Fathers and Sons and Wars and Rumors of Wars

I just read Patrick Mead's recent post Another Tent Peg Pops Loose, and his fatherly angst brought to mind some that I felt a little over four years ago, and wrote about in my weekly column in the Abilene Reporter-News. I wrote it in the late autumn of 2002, when Matthew was about to turn ten years old, and pretty much everyone in the Western world believed that Iraq was brimming with weapons of mass destruction. I don't write political commentary in this blog very often, but I do now strongly believe that the administration at that time pulled a stunt like the mythical Governor sang about in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in his showstopper, "Dance a Little Sidestep." I believe that some sleight-of-hand about this so-called WMD "intelligence" and Iraqi government sponsorship of Al-Quaeda was presented to distract Americans' from the unsuccessful attempt to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden, the self-admitted mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet it is undeniable that Saddam Hussein practiced genocide within his own country and attempted to annex another. And while I rue my own credulity, and detest the catastrophe that has befallen Iraq and all armed forces there engaged in trying to establish peace, I can have nothing but the deepest admiration for the young people who are willing to serve at the President's whim and protect their nation to the price of their own lives - even if he may be wrong about where or how that must be done - and admiration for the parents, spouses, children and friends who send them off with their ongoing prayers. If my son chooses to serve, I will not be able to be more proud of him. If he chooses to protest and oppose the war, I will not be able to be more proud of him. He will do it with all his heart, whatever he chooses. But if he chooses to remain silent and do nothing, I will be no more proud of him than I am of myself for having said nothing and done nothing all this time. So here is what I wrote then, and what I felt then, and what I mostly still feel ....

"What war now?" my son asked, appearing at the entrance to our den in his pajamas.

I fumbled for the remote and quickly shut off CNN.

"C'mon," I redirected him, heading for the kitchen. "Let's get water for you and your sister. It's bedtime."

"What war now?" he persisted.

Matthew's question came some time back, when sabres were first being rattled in the direction of Iraq and CNN was already discussing strategy. He was already aware of the "conflict" in Afghanistan, which eventually was called "war."

"It's possible," I said hesitantly, "that we will go to war with a country called Iraq, and soon."

"Why?"

Why do countries ever go to war? I wanted to say, but it was a question beyond adult reason and certainly not an answer to an honest child. I filled two kid cups with ice and water.

"Their leader may have helped the people who destroyed those two buildings in New York and damaged the one in Washington."

"And crashed that plane?"

"Yes, and crashed that plane." I gave him his cup and we started upstairs. "He also tried to take a country next to his several years ago and said it was his. When we stopped his army, they set fire to everything they could so no one could have it."

Matthew thought about it. "So we didn't really stop him."

I shook my head. "No, I guess we didn't." We were in his room now, and I picked up his globe to point out Iraq. "But if a war does happen, it will happen way over here, on the other side of the world. Nowhere close to us; we're here. Their missiles can’t go that far."

Yet, I thought. Yet.

"So we have to go to war to stop him?"

I hedged. "It will cost a lot of money. And a lot of young soldiers may die or be hurt really badly." For one heart-stopping moment, I saw my little blond, blue-eyed boy very differently: all grown up, and yet just a teenager … wearing desert fatigues and carrying a gun. "But, yes, our president thinks it's the only thing that will stop him.

"And the sad thing is, he may be right."

"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars. Yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between Governments. The once powerful malignant Nazi state is crumbling; the Japanese warlords are receiving in their homelands the retribution for which they asked when they attacked Pearl Harbor. But the mere conquest of our enemies is not enough; we must go on to do all in our power to conquer the doubts and the fears, the ignorance and the greed, which made this horror possible." - What would have been President Franklin D. Roosevelt's next speech, had not a stroke taken his life the day before he was to deliver it. His son read the message April 13, 1945.

How Can You Tell If You're Inspired?

Well ...

Did you ask to be inspired?

"For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" - Jesus, as recorded in Luke 11:10-13

The context is His teaching on prayer. In one swell foop, He tells us that God loves us like a father and wants to give us good things; wants to give us the best gift of all - His Holy Spirt, but that we should ask. I get the impression that this describes how He wants to live through us, and it's not something to be taken lightly. And that it doesn't seem to be in His nature to just appropriate someone's body and do His will through them without their consent or request.

So there's really nothing to fear, is there?

Have you obeyed God?

"We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him." - Peter, as recorded by Luke in Acts 5:31

Oh, well; then no one is worthy of God's Spirit, because all have sinned and falled short of His glory. Sure, I've read Romans 3:23. That's the whole reason Jesus came. Not a proscription against Him being able to work through us. Remember, the same Peter speaking in in Acts 5:31 was the one whom Paul had to withstand face-to-face for refusing to eat with Gentiles.

Have you actively resisted the Holy Spirit?

"You stiff-necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit!" - Stephen, to the Sanhedrin, in Acts 7:51

Again, the implication to me is that the Spirit won't go where He isn't wanted.

Were you baptized into more than just the name of Jesus?

"When they arrived, they prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come upon any of them; they had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit." - Luke, again, in Acts 8:15-17

I am admittedly going out on a limb here. What seems to be described here - to me - is an act of two apostles signifying by prayer and by resting their hands upon these Christians that they felt these believers should receive the Spirit without having to be re-baptized in the way Peter and John have described to them. That's making some assumptions, I admit. But Jesus requests that his disciples baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in Matthew 28:16-20, and - unlike its companion passage in Mark 16 - these verses' authenticity is not generally questioned. And a similar thing happens with Paul in Acts 19.

Have you ever felt the power of overwhelming hope?

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." - a blessing from Paul in Romans 15:13

Well then, if He brings such power it might seem logical - given the whirlwind, tongues of fire, healings and other miraculous manifestations connected to the giving of the Spirit in century one A.D. - that there could be no doubt about His presence in our lives in century twenty-one.

If there can be no doubt, why are would there be phrasings in scripture like these:

"It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us ...." - Acts 15:28a

"... I think that I too have the Spirit of God." - Paul, in I Corinthians 7:40b

That second verse is a study in the conflicting teachings of Paul and some other individuals whom Paul - rather graciously, "I think" - concedes have the Holy Spirit, even though they disagree on a matter that he qualifies "In my judgment."

I have to conclude that there are matters on which people can disagree and still be inspired by God's own Holy Spirit. Spiritual matters. Not just political parties or football teams or worship styles; but matters of life choice and destiny, such as whether to marry at a time when cataclysm is prophesied - the question at hand in this passage.

In other words, when there is no "right" answer.

And I have to conclude that the Spirit sometimes operates in us so subtly; so unobtrusively that we might even doubt His presence; or at least, not fully perceive it.

I think that's because God's plan involves faith and choice and free will.

I don't want to reduce His indwelling to some simplistic formula, for it is a matter much deeper and wider and more powerful and mysterious than any of us ultimately can grasp. But there are aspects of it that God wants us to know and understand, and be comforted by - that is one of the Spirit's primary concerns - and they are not too difficult to seek, to find, and to comprehend.

Are You Inspired?

I will tell you something that I'm not sure I've ever shared on this blog before.

Pretty much every time I sit down at my retro Mac to write a post for "Blog In My Own Eye," I pray that God will inspire me through His Holy Spirit; that He will not let me mislead others; but instead that He will use me to draw others closer to Him - and me along with them.

It's something I've done for about the last year year and a half of my blogging endeavors, after a time when I was wistfully remembering how Mike Cope would begin each of his sermons during our tenure at Highland with the prayer that God would "pour through me the gift of preaching."

I don't believe that such a prayer - for Mike, or me, or anyone else - is a solid guarantee that God will answer with a sudden earth-trembling wind-stirring inrush of holy inspiration and an infallible prevention of error and an inarguable gift of persuasion.

But I do believe it's a good place to start.

I think it'd be a good place for everyone who shares The Story to start. I'll go further than that. I think it's dangerous for anyone to speak, ostensibly on God's behalf, without the assistance of His Holy Spirit.

We make His indwelling such a thing of ultimate mystery; of fear and even dread - perhaps that we'll somehow lose control of ourselves and become scripture-spouting lunatics, or glossalalic-babbling weirdoes, or just some of those glassy-eyed people who murmur intense blessings on you when you check out at their register at Lifeway Book Store. Or the notion of His home in our hearts may be a thing of doubt - maybe that we're not sure when we are or aren't indwelt by Him or whether we're speaking by His inspiration.

While there is certainly an element of mystery and depth to the Spirit that we may never understand, I believe that what scripture says of the way He lives within us is fairly simple and direct.

Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. - I Corinthians 12:3-7

The mention of the name "Jesus" is no guarantee of the Spirit's inspiration. (I hope you can deduce that by watching Televangelical TV.) But no one who tells The Story and proclaims Him as Lord and lives out that Story in service can do so by any other means.

I believe that the Spirit's inspiration is no more complicated than that.

People today are inspired as were people of century one A.D. It's expressed in their writing, their speaking, their art, their music ... now just as it was then.

I haven't seen the manifestation's of the Spirit's presence that most folks call "miraculous." I haven't seen the blind made to see, or the deaf to hear, or the lame to walk, or the dead to rise. I do see in scripture a tapering-off of those incidents as years pass in century one. But I also try to keep an open mind about century twenty-one.

What I do see are miraculous results of the Spirit's residency.

People are still persuaded that God loves them enough to have sent His Son to live and die and live again for them, so much so that they resolve to die to themselves and live for Him and for others.

Isn't that miraculous?

And the effects - unlike a wonderful but temporary healing of the body - are an eternal healing of the soul.

I do see and hear and read extraordinary insights into the deeper meaning of scripture - some of those insights already centuries old, but later than century one; others in blogs written and sermons shared and lives lived in the past few months and weeks and days. I believe they are inspired by the same Spirit.

Should they be in the canon of scripture?

In a sense, I believe they are. God remembers them. And I think He wants us to share them, just as Paul did before judges and governors and kings. Our stories as believers are part of the ongoing Story of Christ; the way He works in and through our lives. Now, I believe the canon to be complete due to its sufficiency of truth. (Scripture was never intended to convey all truth - the atomic weight of artificially-induced elements, for instance; or the meaning of a half-smile on your beloved's face.)

Yet Christ living in us is a story that has great power, and is a worthy supplement to the gospels of scripture.

Just like the epistles.

And, like the subtitle of my blogging buddy Matt Elliott's blog says: "Every day I write the book."

The Tanakh of Christ

As I understand it - and I welcome correction from folks who know better - most Jews agree that the Torah (what we Christians call the first five books of the Old Testament) is The Law; it is authoritative; it is handed down from God. The remaining volumes of that covenant are known as the Tanakh, and the vast majority of Jews agree that these books, too, are authoritative.

But they do not carry the same weight, nor are they viewed with the same degree of reverence, as the Torah.

And while I'm not writing this to advocate that Christians should view the first four or five books of our New Testament as dictated by God while the remainder were simply suggested, I would like to propose these few scattered thoughts, and let you work through them just as I am doing.

First of all, you should know that I believe in the inspiration of Scripture. Yup, all of it. Every page of every volume within the Old and New Testaments. Some of us will part company there, but if I'm willing to at least hear the reasons for your beliefs, I hope you'll do the same for me.

Secondly, it seems to me that the return of people to God and the establishment of His kingdom in this world goes pretty well in the better part of those first five books. Yes, it does seem to go badly for a while at the close of the four gospels, but there is a surprise ending that they all corroborate, wiping out any doubt about a happy ending. And the momentum continues into Luke's sequel called Acts of the Apostles (which probably would not have been even his working title) - as long as the believers persist in telling and living out The Story.

Now you can take to extremes the verses in that book about "continuing in the apostles' teaching, and fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer" - and some folks in the past have, by saying "That's all that scripture authorizes Christians to do." Many of those folks would be horrified to advocate doing those things in homes as well as in God's house, and doubtless very few of us would go to the extreme of selling our possessions to share with those in need. But I digress. The fact is, as long as people did these things, "the Lord added to their number."

Things continue to go well for another couple of chapters, even though Peter and John are imprisoned for telling and living out the Story. Their imprisonment is short-lived, and the authorities are timid about pressing their luck afterward.

Until Avarice steps in. And Envy - trying to keep up with the Josephs in your giving. And then Exaggeration. Finally, Conspiracy to Defraud, with a penalty of death for Ananias and Sapphira. Somehow - with all the miracles going on around them, both extraordinary and everyday miracles - they just didn't "get" The Story.

Then Peter and many other apostles stick up for The Story before the authorities and will not back down. Gamaliel recommends a code of pragmatism, but the floggings begin - and will continue on and off for the next three hundred years for many Christians who do the same.

The problems begin in the next chapter because some others don't "get" the selflessness of the story. Whether they are actually neglected or just feeling neglected, a policy is made to give special attention to some widows.

And folks, whether you agree or not, I believe that one of the first big mistakes in church leadership takes place here.

The twelve apostles gathered the disciples together and told them that it wouldn't be right for them to neglect the ministry of the word of God and wait tables. So they delegated the job. They began creating a hierarchy of service. They, the apostles, would handle the more spiritual tasks. The selected seven would wait tables.

Which means they missed one of the major points of The Story. The one Jesus made by wrapping a towel around himself, and washing the feet of eleven of the twelve of them. The point is this: waiting tables is the ministry of the word of God.

Do you think I am a heretic for harboring this opinion?

(To me, there's a hint that something was amiss when no mention was made of prayer or fasting before/during the decision; and yet that the decision "seemed to please everyone.")

I'm guessing that most of you will have as much difficulty proceeding in reading further as I am having in trying to write further. But I beg you to journey with me a little more; a second mile, if you will. Read on, but not here. Read the scripture itself.

See if it isn't true that things ultimately go well for the company of believers we call the church as long as they stick to The Story - even when their persistence leads to imprisonment, torture and death.

See if it isn't true that things go horribly wrong when folks within that church family begin pushing their own doctrines (about whether Jesus was all-divine or all-mortal; about whether circumcision and the law must be honored to produce a "true" Christian) and leave behind the simple, haunting beauty of The Story.

See if it isn't true that when self becomes more important that selflessness; when the details of what is preached and practiced have greater priority than the sacrifice of the Savior; when race and heritage and diversity become obstructions rather than assets to the family of faith - all hell breaks loose, just as Satan designed and intended.

See if it isn't true in Galatia, in Corinth, in Ephesus, among the Romans, among the Hebrews, in the seven cities of the Apocalypse. See if it isn't true in the hearts of those loved by Peter and Jude and James and John.

See if there isn't a measure of desperation in the those epistles decrying attempts to legislate unity through uniformity, morality through just good behavior, and even faith itself by just believing in The Story rather than by living it out as a vessel of Christ's Holy Spirit.

See if there isn't triumph in the epistles when they call back to His teachings, His examples, His sacrifice, His promises, His resurrection.

Don't take my word for it.

See for yourself.

See if it's even possible in your faith to accept that there might be a New Testament Tanakh - written by good people, inspired people, people doing their best under crushing circumstances, people to whom the Spirit spoke but would not dictate because dictatorship is simply not in God's nature. But people, nonetheless, who were growing more distant by the moment from the sharpness of their recollection of having been part of The Story first-hand.

Then, we can converse some more about that Holy Spirit, given as surely to those who believe today as to those who believed then.

And how He enables us to write our own Tanakh with our lives.

The Torah of Christ

Jesus' commandments, as you probably know, are few and far-between. And simple, and demanding, and life-changingly self-sacrificial.

His commentary on the Torah is that it was summed up in only two commandments. Get those right, and you don't even have to put words to the rest.

His capstoning commandment is for us to love one another as He loves us.

A great ambition. An impossible achievement.

But He teaches detail. He goes into quite a bit of it, even just in the Sermon on the Mount. However, it isn't so much detail as example. The examples illuminate principles that could be applied by any thinking child to the circumstances of her or his own life.

And he teaches by living out His examples. He helps others. Provides wine generously at a wedding party. Heals sick, broken and dead people. Feeds the hungry en masse. Casts out demonic spirits enslaving folks. Dandles children on His knee. Teaches that God loves us deeply, and would give anything - even His only Son - to be reconciled to his prodigal children. Then He becomes the reconciling sacrifice.

That's The Story.

You've heard it before. You know what it is. You can tell it in as many words, or fewer, or more, or better.

He is the two summation commands.

He loves the Lord His God with all His heart and with all His soul and with all His mind and with all His strength.

He loves His neighbor as Himself.

That is the Torah of Christ.

Does He say anything about how we must worship? Yes, "in spirit and in truth." And He sings a hymn with most of His closest friends on their last Passover eve together. Anything else? If so, point me to it.

Does He ever forbid a man or a woman from telling others about Him? No; in fact, He stays an extra day in Samaria because a woman has told her village about Him; the first persons to whom He appears resurrected are women who run to tell the others Whom they have seen.

Does He require attendance at assemblies of God's people? No; He just goes. He reads in synagogue. He attends feasts at the temple. And on off-days, He gathers people in small groups and mountainside-filling multitudes to teach them how to love each other and how to love God.

Does He outline a hierarchy of church government? As nearly as I can tell, He establishes his church in a whirlwind of convicting, spirit-filled faith-sharing around the core of The Story. He breaks His kingdom into a world through ambassadors and embassies; outposts of faith. God is the King. We are His subjects.

Does He demand our baptism? No; He demands repentance, and then is Himself baptized to fulfill all righteousness. Then He undergoes the very barbaric death, the very pathos-laced burial in a borrowed tomb, and the very incredible-yet-undeniable resurrection which that baptism comes to signify.

Does He require the good confession? No; He simply makes it Himself before Pilate.

Does He threaten damnation if we do not agree upon every single way of thinking about His teaching? Oh, get real. He prays for God to make us one, because no one else can. And anyone else can ruin it. So He prays it as one of the last requests to leave His lips as a human being who can suffer pain and torture and humiliation and death:

"Father, may they be one."

Is there anything else that He asks of us to do?

Yes.

He asks us to go. Everywhere. Tell The Story. Build up faith in others. Baptize them into a reconciled relationship with God.

He leaves many of the details, the applications, the interpretations, the commentaries, and the responsibility for living out our faith pretty much up to us. Yet He does not leave us to do so alone. He gives us the gift of His Spirit, to comfort and encourage and convict and inspire our telling of the Story. He gives us each other, to love and to be accountable to and to be blessed by. He gives us prayer, a conduit of communication with God the Father Himself.

He leads us captives to freedom in His train, and gives us all these gifts.

So, is there really anything else that we can teach, any doctrine we can expound upon, any commentary we can make, any interpretation we can insist upon, any theology we can legislate, any judgment we can make that can be worthy of the time we spend neglecting the simple telling of The Story of the Torah of Christ?

Teaching as Torah the Talmud of Men

Okay, I know those probably aren't the exact words of Jesus. (He wasn't speaking English, after all.)

But I wonder if that's what his listeners heard.

The Torah, as I recall from freshman Bible class, is the law given by God to Moses - much of it in narrative form. Then there's the Tanakh, which recorded a lot of other oral traditions of law and history. There's the Mishnah, a sort of commentary on the preceding. Finally, there's the Talmud, a kind of super-commentary which was intended to illuminate and expand upon all of those teachings.

I don't know whether all Jews see them as equal - and there are a lot of different views within Judaism - but there does seem to be a consensus that the Torah came from God and that good men wrote the Talmud. (In fact, I think that the Babylonian Talmud generally receives preference as older and more authoritative when a conflict with the Jerusalem Talmud is perceived.)

Probably some Christians somewhere make the same distinction between the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, but I'm not one of them. I believe in God's inspiration through His Holy Spirit, and a deep purposeful truth within each volume of the Biblical canon.

What I don't believe is that the messages within them all carry equal weight in our lives and our walk with God. And I don't believe that the commentaries written about them carry equal weight - with each other, or with scripture. And I don't believe that the articles written about the commentaries written about scripture ... well, you get the picture.

So when we teach something - and we really pound the pulpit about it - is it generally something that is Torah or Talmud?

When we tell someone the story of Jesus; describe His compassion for others; repeat His teaching about our relationships with God and others; relate His sacrifice as the ultimate innocent for our guilt - do we really have to pound the pulpit? Isn't The Story powerful enough that it persuades all by itself, though told with the gentlest of tone and the most timid of sociability?

And when we really want to persuade someone of our "rightness" on a particular question of doctrine that does not immediately "sell" itself by its intrinsic qualities, isn't it then that we find ourselves proof-texting and cross-referencing and committing assault and battery on an innocent lectern?

Isn't it then that we are tempted to generalize, exceptionalize, rationalize, extemporize and categorize? When the "truth" isn't so simple, so obvious, so heart-wrenching and will-breaking?

Maybe that's because what we're defending is a tradition of men and not necessarily of God.

Jesus wasn't fond of men's traditions that took priority over - or contradicted - God's teaching. He said it nullifies our worship. He said it puts our lips in a different segement of life from our hearts.

He said it was teaching the commentary as if it were the law itself.

That sounds like a really dangerous mistake to me.

Having Arrived

Angi is drafting a workbook to accompany the group study of her colleague Darryl Tippens' book Pilgrim Heart, and while perusing her work - and remembering Darryl's from our LIFE Group's study of it last summer and fall - it became "real" to me that God's intention for us all along was to be on a journey.

Israel got in trouble when no longer bound for the promised land, but when they had occupied it - when they felt they had arrived, and were no longer on the journey.

They failed to exterminate the foreign gods. They coveted and stole the property to be wholly dedicated to God. Their worship at the tabernacle and temple became rote. Then they forgot to meditate on the law of God daily, and to read the law annually, and to live it out constantly.

Pretty much the same way that I live, and maybe that you live. I don't drive out the things more important than God in my life. I want things more than I want Him. My worship becomes dutiful, but not heartfelt. I neglect God's word for my life.

I feel I've "arrived," as a Christian; blessed with grace and forgiveness. I don't see my own distance from God anymore, or my life looking less and less like His Son's instead of more and more like it. I've left the journey, and taken up comfortable residence in myself.

Oh, I'm not a horrible person; I don't try to drown little fishes or pull the wings off of puppies.

I'm just all about me.

And I need to hear the call - like Abraham, like Moses, like Nehemiah, like Saul of Tarsus - to get up and get out of me and get on the road to a land that God will show me and a people yet un-reborn.

Does Hollywood 'Get' God (Better Than Evangelical Christianity Does)?

I put off seeing Bruce Almighty for a long time. I didn't go see it at the theaters. I didn't rent it. I enjoy a good Jim Carrey flick - maybe more than the next average guy - but I didn't expect to like Bruce at all.

More accurately, I didn't expect to like the depiction of God in Bruce.

Finally, a very obviously-sanitized version of the movie came on USA Network last week while I was sick and, having nothing better to do, I took it in.

And I was surprised. Pleasantly surprised. Morgan Freeman's version of the Deity was someone you would actually like - and someone who would actually like you, even though knowing everything about you. This God would take time out to page you on your phone and pull a cheap stunt or two to get you off-balance and chat with you and trust you with ultimate power ... well, within a fourteen-block area of Buffalo, New York, anyway. Without neglecting everyone else, he would still care enough about you to let you learn the hard way that your girl - with whom you have been unforgiveably selfish - prays about you every night, until she just can't pray any more.

He'd listen to your questions: "How do you make people love you without interfering with free will?" Answer: "Welcome to my world."

He would even help you learn how to pray. Not just a little peace-on-earth-wish-from-a-Miss-America-candidate kind of prayer, but one that comes straight out of your heart and your unselfishness and your own love.

So I actually wondered: In spite of all the flaws, pratfalls and downright inaccuracies that any movie Hollywood makes about God must have, is it possible that Hollywood sometimes actually hits the mark?

In the first of the Oh, God movies, George Burns as the Deity takes a turn at answering mankind's questions, posed through grocer John Denver. High on the list: "Is Jesus your son?" The answer: "Jesus was my son. Buddha was my son. The guy who overcharged for this room-service steak is my son. Next question."

Corny, politically-correct drivel, right? Sure. And perfectly true. Evangelical Christianity wants to claim God as its exclusive property, and vice-versa. It says, "Validate me! Tell them I'm right, God!" But God isn't in that business. Everyone is His child ... some already adopted; others waiting. There weren't any that He didn't send Jesus to redeem.

Too bad the movie's God didn't have a stronger message than "You can make it work."

That's the same message you hear from too many of evangelical Christianity's televised prophets. "You can make it work," they'll tell you; "... and God wants to make it work for you."

So buy God in the convenient cosmic size, good for all uses and guaranteed to work for you. God wants you to have it all!

Not the God I read about in scripture. He's truly almighty. The kind of God people fall down in front of and beg for rocks to fall on them; the kind of God before whom people feel so unworthy to speak that they'd only feel cleansed by having their tongues cauterized by a burning coal. He's no chummy fellow bent on blessing exclusively me or exclusively you. He's more pragmatic. He agrees with comedian Stephen Wright's musing: "You can't have it all. Where would you put it?" And more importantly, would you spend more of yourself trying to figure out how to keep it, rather than redistribute it to help those who have nothing? The God I read about just says, "Come work for Me. Help it work out right for others. You don't have to worry about yourself; I'll take care of you."

Morgan Freeman's Deity returns to bedevil (sorry; couldn't help myself) the hapless anchor of the news station in Buffalo in an upcoming sequel, Evan Almighty. You remember Evan, don't you? The poor fellow that omnipotent Bruce terrorized by forcing him to babble incoherently during his first moments as anchor? In this go-around, he's being asked to build an ark.

In a preview, Evan sees the Deity in the back seat of his car via the rear-view mirror and goes absolutely blithering beserk. "Let it all out, son," he is encouraged. "It's the beginning of wisdom."

Yeah.

We could all use a bit of that.