I Must be Dreaming

I’m a pretty simple guy.  Once I find something that works for me I rarely deviate from the plan.  Take our cars, for example.  It took me years to realize that all the Fords, Chevys, and Dodges we were buying may have been cheap, but they sure didn’t hold up too well over the long haul.  So once I bought my first Toyota, I realized it was game over.  Hard as it is to admit for this grandson of a “made in the USA” union welder, but I’m probably not going to be buying much other than Toyotas unless Toyota completely goes off the rails and starts turning out crap.

(LOVE that 50mpg I get with the Prius, by they way!)

Pants?  Dockers.  They just hold up for the long-haul.

Shoes?  Florsheim Comfortech.  (Bad arches will do that to a guy.)

Mountains or ocean?  Mountains.

Target or Walmart?  Target.

Mac or PC?  Once you taste an Apple you never go back.

Paper or plastic?  Well…  Actually, let me get back to you on that one.

About the only time I get un-predictable is when I do my bread-winning job.  Technology.  With the exception of that whole “Mac -vs- PC” thing and my personal choice of laptop, everything else I do in the field of technology is about staying fresh, relevant, and cutting edge.  Blade servers, SANs and virtualization are right up my alley.

(Sorry for that geek side trip.  I won’t do it again.  Promise.)

So it should come as no surprise that where theology is concerned I tend to be a pretty “need based” dude.  ”Does this theology ‘need’ to be changed or is it perfectly fine the way it is?”  I may be a reasonably intelligent dude but there were a lot of smarter theologians looking out for my well being a long before I was even a twinkle in my mammy and pappy’s eyes.

It’s called theological inertia.  It’s pretty hard to steer it too far right or left once it has a head of steam.  I always like to go back to guys like Luther, Wesley, and Calvin for my theological comfort food.  Smart guys.  Guys who managed to de-clutter the landscape and keep it simple.  A little tough to read in the native pre-modern English (or was it German?), but smart nonetheless.

So when I hear people unveiling “new” theology or “new revelations of God” my Holy Spirit “crap detectors” go into overdrive.  You know who these people are.  They tend to write things like, “The Secret,” or, “The Secret Message of Jesus,” or “The Dream of God.”  (Another telltale sign is when they show up on Oprah, but that’s another story for another day.)

When Verna Dozier penned her book, “The Dream of God,” I doubt she anticipated that it would have quite the subversive impact it has since achieved.  To sum up the book simply, she argued that it was time for Christians to stop merely “worshipping” Jesus and instead “follow” Jesus.  The implication – correction, the clear message – was that we Christians spend way too much time thanking Jesus in worship and not nearly enough time living like Jesus.

On its face, I really like the concept.  In recent years I, too, have become concerned about Christianity’s penchant for self-centeredness, not engagement.  At least as it was defined in the political power-base terms that ultimately got a lot of so-called “conservatives” elected, Christianity felt like it had become a little too detached from the pains and struggles of average humans.  So the notion that someone would come along and urge us back to balance with the more practical side of the faith is, on its face, refreshing.

It’s not until you think through the implications of the title of Dozier’s book that you start to draw a deep breath.

(Here comes that side of me that gets all stodgy and old-fashioned.  Time to put on my Florsheims.)

I think it can best be summed up with that classic WWII question, the one they asked all the time when oil was scarce and rubber even more so.

“Was this trip really necessary?”

Having a “need-based” perspective on theology means that I hold “new” stuff up to a higher level of scrutiny than seems to be the norm for many post-modern pastors.  Dozier’s book, and the very title itself, seem to have percolated their way into the teachings of many of today’s Protestant pulpiteers.  People who are desperate to reenergize their flocks and keep the faithful moving forward are grabbing for anything that even remotely looks like it can reach and move a generation raised on ramping levels of non-Christian mysticism.  So characterizing God’s plan in terms of a “Dream” sounds perfectly fine and a wonderful antidote to the alternative; people who are so turned off by the hard edges of Christianity that they stop showing up in the sanctuary altogether.

Where “The Dream of God” is concerned I think we have dropped our theological guard a tad too much.

I don’t have a problem with Dozier’s urging to Christians to be more like Jesus.  Not nearly enough of us so-called Christians behave with the compassion and concern of Jesus, engaging our own modern-day version of “lepers” and “Pharisees” with truthful, Christ-like dialog.

The problem I have is with Dozier’s over-personalization of God’s divine “plan” for humanity in the human form of a “dream.”

As I read the Bible, and embrace it end-to-end, confusing passages and clear passages alike, I don’t see anything other than prophecy resembling a “dream.”  ”Dreams” imply “potential,” not “projection.”  Dreams makes God look far weaker in the grand scheme of the universe than in fact He is.

Ask yourself a practical question.

If God has a “dream” doesn’t that mean that God isn’t in control of every aspect of human existence?

If man doesn’t help God achieve every last one of the end goals of His dream, does that mean that God has failed, man has failed, or both?

Was it a “dream” that Jesus went to the cross and spilled His blood, or was it a part of a specific plan designed to bridge the gap between humans and the Creator of the Universe?

I won’t take the side-trip down the path of “predestination,” the notion that we are all just puppets playing out scripts long-ago written by some puppet-master.  That seems a little too extreme, even for a God with a “plan.”

But when we shift our language and our focus from the idea that God is “in control” and “has a plan” to “God has a dream,” are we really thinking through all the implications of such a subtle linguistic shift?  Have we considered for a moment that we have just tackled a decent problem – lack of Christian engagement in the world around us – with an indecent dumbing down of the Holy Other’s plan for humanity?

This all came full circle for me recently when I read the new vision statement that a pastor had crafted for his church.  In it he referenced “The Dream of God” in terms of our role as Christians in doing the work necessary to bring heaven to earth.  Now I’m not going to dive into the whole “heaven coming to earth” part of the equation, I’m still wrestling with that one.  I’d like to think Heaven is a place God has already created for us, not a place we are helping God to create.  I am still reading up on the whys and wherefores of that new twist on orthodox theology.

What I am diving into is the notion that we as humans are somehow pivotal in God fulfilling his “dream” versus execution of God’s “plan.”

“Dreams” imply the potential for failure.

“Dreams” imply that you can make things up as you go along, taking any number of alternative paths to the goal.

“Dreams” imply that you haven’t thought through all the challenges you may encounter along the way.

“Dreams” imply that the end is some far-off possibility, not a foregone conclusion.

“Dreams” imply that outside forces have the power to derail the process.

“Dreams” imply that the conclusion is more “vision” than “certainty.”

In other words…

If I buy this idea that God has a “Dream,” in the same spirit that Martin Luther King’s “dream” inspired a generation to lay the foundation for the first Black American President, then I do not fully buy into the notion that the end-game has already been defined.  When Martin Luther King uttered his now famous words, “I have a dream…” I highly doubt that he could have anticipated Obama taking office 40 years later.  Is God somehow equally unsure of the end-game of the universe He created and the humanity he sent Jesus to save?

On the other hand…

When I buy the notion that God created this world and all of us in it in the framework of a larger “plan,” it makes all the struggles we face each day so much more understandable.  It also makes our role in meeting our own struggles and the struggles of those around us more clear.  The boundaries of our physical world were created by a God beyond our comprehension and, as the Bible says, God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.  It all fits into a plan, a structure, and a timeline of God’s knowing and an outcome of His definition.

For this guy who accepts the notion that we are made in the “image” of God, the notion of God as a “dreamer” seems like a way-too-personalized understanding of God’s transcendent, divine, omnipotent nature.

I probably never will figure out that whole “paper -vs- plastic” thing.  Some mysteries are just too vast and unfathomable for my pea-sized brain.

What I have figured out is that when people over-personalize God in man’s image, changing His divine, master “plan” into a mysterious, open-ended “dream,” I need to ask a simple question…

“Was this trip really necessary?”

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