provide it for us even though it breaks His heart to do so. That place is hell. It’s not God that makes hell such a terrible place … it is the complete absence of God’s influence that makes hell so bad.

Even though I have a concrete belief in Heaven and hell, I can’t make that the focal point of my faith. Why? Well, if all I do is think about the future … someday far in the future … I am ignoring one of Jesus’ most powerful lessons. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is near. What did He mean by that? I think He meant that we can experience Heaven right now in our mortal life. If hell is the total absence of God, then Heaven is living in God’s presence. In fact, Heaven is more than just the presence of God – it is a place where God’s Will is done. We can experience God’s presence and live in His will right now. If we spend all of our time looking towards the future, we will miss out on the beauty that is Heaven on Earth.

Think about it … we all know the bitter and depressed Christian who lives a miserable life and constantly talks about Heaven in the future tense. My heart goes out to these people. Thank God they have the promise of eternal life from the One True God to keep them going. I am not suggesting that it would be healthy to totally forget about our promise of Heaven; I just pray that someday we can all experience a shadow of Heaven right now!

There are a number of definitions for this perspective.  The one I like best is: a perspective that affirms God to be not only still active in the affairs of men, but as a being with a stake and a vested interest in the outcome.  A key attribute of this perspective relates to God’s firm resolve to bring his will into being in every situation by any means necessary. 

Distilling this personal definition into a functional understanding means for me that God hasn’t wandered off to something more entertaining. God isn’t hanging ten in Maui right now because the waves are just bitchin’.  He isn’t playing the back nine at Augusta because, as God, he gets a killer tee time.  He isn’t off playing in another sandbox, because it’s better than the one he created.   No, he is actively seeking to manifest his will in the everyday and mundane events of his creation with the explicit goal of bringing it back into relationship with himself.

More simply put, God isn’t a disinterested third party.  He isn’t the Watcher from Marvel comics.  He isn’t a neutral observer that mediates disputes in his creation.  God is an interested entity with an agenda.  He has skin in the game as it were.  He is a being that is seeking his creation’s best interest as he defines it.

Some might look at this exposition and think that I’ve reduced God to a lobbyist seeking to cajole his creation into doing what he wants.  While there are some in the “Name it and claim it” crowd that teach something very close to this, in my view nothing could be farther from the truth.  A lobbyist seeks to influence others into implementing his agenda or that of his client, through all the tools in the persuasion arsenal.  And while God does use some of these tools on occasion, there is another dimension to this.  God has the power to enforce his will in order to bring it into being.

Can a lobbyist fling stars into orbit?  Can a lobbyist speak life into existence?  Can a lobbyist speak the fate of man with absolute certainty?  Can a lobbyist heal the lame, give sight to the blind, and restore hearing to the deaf?  Can a lobbyist create eyes for a blind man from spit and mud?  Obviously not….

Can a lobbyist insist that a reluctant prophet go to Nineveh?  Can a lobbyist arrange a great fish as a method of conveyance to enforce his will?  Can a lobbyist insist on an outcome and have the ability to make it so 100%  of the time?  Obviously not…  God has the ability to do all of those things and much more.

The Bible clearly states that God has an interest in the lives of men and women.  It unambiguously shows that God has a heart for his creation.  It displays vividly that God has a burning desire to restore his creation to relationship with himself.  It demonstrates in absolute terms that this is a primary ministry of and mission for God.  It has played out numerous times in the Bible.  From Noah to Moses to Abraham and beyond we are surrounded by what the writer of Hebrews calls a ‘cloud of witnesses’ to this ministry of God.

Some read the bargaining God allowed by Abram regarding Sodom’s fate, as a hint of malleability in the will of God.  This is a valid conclusion to draw from this particular instance, but I think a flawed one.  God knew the outcome was not going to be affected by Abram’s bargaining.  The end result was ultimately the same; Sodom and Gomorrah were still the same smoldering holes in the ground they were going to be at the outset. God being the timeless being that he is understood that only in allowing Abram to bargain in some fashion could the life of Lot and his family be spared. And this was an important part of God’s agenda in this instance.  

We also see the activist God at work in the life and ministry of a reluctant and otherwise obscure prophet by the name of Jonah.  God calls him to go to Nineveh and Jonah balks.  From the text it doesn’t appear Jonah had any trouble with serving God or accepting the calling to the role of prophet.  He only has trouble with the specific ministry he’s been called to in terms of audience and geography.  Jonah’s response is to bail on the whole mission and ministry.

The possible reasons for Jonah’s balk are many.  Some have posited that he just didn’t want to go there for racial or cultural reasons.  While others have posited that Jonah knew God was planning to use the Ninevites as a tool to bring the Jewish people back into right relationship with him, by captivity if necessary.  Both possibilities, while valid interpretations of Jonah’s potential motives are largely arguments from silence.  There is no proof in the text for either position.

The only thing the text gives us for certain is that Jonah was convinced it would succeed.  It’s possible that his belief was based upon arrogance or vanity.  It’s also possible he was convinced that with God’s assistance anything was possible.  The text really doesn’t give us good window into Jonah’s thinking on this apart from that.

What is certain is that he was so unwilling to participate in the implementation that he fled for Tarsus aboard a boat.  And as a result he found an immutable truth about God in the process.  God gets what God wants.  If God wants a prophet in Nineveh, God doesn’t allow that individual to flee the calling at the appointed time.  When the time is right, there is nothing that can keep anyone from their appointment with God’s plan for their lives.  So our reluctant prophet ends up in Nineveh right on time to fulfill God’s plan for his life.  That by its very definition is activism on God’s part.

The story of Jonah is but one example of God’s activism.  There are many more.  From the angel in Balaam’s path to the story of Esther and beyond, they all prove the same point.  They all bear witness to a God that is either unable or unwilling to sit on the sidelines as the events of history unfold.  They speak to us even today that God’s will is unchangeable and immutable.  They inform us as to the character of the divine creature that spoke the world into existence.

And they should give us pause in our moments of rebellion against this God.  We should remember that the God of Genesis 1:1 who commanded the sun into existence by simply saying that it would be ‘good’ if it did, is the one with which  we’re toying.  We should remember the story of Jonah as we ponder our answers to God’s call on our lives.  It should force us to ask, does God have a great fish in waiting for me to deal with my stiff necked and stubborn nature?  And is God ready to consume me whole when I foolishly tell him to go get bent?

The consistent witness of this activist God should alter how we relate to him.  It should impose a certain amount of fear mixed with reverence and a dash of awe when we consider God.  If God wanted to he could give us an ‘offer we can’t refuse’ or cause us to awake with a horse’s head in our bed to get the point across.  God is however so much more resolved and determined when it comes to his will than a mafia lord.  Also if we give criminal thugs deference to avoid drawing their interest in us; how much more deference should we give Almighty God?   

 We should remember that the God that flooded the world in Noah’s time still exists.  We should be mindful that the God that destroyed Sodom for its manifest lack still resides at the center of our world.  It should give us pause that the God that thwarted the plans of the builders of the tower of Babel still remains committed to doing that very thing even today.  His nature is immutable and without a glint or glimmer of change in it.  If God wants something to happen or change, you can take it to the bank that it will.  God’s word doesn’t return void.  God always gets what God wants! 

This simple truth should change the very core of who we are.  It should force us to our knees in repentance.  It should fundamentally alter who we are and how we relate to the divine in our lives.  We shouldn’t tarry or dither when it comes to the essential nature of God’s call on our lives.  It should us force us to action.  It should put our feet in motion.  So let us begin.