House of Faith or Enchanted Forest?. Charles W. Hedrick, Jr.
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in God’s “master plan.” The alternative, thinking we live in an “unscripted” and arbitrary universe, is a frightening concept. In an arbitrary universe, no master plan exists. What happens—happens! Under those conditions, life’s meaning is what each of us makes of the random events that constitute our lives.
I personally do not like this alternative and hope that affairs in my life are part of some benevolent design for the universe. Yet I am a little dubious when someone tells me God spends time counting the hairs in my drain and marking the demise of individual sparrows. Such micromanagement will not work in large organizations—and the universe, if anything, is large. Effective management gives priority to the more significant. In a global crisis, I don’t want God worrying about minutiae, like the welfare of my wife’s tomato plants. Micromanagement may be why we have natural disasters, like floods, earthquakes, or epidemics. Other disasters, like war for example, are inevitably the result of human contrivance.
One should not too quickly criticize the divine Administrator of the universe, however, since we have only the barest inkling of what’s involved in running it. The universe may actually be unlimited, and if so, that is a lot of turf to cover, even for God—or so God suggested to Job (Job 38–41) when Job bitterly complained that God treated him unfairly. If God is weighing the outcomes of baseball games and neglecting the causes of war, he is likely out of touch with what’s really happening in his universe—at least in this small corner of an out-of-the-way galaxy. Surely God can find better things to do with his time than ponder the pennant!
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One major stumbling block to religious belief in the twenty-first century is God’s silence on matters we people of faith find perplexing. Most of these issues could easily be resolved if only God would be more open with his counsel and obvious about what he expects of us. For example, Why doesn’t God talk out loud anymore? Perhaps you have never wondered about that, but once upon a time God spoke in an audible voice—but not today! When he needed a national leader for the Israelites, he called out to Moses from a burning bush: “Tell them,” he said, “I Am that I Am sent you” (Exodus 4:14; Deuteronomy 4:33–36; 5:26). And though “the word of the LORD was rare in those days,” God spoke to Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1–11). Out of a whirlwind (Job 38:1), he dialogued with Job, but whispered in a “small voice” to Elijah (1 Kings 19:12). He addressed audible speech to Gideon, Noah, Jonah, the prophets, and others. In the New Testament two instances are notable: at the baptism of Jesus an audible voice from Heaven announced: “This is my beloved son” (Matthew 3:17), and the same words again from a cloud at the transfiguration (Mark 9:7). The biblical God was a talker! So, why the deafening silence today? If there was ever a time we needed to hear God’s voice in our ears, it is now, but today few claim to hear God’s voice (some do, of course, but today people hearing voices from clouds are usually institutionalized).
Religious professionals tell us God speaks today through the Bible—which for some is literally the “Words of God.” But written words are not a living voice! Quoting the Bible to solve modern social and moral problems really hasn’t worked; proponents on all sides of issues use the Bible to support their different views. At best the “written Word” is generally ambiguous on contemporary social issues and requires extensive rationalizing to make the text fit the modern situation (the Bible is, after all, a compilation of ancient texts). Religious professionals claim an edge on the rest of us in explaining the Bible, and even if they don’t, we defer to them anyway. Apparently we think God has privileged communication with them to which the rest of us are not privy.
We seem to have access to God thirdhand at best: once God spoke for himself, but today we only have memoirs from people we believe communicated with God; and most of the memoirs do not appear to be based on what God himself said audibly. Many religious professionals claim God’s spirit leads them to the “correct” explanations of the memoirs. But, alas, the religious professionals tell us conflicting things—and on God’s authority too! Imagine how easily our moral dilemmas could be resolved if only God spoke to us on point from a burning bush or a cloud in his own voice about abortion, homosexuality, war in Iraq, and care for the environment. Unfortunately the contested issues that divide Americans today are not directly addressed on point by the ancient texts of the Bible.
Why won’t God talk to us any more? Why should he need ancient memoirs and middlemen to communicate? A genuine conundrum for which no definitive answer exists! Some say: (a) God doesn’t need to speak; the Bible speaks for him. (b) We are too cynical and secular today to believe God even if he did speak; so he doesn’t bother. (c) God has oblique ways to communicate; for example, through his spirit by impressions on the human consciousness (but this could only be the “noise” of our own religious engineering). (d) God never really spoke audibly at all; biblical writers described events mythically (if true, it raises interesting questions about the Bible). Whatever the reason, we apparently live in an age when God’s living voice has fallen silent, and we no longer hear “from God’s mouth to our ears.” It is an age when God is absent, some have said, and we are left to ponder God and what he expects with little direct vocal assistance from him. The problem for us now is: How do we discriminate among the insistent voices of religious professionals filling the vacuum with their “right” answers to our perplexing questions?
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Our predicament, however, may only be due to God’s sense of humor. Growing up Baptist, I never thought God had a sense of humor. God seemed so utterly serious—not a droll bone in his entire divine body (so to speak). And no wonder; having to deal with sin, disease, evil, and such, would tend to sober anyone. It all made sense then that God had no lighter side but was always heavily serious—never a wink or a twinkle in his divine eye. But I have to admit there are things in the Bible about God that strike me humorously. Maybe God does have a sense of humor after all—a sort of dark humor, but certainly not slapstick. Take Adam and Eve in the Garden, for example. God places them there in a state of innocence and tells them “Enjoy! But don’t eat the fruit of that particular tree.” They take the bait and “fall” for the joke. Later God comes looking for them. But they hide from the All-knowing and All-seeing One, who, tongue in divine cheek, plays along, calling out, “Where are you guys?”—as if he didn’t already know!
God called Moses to go to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of bondage. After God twisted his arm, Moses agreed, and away he went. On the way, he stopped one night at an inn; God met him there and (oddly) tried to kill him (Exodus 4:24–26). Is this another practical joke? Well, can you imagine God “trying” to do something and not being able to do it? “Ha! Gotcha that time, didn’t I Moses? Aw, just kidding around!” One practical joke is still in process. Three modern religions worship the same God: Jews, Christians, and *Muslims. Modern Cairo, a bustling city of over 15 million souls, virtually shuts down on Friday. At one in the afternoon prayer rugs come out and millions of men pray in the streets. Mahmoud Tawfik prays to the same God as Solomon Silberstein, who worships at Saturday Temple in Jerusalem. On Sunday in Springfield, Missouri, Mary Smith’s “Our Father” ascends to the same God. Each religion thinks of itself as “God’s special people”—to the exclusion of the other two religions, I might add; and their holy books prove their paternity as God’s own people.
I hesitate to blame God for this strange situation, but if we believe the faithful of these religions, God produced their holy books, which confirm the privileged status of each religious community. The situation is not unlike the “jokes” on Adam, Eve, and Moses. There has to be a little *George Carlin humor in all three claiming to have exclusive access to the divine ear. Can you imagine the God who parted the “Red Sea,” made the sun stand still, and raised the dead not being able to correct the record? The brunt of this particular joke seems to be those who fail to recognize how ephemeral their favorite fundamental dogma really is.
Of course, it is possible God has absolutely no sense of humor, and never does the divine equivalent of winking, or tucking tongue in cheek. But I would like to think that God was never really serious about some things we credit him with—like Samuel telling King Saul, “God said annihilate the *Amalekites” (1 Samuel 15:1–3), or God telling *Abraham, “sacrifice your son” (Genesis 22:1–3). It seems perfectly clear that God was never really serious about that last order, since he stops Abraham from killing the