Apophatica

God has made it clear that he does not tolerate homosexuality.  God has made it clear that he does not tolerate Muslims.   God has made it clear that he does not tolerate transgendered people, liberals, people with tattoos, etc, etc.  Any Bible-believing decent Christian knows this and therefore will also be intolerant in the name of the Living God in whom we live and breathe and have our being.

The problem is, God is unseen.  Nobody has ever heard the audible voice of God and been able to know exactly what God does or does not will.  God has so many unknowable facets within a cloud of mystery that can only be embraced, but never fully understood.  Despite the fact that we cannot fully know God nor God’s will, we are quick to give attributes to our incomprehensible creator that typically put us at odds with those who we can see and feel and be in relationship with.

Megachurch pastor Rick Warren shunned his son for being gay and stuck to his guns to save face within a congregation to whom he had preached intolerance of homosexuality.  Warren defended God’s rules even until his son committed suicide.  Leelah Alcorn was told by her mother that being a male feeling like a female was strange and unacceptable in God’s eyes and a mere anomaly that would eventually pass.  And so it did, along with Leelah when she took her life in hopes of liberating others with the same predicament.  Deah, Yusor, and Razan were gunned down by a neighbor who couldn’t accept that Muslims would take the parking spot that he wanted.  All of these are obviously simplifications to very sad and very serious relational breeches, but in the end the point is the same: Many people would rather defend the honor of an invisible God who is mostly created in their own image than to simply love those who are right in front of their eyes.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/31/us/ohio-transgender-teen-suicide/

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/guns-chapel-hill-myth-american-vigilante

So?  Where do we start?  I always spout my ideas, now it’s your turn.  How do we get people to let God be God and stop creating a God that was never meant to exist?  How to we get people to quit alienating the very people they are supposed to be protecting in the name of untenable arguments supposedly decreed by an embellished anthropomorph?  How do we convince people to love the seen and embrace the unseen? Perhaps we can learn from the dying and their regrets to learn what not to do before the damage is irreversible.

http://www.aarp.org/relationships/grief-loss/info-02-2012/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying.2.html

This entry was posted on February 25, 2015 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.