2 minute read
Rainn Wilson of The Office fame is not a Jesus follower but wrote an excellent book based on his Baháʼí Faith.1 While promoting it on The Holy Post Podcast he mused, “Bottom line: the #1 most important question anyone can ask themselves is, is there a god?… We’re either a random assemblage of molecules that happened to have developed this incredible consciousness or there is some meaning, purpose, and force behind all of it and our consciousness is connected to something having to do with a soul and eternal life, etc. It’s one or the other, baby.” Agreed.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches, “Question: What is God? Answer: God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” OK, first of all, “What is God?” “WHAT?” Unreal. Talk about a teeing up a terrible answer with an shitty question. That Q&A manages to encapsulate the essence of my problems with how Christians are enculturated to be spiritually uncurious. Why is the non-Christian Dwight Schrute actor asking vastly more curious spiritual questions than our historic theologians?
“What is God?” is why people think of a divine Santa Claus. He’s an old, bearded White dude who watches you, keeps a naughty and nice list, and doles out gifts or punishments as merited by obedience to his rules. Systematic theology God is a deity who a) appears to be a fantastical character in a children’s story, b) no human can relate to in any meaningful way, or c) sounds like a list of features on the latest model year vehicle. We need less of Bette Midler’s stalker God watching us from a distance and more of Joan Osborne’s asking, “What if God was one of us?”
God is not an inanimate object, detached life force, or Hellenistic philosophic premise. What makes the Trinitarian understanding unique from the deity, deities, or supernatural force of any other religious or spiritual perspective is God’s interpersonal essence. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in an eternal, perfect dance of divine community. God loves and cares, forgives and woos. God desires intimacy and vulnerability. Perceived through the prism of the incarnate Word, the character of God is to celebrate with those who celebrate and mourn with those who mourn.
The original beatniks were spiritual vagabonds who asked the same kinds of perceptive questions as Rainn Wilson. They intentionally wandered all over the place–Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, occult magic, and Native American animism–but they did it less like analytical engineers and more like curious anthropologists. If I may attempt to infuse that same curious spirit back into an explicitly Jesus-rooted spirituality, I’d offer this important revision to the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s all-important fourth question: [WHO] is God?2
As an aside, if I weren’t a Christian but still believed in God, I think the Baháʼí Faith would probably be the most attractive alternative.↩
To be honest, I’m far less certain who God is than who God is not, but I’m fairly confident that question’s answer revolves around the endlessly fascinating person of Jesus.↩
