What Kind of God

When I can tear myself away from the Peace Church website I have been know to venture on Ship of Fools. I followed a thread on one of their message boards for a while that was reflecting on an article by Bart Campolo - the son of Tony, and this statement of his was the crux of the debate.

'Some might say I would be wise to swallow my misgivings about such stuff, remain orthodox, and thereby secure my place with God in eternity. But that is precisely my point: If those things are true, then God might as well send me to Hell. For better or worse, I simply am not interested in any God but a completely good, entirely loving, and perfectly forgiving One who is powerful enough to utterly triumph over evil. Such a God may not exist, but I will die seeking such a God, and I will pledge my allegiance to no other possibility because, quite frankly, anything less is not worthy of my worship.

Please, don’t get me wrong. I am well aware that I don’t get to decide who God is. What I do get to decide, however, is to whom I pledge my allegiance. I am a free agent, after all, and I have standards for my God, the first of which is this: I will not worship any God who is not at least as compassionate as I am. '

I have heard Bart speak at a fairly evangelical youth work conference and I am sure most people didn't get the implications of what he was saying. In particular he told one story of a boy in inner city Chicago who had become a Christian before falling back into his previous gang and getting killed. At the funeral one woman asked him, 'was he saved?' Bart's answer and I got the impression he was very angry with the woman - 'what about all the other kids who weren't 'saved?''i.e what are the implications of your theology or believing in your God?

To me this comes close to summing up where I am at. I do believe in God and the things that I believe God is about. Even if there wasn't God, or I had the wrong idea about God, it wouldn't change the way I chose to live and be, I would probably just be more despondent about it! My big question is whether this God - infinately more compassionate, merciful, loving than me, is the God of the Bible or the God of Christianity. Perhaps that God is true but not worth following, or the Bible is just the reflection of a tribal God? Does Christianity distort my image of God? I have spent a lot of years and emotional energy trying to square this idea of God I have with the God of the Bible. I have read theology, philosophy, argued and debated, listened (occasionally) and questioned and whilst I feel much happier I am left with the following.

1. The attitude of many Christians - theology seems to lead to a certain point and debating with them simply leaves you feeling even more of an outsider. Christianity/the Bible seems to lead so many to a certain point it leaves you with the feeling that the core text/doctrine etc must be at fault.

2. Revisionism - not sure if this is a fair word but taking parts of the Bible, including some of the sayings of Jesus and redoing them to fit a pre determined moral position that starts from a premise outside the Bible - God cannot possibly be this therefore this text that seems to say one thing must in fact say something else.

3. Making God in our own image whilst quoting the Bible! Using Jesus or God to justify or make sense of our own needs/prejudices/experiences of the world

4. Selectivity - only looking at or using certain texts.

I boil all of this down to - are the two things -my understanding of God and Christianity, incompatible and I am only not willing to give that up because I have invested so much of who I am, my career, my community etc into it. Am I too scared to let go of my religion in order to truely find God?

I have come in one key way to the same conclusion as Bart. I will attempt to live in a way that believes certain things about God and if that makes it unChristian, unorthodox, unbiblical then I now have the self confidence which I didn't have a few years ago to do that. If people want to convince me that this actually is what the Bible/Jesus/Christianity are really saying then I am very open to stay with that journey, but without ducking these hard questions or being afraid to put the kind, compassionate, loving, merciful before doctrine, religion. orthodoxy, the Bible.