What is the our response in a culture that feels this way? How do we respond? What types of conversation stem from this postcard and the attitude it represents? It is overwhelming how many people hold this attitude. Something went wrong somewhere.
posted by Drew Crisp @ 10:10 PM
6 Comments:
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The great American mystics: The Marlboro Man, Robert Redford, Thomas Kinkade, Peter Fonda.
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This stems from a wrong perception of what it means to be "close to god." I watched a movie the other night called “Gorillas in the Mist.” The movie is about a woman named Dian Fossey who moves to the mountains that border Congo and Rwanda to study gorillas. The movie was way too long and I wouldn’t say a must see. Anyway, at one point in the movie, Dian Fossey, while walking in the beautiful mountains, says something like, ‘This is the closest to God you’ll ever get.’ While I could definitely appreciate the beauty of those mountains she is simply wrong. The individualistic culture we live in tells us that “being close to god” is whatever makes you feel spiritual, and the “god” which you are close to is whatever you want to believe. Being with horses or in mountains or with gorillas are fine things, but they are not being close to YHWH God which I suppose means worship. We have come to believe that being “close to god” means what we want it to. Unfortunately, the Christian story says otherwise. Being close to YHWH God has always occurred through a people—Israel and the Church, which I believe are really the same thing. We need the church, not because we will always feel good about it, in fact most times we might not. The Church isn’t however about making us feel good and spiritual it is about making us Christian. We need the church because YHWH is in the Church, because YHWH has chosen the Church, because YHWH says so. Anyway, “being close to God” is not about feeling spiritual or being close to nature and horses it is about living out YHWH’s story on earth, which by definition includes the church. So while people may feel close to “god” riding horses or climbing mountains, unless that is mediated by YHWH’s people they are close to some “god” other than him. On a more personal note, I struggled very much my freshman year here at Ozark trying to be motivated to go to Church. I felt that I had Church in the dorms with the guys a lived with. While I certainly am challenged and have had fellowship with those guys it is not until I have been at Dederick that I have been a part of a Church body. Before I was around a bunch of people a lot like me who also believed in YHWH, but now that I’m at Dederick, I’m a part of a Church, a community of people that I wouldn’t have anything to do with unless YHWH had called us together. I’m sure there is much more to this Drew. I’m sure that I need to think more on this issue, but these are some of my initial reactions.
isn't jesus returning on a white horse? that girl might be on to something... sorry, it's late and that is all i've got.
I'm sorry, but why is a little girl walking a horse......honestly. What if the thing lost its mind and trampled her?
Wow, quite a take on culture and whether we can be close to God or not through some measurable or quantifiable means. 1. Most churches are not places where people feel a closeness with Jesus because either the people are not or the minister is not. 2. The place that you experience closeness with God does not matter as much as the meaning you attribute to that encounter and even then I think God allows us to get most of our doctrine wrong and still shows up. Think about it, can an experience of a hindu who never heard of christianity, yet believes and follows God according to his own conscience not be plausibly considered as God encountering Him? come on, what are we, discerners of God's actions or agents for change in a suffering and lonely world. The first thing I think I can do to get on the wrong track in anything I do is to screw up the job description. Anyway I am arguably wrong about everything I believe and yet find that a perfectly good place to be mainly because I realize my own inabilities although I am highly educated. That last comment is not a paradox, just a humble assesment of humanity.
can we market this somehow? I bet there is a church model in here somewhere.
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