27. Drewidism 101 – We are not his fan club

Genesis 1:27 So God created human beings, making them to be like himself

                              He created them male and female

                             So God created mankind in his own image,

                            

To hear some folks tell it, God was bored, and one day decided to create everything and specifically humans.  We are his personal ant farm.  Or fish bowl.  Or for those of you who follow a particular face book page; a hamster cage.  Further, God being a petty minded child sits in judgement of what we are doing and just waiting for the day when he breaks out his magnifying glass and roasts us on the celestial sidewalk.  Thus, the prospects of being created for the glory of God are really not that appealing. 

          It is like when an acquaintance of mine talked about a vision of heaven where we were all standing and singing songs to God.  The afterlife was just one begin songfest.  As he is telling me this, I hoped that his vision was of Sunday morning.  But then another friend of mine equates good worship with sex; one of us is doing something wrong.

          Me?  And this is Drewidism, believes that God had little choice but to create.  It is the nature of love, it is the nature of God; to create, to expand.  Love simply has to express itself.  We, you and I, and your aunt Ethel, and Uncle Wilburt, and Granny Faye, were all created simply because he is so friggin awesome.  It was not an act of egotistic power.        But I don’t believe that we were created to stand in heaven, the throne room of God, and sing his praises all day!

          There are many references that state we were created to glorify God.  We bandy about that term, and for most of us it is simply meaningless church-speak. Most of us when we talk about glorifying God think Sunday mornings, standing and singing hymn, worshipping him, and loving him.  Others talk about magnifying him.

          This is a time when I can only speak for myself.  I attend church, sing hymns, and drink questionable coffee because I need to do that.  God while he enjoys this, does not need it.  He did not create us to be his personal fan club.  There is little I can do to magnify his glory.  It would be a really, really, good day for you to say wow, can you ever see God in that man. 

          As already stated, I believe, God created us out of an expression of his love for us.  There was really no point, no profound purpose, no great design, in many ways it strikes me as our struggle to be significant that makes us look for a reason.  We were created out of that joy, wonder and delight that are God, to enjoy who he is.

          We were created in his likeness.  One translation uses the word godlike.  But what does that mean?  For me, in his image, in his likeness, means – we are able to love.  We have to be in relationship with others.  We create.  We reason – sometimes not that well.  We have humour.  We are compassionate.

          When we were created, so the story goes, we lived in the garden.  We toiled, we gathered food, hunted animals.  God came and visited us.  He hung out with us, told jokes, and just enjoyed being with us; and we with God.

          But Drewidism holds the Garden was a state of existence, it was not a physical place.  Oh yes, there was a physicality about it.  There is always physicality about strong emotion.  My love for my wife and kid has a manifestation, a body sensation.  When I look at pictures of my wife and I playing on the beaches of Thailand I feel an ache of longing.  But I don’t think that the Garden was a place.  You know, “Go to the Tigress River and turn left and go to the tree that looks like an old man.”

          In the Garden, there would have been toils and struggles, there would have been defeats and failures.  There would have had to have been. If our successes were guaranteed, they would not have been enjoyable.  This idyllic life where we ate fruits and drank nectar and waited for God to show up so we could worship him; I don’t think existed.

          When Jesus came to earth, that sort of reads like a UFO story, we see again why we were created.  Most of what he did, was be with people, he loved them, he took an interest in their lives, he showed compassion.           

          So we are not his fan club, if anything we are more like family.

So who is God?

This is not my idea, but I like it so I swiped it.

If God is Love then....

God is patient, God is kind. God does not envy, God does not boast, God is not proud. God does not dishonor others, God is not self-seeking, God is not easily angered, God keeps no record of wrongs. God does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. God always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.