BLOG 7/10/2016. NOT LOOKING FOR GOD? OR NOT SO SURE?

BLOG 7/10/2016. NOT LOOKING FOR GOD? OR NOT SO SURE?

I have a remarkable acquaintance who self-consciously seeks out those on the margins of society who are so involved in their struggles for economic survival, or their illegal status, or their life of violence … that they are certainly not looking for God. I, on the other hand, live in a suburban community with successful professionals, medical and academic folk who would probably fit the same description. On the surface they are not looking for God, or have written God off as irrelevant to their personal goals. Many of these live with some background in religious institutions, but found out that many who inhabit such institutions are themselves not looking for God—they simply find the ethos of church institutions a comfortable part of the cultural fabric of their lives, what with its atmosphere of aesthetic spirituality, while at the same time are strangers to God and hardly make God any sort of priority in their lives. (Spymaster John LeCarre colorfully described such as those who “file in for their weekly dose of perdition or salvation, though I never saw that much to choose between the two of them.”)

But that’s not who I’m talking about. I’m talking about those apparently successful men and women with commendable professional credentials, keen minds, and social contacts … who for all outward appearances are not looking for God. My question is: Does what appears on the surface really describe the subliminal hungerings of their lives. Are they looking for God but could not admit this if they tried?

How would one discern? A generation ago Kurt Cobain was the arch rebel of the grunge musical community, and his musical group: Nirvana, was wildly successful. But then at the prime of his life and career he took his life. In his papers as he sought to explain his despair, he is reported to have said: “What I really need is God.” Or a super-bright graduate student who delighted in making life miserable for Christians what with his militant and skillful agnostic assaults on their belief in such a ridiculous myth as God. But then he called me one night late and asked if he could talk. It turned out that he was eves-dropping on a conversation I was having with someone else, and I had said something like: “The problem with a false witness is that they usually have a false estimate of themselves” (I don’t ever remember saying anything like that). That got through to that subliminal empty spot in him, and ultimately he became a most articulate follower of Jesus Christ.

I hang-out at a neighborhood coffee shop where I am not identified as anything other than a white-haired old man, who is also an author. And in that context I often get in brief and interesting conversations with those young enough to be my grand-children, and who don’t feel threatened by me. And often when they ask what I write about, I candidly tell them that I write stuff about the church and what it means. That’s not threatening to them. But it often opens the door to their longing for some contact with whatever God is all about. They are not self-consciously looking for God, but then again at that subliminal and often inarticulate level, they are.

If one was looking for God, where would they look? Some of my conversation partners are lapsed church members who didn’t find God in whatever expression of the church they abandoned. But there are those attractive colonies of faith that are like springs of water. D. T. Niles (a Christian leader in India a couple of generations ago) described evangelism as: “One beggar telling another where to find bread.” So how would my suburban, young professional coffee-drinking friends find God if they were looking? The answer may be that they would find God if some contagious follower of Jesus would quietly come into their orbit and walk non-aggressively along side of them. That’s how house-churches, and colonies of vital faith emerge in so many forms. Be confident that there are many people out there not consciously looking for God—but who really are.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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