I love Tim Tebow – I just hate what his fan do with his success. It is irresponsible and un-Biblical.
I have said before that I respect Tim and that he does not think God helps the Broncos win football games.
Why I love Tim: He works incredibly hard, has an amazing energy, lives out his faith, and serves orphans. This guy is incredible!
Why I hate his success: If you are in the NFL, you are gifted. Every player is extraordinarily talented … and I think that those talents come for God. I would prefer if we said that every player was blessed by God – some acknowledge it and some are quite vocal about.
The assertion that God blesses one player more than another is where I run into the problem: that God is picking and choosing this person over that one – and interfering in this moment but not that one is a view of God that is irresponsible and indefensible.
I will go as far as to say that it is somewhere between superstition and missing the entire point of Jesus’ life and message. This certainly is not a Christian view of God.
Last week Tripp had a blog posted by Rachel Held Evans where he said that God was not omnipotent and that the future is not determined. In the TNT podcast that comes out today, Tripp and I talk about the line of reasoning that some people took in not only their objection to Tripp’s note but came to the defense of an omnipotent conception of God . Some people just came out and said “the book of Job shows that God is omnipotent”. This is a terrifying sentence to hear from a Christian.
There are three things about Job that need to be clear:
- It is not a newspaper report. It is a dramatic presentation (broken into distinct acts).
- That God rewards those who do right and love God and punishes those who disobey and turn away from God … is exactly what the book of Job is written against. That is against the narrative of Job’s life story at the beginning and against what God says at the end.
- Christians believe that Jesus lived a perfect life – and was brutally murdered. I see that as the Death of Job’s God. That old concept of God died on the Cross.
So the BIble doesn’t teach this view of God and the history of the world does not reflect this view. God does not reward those who are faithful and put down those who are evil. The evil prosper and the righteous suffer as much as everyone under that evil.
We have to stop with this superstitious system of rewards and benefits that treats God like God as some sort of cosmic Gum-ball Machine. It is extremely hurtful and insulting. The part that baffles me is how prominent the view is among evangelicals … who make bold claims about being based on the Bible and ‘being Biblical’.
This view of the interfering God who doles out blessing to ‘His’ favorites is a relic of the past that we must outgrow.
This antiquated, superstitious view needs to die on the Cross so that the God revealed in Christ can be resurrected for our time.
OK. I agree that a simplistic view that God rewards those who are faithful, and puts down those who are evil, is simplistic and not tenable (and obviously was seen to be so, in several streams of the Hebrew Scriptures.)
But but but–I’m not sure that rules out the idea that God can act in specific ways. And now that I’ve got Epperly’s book under my belt, I’ve got a few questions. Even in Epperly’s process view, there is a sense in which “an ever-present and intimate God can also choose to be more present in some places than others to achieve God’s vision.” (p. 66). Now when he says this he’s specifically talking about Jesus, and how we can see Jesus as a uniquely intense manifestation of God’s wisdom. But even when talking about prayer, he communicates a sense that God responds to our prayers, that they can create a greater field of intensity that calls more healing into being than would otherwise have happened.
I understand that the paradigm of God working immanently within creation is not the same as the ‘supernaturalist’ worldview–but there remains the question of how we can say God is acting specifically, at all, if we insist that God can’t choose certain instances in which to act. I’ll ask again the same question I asked in a different comment thread–for every sick person who is earnestly prayed for (even within a process framework) and receives God’s power to heal, there are others equally earnest, equally open to God’s healing work, who are not healed. Isn’t there still some degree of mystery here, of wondering why God’s immanent energies seemed to be working more in one situation than another?
I don’t think the question of God’s omnipotence (God is orchestrating everything that happens) is the same thing as the question of God acting specifically (doing certain things in one instance that God doesn’t do in another). I know process seems to say they are the same, that if God has the power to ‘intervene’ in any way then it makes God ultimately the author of everything. It seems to me that if you allow for the possibility of any kind of divine action or initiative, at all, you still get the same conundrum, the same possibility that God isn’t perfectly “fair” in how God relates to the world because there is the element of God’s choice.
As far as the book of Job–while it certainly does thoroughly debunk the notion that God’s blessings flow to the righteous, and punishments to the guilty–there still seems to be a sense of God’s ‘sovereignty’ at the end–that God’s wisdom in creating and working in the world will not always make sense to us, and that is something we need to live with, even regard with awe. So while I am all for ‘faith seeking understanding’, I do feel that Job ultimately cautions us against finalizing any kind of system that seems to have things all worked out in a way we find satisfactory.
WOw. nice reply
OK – so we agree that there is no ‘super’natural
- god does not reward the righteous and punish the evil
- we don’t know how god would intervene even if ‘he’ wanted to
I’m comfortable with that ;p So I am going to go ahead and say that what is happening in Broncos games is not what folks are saying it is.
Now as far a healing goes – I do believe in the present work of God’s Spirit in the world … and I have seen many many healings. I’m just not sure what happened there was what I was told happened there. … that is about as far away from ‘having it all worked out’ as you could want!
I have been busy in my workshop and looking forward to unveiling the follow up to Making Sense of Miracles in early February. Thankyou for the awesome response.
I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to pick a fight, honestly I’m not, but when I hear something like ” I see that as the Death of Job’s God” I get the impression that you are suggesting that the god of the OT is different than of the NT.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you? Maybe I’m just too sensitive to it because I”ve heard that a lot lately and I just want to ask people what they have to say to Annais and Saphira.
Thanks for the chance to respond! No – I don’t believe that the God of the NT is different than that OT. THere is lots of grace in the NT and enough Law in the New to disavow anyone of that notion.
What I am saying in that that human conception of God passed away. The real and living God is fine! It’s the way that we conceptualize that that needs to be ‘born again’
People get upset when I talk about Job’s God dying on the cross. But I just ask “Do you think that Jesus was God”. Yes is the answer if somebody was offended by Job’s God dying.
Then I ask – “so Jesus was God when he died – so God can die?” ummmmm … yeah but God was in heaven during that.
“SO are you saying that God and Jesus are two different people – or that his ‘God-ness’ left him and on the MAN part of Jesus died?” uhmmmmmmmm….
All I am saying is that the way we conceptualize these conversations is important. That is what I was after with the Job comment. Thanks for the opportunity to flesh that out (pun intended) -Bo
Bo have you seen Tebow mic’d up against the Bears? You get everything from Tebow singing “Our God is an Awesome God” on the sidelines, praying to for Jesus to come through for him and win the game (5:45) and many other treats.
I have not (I don’t have cable) but BOY HAVE I HEARD ABOUT IT! wow.
plus – I’m not sure I could watch it since it was against my beloved Chicago Bears … ;(
that video is kind of scary….
Bo you know if Tebow got the Bears a playoff win you would be singing worship songs with him!
Tripp Fuller – you are a Modernist! … who only believes what he can understand!
(at least that is what I read on the internet earlier this week)
Bo,
Thanks for this thoughtful reflection, I really think you hit the nail on the head and were able to do so in a really positive way. I will admit, my own feelings about Tebow (more the mania surrounding him) are mixed, but he seems like a genuinely nice and gifted individual who is doing exactly what he thinks is right: worshiping God with his work.
Where I think we begin to see it break down (thanks to the person who posted the video clip) is when Tebow appears unwilling to take some credit/responsibility for his own participatory role in his work. I think this is directly related to the story of Job, so it was great that you brought the two of them together.
Reading the book of Job requires great wisdom, and as such I feel that I should never settle on a ‘final’ reading. That said, there is an important ambiguity about what Job repents of at the end of the story. It is possible to render the Hebrew as “I [Job] repent OF dust and ashes.” This has different implications from the more common translation of “I repent IN dust and ashes.” (For an article that suggest the former translation see http://www.jstor.org/pss/1517305)
If we take the former translation seriously, a whole new world of meaning opens up. While it is right to ascribe Job’s blessedness to God, there is no doubt that Job worked very hard to obtain it. More importantly, at the end of the story, the only way that God is going to be able to bless Job again is if he gets up out (repents) of the dust and ashes and goes to work. It is only by moving beyond a state of paralysis and working that God is able to bless a person. Had Job remained in the dust pile, he would have simply died there. God did not conjure up all of his new-found success like a genie. While God blessed him in his work, Job actually went about doing the work.
In this reading, Job sees his authentic humanity when he says he sees and hears God, he sees what he is called to be. Therefore, he despises himself for his sulking and moves beyond the paralysis of the question “Why do bad things happen to good people.” Good things cannot again happen to good people unless they are able to embrace their authentic humanity and go about doing the best work that they are able.
To bring this back to Tebow, he has absorbed the traditional Christian submissive posture toward God. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it becomes so when it is assumed that everyone’s work is meaningless and God is ultimately making the decisions about who wins, who loses, who is hurt, etc. It is meaningful to talk about how God is present in those situations, but it begins to break apart when all human participation is overshadowed by God’s final causation: God choosing one team or person over another (completely overlooking their ability or the amount of work they put into perfecting it).
Thanks for this reflection, Bo. I too have a love/hate relationship with our boy Tebow. Ultimately, I think he has a great heart but is an irresponsible communicator. >> http://videoaudiodisco.blogspot.com/2012/01/public-faith-responsible-communication.html