The vast majority of humans believe in a god or spirit of some kind or other so the problem today isn’t god’s existence but rather his/her/its identity. Sadly, we have become spiritually lazy and instead of doing the hard work of discovering who this god is we create one to our own liking. We take our divine preferences to the marketplace of ideas, enter the build-a-deity store, and create a nice fluffy god. We even place a prerecorded message inside so that when we pray to it we can hear the soothing sound of our own voice assuring us that we to can be like God. We make it as cuddly as possible so that when the world fails to bend a knee to our god like pretension we can comfort ourselves with a divine hug.
Maybe instead of creating a build-a-bear spirituality we should enter the wilderness and go big game hunting for the Lion of Judah. Maybe instead of clinging to the false security of our teddy bear god we need to seek the divine King of the jungle who isn’t safe but is good (1).
“The people responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus never accused Him of being a bore – on the contrary: they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with a yawning ho-hum atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies” (Dorothy Sayers)
- The description offered by the beavers about the God like figure Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
Photo by Alex Blăjan on Unsplash
