Twisting God

 

Twisting God

 

Psalm 1
1:1 Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers;

1:2 but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.

1:3 They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.

1:4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

1:5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

1:6 for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

 

 

Twisting God or trusting God?, that is the question. At least that’s what comes to mind when I read a psalm like the Psalm 1 that talks of "prospering," and well-rooted trees vs. sinners and scoffers. It’s such a short Psalm, but it lays out one of the fundamental paradoxes of faith—do we trust God? Or are we “twisting” God to be our personal “genie in the lamp”? Do we find our delight in the Lord? Yield the fruit of God’s nurture? Or are the ways we attempt to manipulate the divine leaving us twisting like chaff in the wind? 

 

The easiest interpretation of this psalm would be to see it as a “righteous vs. sinful” dichotomy, but instead, let’s skip the indictment of the “wicked,” and focus on the difference between the “trusters” and the twisters of God, starting with the “trusters.” 

 

Psalm 1 describes those who genuinely trust God as ones who do not follow the advice of the wicked--not a very flattering qualifier, is it? The Hebrew word translated here as “happy” is ashrei, which may better be expressed as “fortunate,” as in “Fortunate are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked.” Fortunate, indeed. And the original word for “wicked” may be rendered “foolish,” as well. Again, this different angle on the translation brings us back to my suggestion that the Psalm is more about the foolishness of manipulating ("twisting") God vs. trusting God to deeply root and nurture us as people of faith. In taking this tack, we are not reducing the harm to the human condition made by “wickedness” and “sin,” we are simply nuancing the psalm's meaning in order to extract a more practical lesson from it. After all, do any of you want to advance a defense of "wickedness" and "sin"? I thought not...

 

Those who are the most “fortunate” are the ones who put their trust in the Lord and seek to follow God’s precepts, believing that God will illuminate their paths and “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” with them, as we read 22 Psalms later. Trusting in God, as a practice, will inherently lead us away from the counsel of the foolish, and ultimately away from the temptations OF wickedness and sin. Trusting in God leads to prosperity, saleah in Hebrew, which may also be translated “to advance” or “to make progress.” These latter meanings sound very Wesleyan—“going on to perfection,” remember? Of course, libraries of books and seasons full of sermons have been written on what it means to “trust” God. For me, trusting God means living my life guided by Mr. Wesley’s “quadrilateral” of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason, all of which help us hone in on what God expects of us, desires of us, hopes of us, and tries to love us into being, as a person of God. When you get enough "persons" of God together, we become the PEOPLE of God—a group that can change the world, bring about peace, justice, and the fulness of the Kingdom of God, with the help of God. Trusting in God also leads to a life enriched through contemplation, prayer, and seeking the presence of God. Trusting in God means being willing to rest in the arms of God during times of suffering, rather than striking out violently against our tormentors or wallowing in self-pity. A famous proverbs text says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not into your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge God, and God will direct your paths.” Jesus stated it thusly: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Follow this advice, and you WILL “advance” and prosper (sounds a little Vulcan?).

 

Trust between two people takes time to develop and must be earned. So it is with trusting God, only in this case, it’s because it takes practice on OUR part, not because we have to “earn” anything. Grace is a gift, but putting it into practice is what builds our trust in God. This psalm says such wonderful things about what develops when we DO trust in the lord: we become “happy,” fortunate people; we don’t fall prey to the foolish and the ideologies and schemes they proliferate; we learn to “delight” in the Lord, like a well-rooted tree gathers in water, sunlight, and nourishment; and we won’t so easily “wither,” which sounds good to me! We seem to be living in an age of “withering,” with everything from the environment, to the church, to our politics languishing in a state of “withering,” similar to leaves falling off of the life-giving branches of the tree and blowing around like chaff in the wind. Give me the “streams of water” that God offers to quench our thirst and nourish our “roots” in, when we trust in God!

 

The “foolish” we are warned against in this psalm may BE foolish because they are attempting to TWIST God. We all do this, to some extent, but it is just too easy to “make our bellies our God,” so to speak, meaning we make OUR desires a higher priority, and our PERSONAL prosperity the aim, rather than seeking the Kingdom of God. When we set these as our “A-list,” we must then manipulate—twist—our theology in such a way that God, as we conceive God, exists to meet OUR needs. The twisted God is the God of our own design, the God who we turn into the genie in the lamp, summoning him to grant us our “three wishes.” If we twist God enough, this is exactly what we turn prayer into—making our demands before God, and expecting that the results will be the fulfillment of these demands. If we “twist” too far in this selfish direction, we may then quickly become disillusioned with our faith AND God when too many things on our “prayer list” go unfulfilled. 

 

This is a hard thing to write about, or even to ponder, because as I said earlier, we ALL do this, to some extent, and some of this "personalizing" is legitimate. In order to develop a more “intimate” relationship with God, we DO need to imagine God as someone we CAN grow close to, and as our human relationships—i.e. marriages and friendships—show us, we “choose” to be with people we judge to be more compatible with us. So, when we attempt a “closer walk” with God, it is helpful and very human to “imagine” God in such a way that our “comfort level” is reached with the Almighty. If we don’t advance in this direction with God, we may postpone or even eschew growing the kind of closer relationship with God that God invites us to, and may stay on the “outside looking in” like those folk who can’t get beyond calling God “the Man Upstairs.” I don’t believe our personal “conceptualizing” of God in order to grow closer to God is a BAD thing, but it may turn counterproductive, if not downright dangerous, if we give in to the temptation to “keep twisting” until “God” pretty much mirrors US. Twisting our concept of God too far in our direction turns us into spiritual narcissists—the God we worship is a “selfie.” 

 

Ludwig Feuerbach, a 19^th Century anthropologist and philosopher, in his book, “The Essence of Christianity,” stated that the most frequent human/divine flaw he observed was precisely the product of this narcissistic twist: Our God becomes US, writ large. In a modern (and a bit more humorous) vein, author Anne Lamott said: “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Now THERE’S the ultimate twist! 

 

God is not white or black, brown, or red; God is not a socialist, a communist, or a libertarian; God is not a Republican or a Democrat; nor is God allied with any one nation or religion. In fact, you will find the divine truth in all of these groups, and in none of them, just the same. God is God, and Jesus put “skin” on the divine, both to draw close to us and to understand our plight. God DOES want a closer relationship with us, and has revealed Godself to us in Jesus Christ, and in the teachings of the scriptures and other holy writ. God continues to reveal Godself to us through the Spirit of God, and in the “spirit of the age.” God is providing a "picture" of just who God is, so we may become “comfortable” with drawing ourselves closer to God without needing to “twist” our view of the image of God too far. I believe this is why the Bible says we are “made in the image of God.” ALL of us---ALL OF US have some of the “image of God” in us, and it is THIS image we are to incorporate into our trust, not our twist. God doesn’t need our “spin” of who God is; instead God invites us into the perichoresis, or the “divine dance” of how God “interfaces” within the Godhead, and with the wider creation, including US. It’s a waltz, friends, not the Twist!

 

I could have called this message, “Twist and Shout,” for that may be how we have putted up the world right now. “Trust and Obey,” as the hymn writer has said, may be the better way to get it straightened out! But maybe it is just simpler to do what Jesus said: Love GOD and love EACH OTHER. This week, may the very first of the 150 Psalms recorded in the Bible give us encouragement--that God DESIRES to “delight” us with God’s presence--and the COURAGE to do what WE need to do to run from the fools and the scoffers, and learn to fully trust in God. And no, let’s NOT all “do the Twist”! Amen.