God is Relational

CrossWalk Community Church Napa

Note: You can view this teaching on our YouTube Channel.

Last week we looked at the idea of God being open. While we have a lot of popular language that affirms the idea that God is unchanging, which we tend to equate with unshakable strength that can be relied upon, the idea comes with some problems. If God is unchanging, it means that the future is essentially fixed, which means we don’t have free will whatsoever. It also means that God is in no way affected by creation – including us – which means praying to God for help is pointless because God will not be moved. An open stance views things differently. Because creation – including us – are not living predetermined lives, the future is open, not-yet-written, and therefore unknowable. An open stance also allows God to be lovingly responsive to creation, which is an expression of change. God’s essence is a constant, yet God’s experience is in related response to whatever creation is doing. More like a jazz combo playing with-and-in-response to each other than a symphony playing notes written centuries ago. Like a parent who loves their child but interacts and responds to them based on their developmental needs.

This week we will consider the relational aspect of God.

Some people claim to experience God in such weird ways that I wonder what they may have been smoking prior to their experience. I’m not sure that is a God I am interested in being in relationship with, and definitely not if I have to get it through a substance.

Some people claim to experience God in ways that affirm their ideologies that support hatred, violence, and injustice, to the point that they feel that God is endorsing them. If God is like them, I don’t like God and don’t want to be in relationship with such a God.

Some people claim to experience God in ways that just don’t add up with science. If God is real and true, it seems that God would largely abide by the laws of nature that God apparently brought into being. Frustrated by the lack of logic, some folks simply walk away from the pursuit of spirituality and faith altogether.

Some voices from antiquity, like the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas and the Jewish theologian Maimonides suggest that God, being unchangeable/immutable, is not relational in any way whatsoever. Most people nowadays don’t agree with them.

As part of the name suggests, Open and Relational Theology supports that idea that God is relational, involved in a personal way with creation. Evangelical pastors have promoted the idea of having a personal relationship with God – supporting this idea. And yet the “personal” denotation has some downsides that need to be addressed.

What do you think? Is God relational? Does this matter?

The Bible is a collection of books that serve as the core documents representing the beliefs of ancient Jews and the earliest Christians. These beliefs were in flux – not fixed – which is itself an encouragement for us to keep “fluxing”! There are many accounts in these texts of people experiencing God relationally. God apparently wanted to be known and discovered relationally rather than dropping a multi-volume written systematic theology on us. Thank God for that! Here are just a few examples of when God was experienced relationally.

· Adam and Eve experienced a graceful, loving, nurturing God after they ate the forbidden fruit.

· Noah experienced a God who cared about creatures and the survival of humanity through the flood.

· Abraham sensed God calling him to a new location, and along with it a new way of thinking about God.

· Hagar experienced God as a loving, providing being who saw her in her despair after she was mistreated by Sarah and Abraham.

· Jacob experienced God in a vision that helped him see that God was more interactive in creation than he could have imagined.

· Moses experienced the presence of God in burning flame to call him to return to Egypt to demand freedom for Israelite slaves.

· Elijah experienced God in silence when he was overwhelmed by the noise of his fear, and also learned that he was not as alone as he thought.

· Jesus experienced a relational God as his baptism – the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove (not an eagle!). During a solo retreat, Jesus experienced temptations to help him clarify who he was and what he would be about (he was going to be driven by his principles and not his passions, he would remember that he was following God and not telling God what to do, and that his goal was not personal power and glory but to simply follow God).

· Peter experienced a vision from God that blew his mind and blew open the doors for Gentile inclusion.

· Paul experienced a vision of Christ as a blinding light, transforming him from an enemy of Christians to their greatest champion.

Christian history is littered with stories of people experiencing God relationally, showing up in all sorts of ways. Christian orthodoxy tried to make sense of it by inventing the idea of the Trinity and codifying it as a way to express the relationality of Godself. Unfortunately, we went too literal with it and largely missed the point so much that other monotheistic traditions called us out for creating three Gods. Let’s remember that the Trinity was a metaphor that was meant to help, and that’s what it should remain.

Far more than anything else, it has been my experiences with God that have kept me in the faith. God has shown up at times to first open my eyes to God’s relational aspect. God has shown up as grace and love when I felt like Adam and Eve. God has shown up as encouragement as I have taken leaps of faith personally while leading the church at the same time. God has shown up as affirmation when I have stood up for others. God has come alongside when I have felt weak and given me strength. God has been with me when I was convinced God should not, blowing away my binary mindset that would restrict God from gracing the unworthy with God’s presence. God has been a source of hope in the face of despair. God has been a giver of a Merton-like unitive vision that only later I would be able to name as panentheism.

For a lot of people of faith, the relational aspect of God is an easy sell. For those who are on the skeptical side, I would encourage you to not be dissuaded by some of what you’ve heard that sounds like nonsense. It’s possible that for some of the stuff you’ve heard or been encouraged to believe that it is, in fact, nonsense! And yet there are voices from the scientific community that are beginning to have fresh perspective on how connected everything is relationally. In fact, the essence of creation is relationship at the smallest level we can see. Perhaps this relationality is part of a greater whole that we call God? Perhaps there are people just like you that can be instructive for you on this journey. I would recommend a couple of titles that may be helpful in this regard. Andrew M. Davis’ and Philip Clayton’s how I found GOD in everyone and everywhere is a wonderful collection of “testimonies” of discovering God from a wonderful range of people including scientists and spiritual leaders alike. Rob Bell’s What We Talk About When We Talk About God is also holding up well, in my opinion, for those who geek out on the science side of things. Don’t give up – there is good reason not to believe in the God you don’t want to believe in, but what if much of that is erroneous constructs? Maybe there is more to be discovered that you haven’t heard of. It seems that the scientific mind is one of endless, humble curiosity – confident in what is known and yet open to what remains to be discovered.

Oord provides a really cool metaphor about God’s relationship with creation that I found to be quite provocative and helpful in his book, Open and Relational Theology:

Imagine an empty room large enough to seat five hundred people. Fifty people enter and space themselves at varying distances, in no particular order.

Bring to this room an enormous ball of string made of a single strand. Ask the fifty people to pass the ball among themselves in random order so everyone holds a point on the string. Eliminate slack. The result might look like a spider web or Native American dream catcher.

Now have one person in this interconnected web give a firm tug on the string. Ask others if they felt the tug. If the string is tight, dozens of people would feel at least something. If we added sensitive measuring devices, every point on this interconnected web would feel some movement.

Now imagine someone capable of touching this string at every point on the web. This person could touch 100,000 points, maybe millions. If she had a sensitive touch, she could feel every vibration.

Only someone able to touch all points simultaneously could feel the full influence of the one tug. Of course, touching all points at once would require the toucher to be in all places. The only one capable of this amazing feat would be omnipresent. And the One who feels every movement would be the most influenced.

An omnipresent, relational God is the most moved of all.

God is literally in touch with all of creation! Aware of all that we are feeling at all times, everywhere. God feels the tug from us when we find ourselves experiencing every kind of emotion and therefore is experiencing them with us. How can God not be moved as one who is tied to absolutely everything and everyone? Since we are all tied to God, we are, therefore, connected to each other. Let your mind go for a while with the yarn ball image – it’s pretty amazing.

Relationships are two-way streets. Sometimes I wonder if we treat our faith more like a one-sided relationship where God may as well be a fence post or a journal, where we are saying everything that comes to mind and then leaving no time to listen or receive from God. There are things that God wants to “say” to you – are you able to receive the message? If you are receiving the messages, are you embracing them? God speaks through all sorts of means – the Bible, community, circumstances, etc. – yet will be generally consistent with the mega themes found in sacred text. God will not ask you to jump off a cliff (unless you are well equipped and are doing it for sport). God will tell you that you are deeply loved (every day, in fact). Do you have room to hear that you are loved by God?

On that last note, be aware that we human beings have a tendency to believe that we were created in the image of God as is stated in Genesis, and then we turn it around and create God in our image. When left unchecked, we can create a God who supports us in our ugliest, least godly attitudes and behaviors, further justifying some of the worst evils ever deployed. I still hear to this day justification of atrocities based in such thinking. American Slavery and Manifest Destiny are a couple of beauties from American history, and it’s effect is still with us to this day. The holocaust is another. The crusades another. And there are personal evils that are largely unspoken that are carried out every day. I say this simply to remind us to beware of our tendency to create our own echo chambers and eventually conclude that God was endorsing us when God has been left out of the conversation. Is your god a fence post or an alive and responding benevolent Being?