Open and Relational Theology: God is Present

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

Theology matters. What we believe manifests itself in what we do. If what we believe is off, what we end up doing will be off, too. Conventional Theology separates God from creation, quite literally, even if paradoxically. The creation poem found in the first chapter of Genesis has God creating the heavens and the earth out of a formless void – chaos, actually – breathing-speaking all of creation into being. While the description of creation being good every step of the way with humans being very good was in sharp contrast to other theologies competing for allegiance, it was still primitive. God was “up there” beyond the metal-dome-firmament that God would occasionally open to pour down rain in its season. Or not open it for a long time, if people were especially naughty, or keep it open way too long if people were really, really, really naughty for a long period of time. And yet, it was the breathy word of God that made creation, creation. God was necessarily infused into all of it as animating, life-giving presence.

Chasms. Conventional theology gave us the Four Spiritual Laws used for evangelism. The first law? We are separated from God because of sin. Two: the wage of sin is death. Three: while we were sinning, Jesus died as a final sacrifice to pay for our sins (somehow it makes sense). Four: all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Apart from a literal interpretation of Jesus’ death as substitutionary atonement, the metaphor can be good and helpful. Unfortunately, conventional theology took it in the wrong direction – a path Jesus would not have directed. Paul, whose writing is used to generate this Roman Road, would not agree with its application. He was writing primarily to Jewish Christians, who naturally assumed God was intimately with them, who needed to see that God was equally with Gentiles. Instead, we weaponized the verses to create a binary which can very easily get off track and even cause significant destruction, distinguishing some as “in and loved” and others “out and damned”.

Who moved away? We feel the distance of God not because God ever left, but because we have shut ourselves off. Sometimes willingly, sometimes due to misunderstanding. If God is Spirit, and we experience God when we open ourselves to God, we can very easily understand why we feel the absence of God when we are closed to God. It also makes sense that when we open ourselves to God after a long time of being closed, it feels as if God has come back, come near. But not because God ever moved. God was simply welcomed back into our consciousness, our inner dialogue, our lives.

Creation care. When God is viewed as a “removed other” and we are viewed as totally depraved creation, we very naturally disregard creation – the planet itself and its inhabitants great and small. Throw into the mix a horrible, non-metaphor-respecting approach to interpreting the book of Revelation that prophesies that God will destroy the earth and create a new heaven and earth, and a massive group of the Church no longer cares what we do with the planet because “it’s all going to burn anyway...” A good friend of mine who I respect a lot shared a quote from highly influential now-retired mega church pastor, Rick Warren, regarding the COVID pandemic. He said that we need to remember that we are all in God’s waiting room. While hope is the obvious truth Warren wanted to communicate, there is an insidious dark side to the theology behind the statement. Nothing happens in the waiting room except waiting. And the waiting room has no value or purpose except to hold people until their appointment. The ugly truth that the statement also communicates is that this place sucks and all we can do is wait. I’m sorry, but that’s unbiblical nonsense that I am certain is insulting and offensive to God and in no way reflects the life, teaching, and mission of Jesus or the fullness of the Jewish tradition that formed him.

Isms. This rendering of God also sets up a framework that allows people with power to subjugate people with less power. Women. People from other races. People with differing sexual orientation from the majority. People with developmental disabilities. People with less money, education, citizenship, etc. It’s a long list of people who have been treated poorly by those who hold power. I know people of faith who live with conventional theology who declare devotion to Jesus and at the same time diminish others based on any number of criteria.

Panentheism, which is deeply biblical, corrects the errant view that God is removed and that we and creation itself are totally depraved. It states that God is deeply part of all creation, and is in a unique relationship with sentient beings, namely humans. Panentheism means that all is in God, and therefore God is in all. While most of creation simply operates based on their design, human beings are afforded the capacity to be aware on the relationship between ourselves and God. Jesus certainly recognized that God is a present Spirit everywhere when he spoke to a Samaritan woman at a well boldly declared that true worshippers worship in spirit and truth – not tied to a particular Temple (or religious tradition). Immediately before Jesus began his public ministry, he endured a spiritual battle that forced him to come to grips with the internal egocentric forces that would demand allegiance and radically change his trajectory. In another space, Jesus told his disciples that wherever two or more were gathered he would be present, and that he would somehow be with them even after his death, suggesting that there is relational interplay between each other and the divine. He said that the Spirit would be a source of comfort and guidance after he died, which certainly came true. The whole point of what we call the incarnation of Jesus is that God’s location was no longer to be understood as separate, but as deeply entwined in Jesus, and the same is possible for us.

Far Reaching Implications. How might we live differently if we really believed that God was all around us and in us and in all others as well? How might this radically shift us toward compassion toward all other human beings and creation itself? How might this change the way we think about worship and prayer, and how we speak about God?

Questions.

1. How did you understand God’s location throughout your life? How did the language of your prayers serve to shape your understanding – what does referring to God as “Heavenly Father” do to our placement of God?

2. How have you been impacted by a theology that supports God’s separation from us?

3. How were you taught about creation – was it damned or divine? How was your view of creation supported (or not) by your religious influencers?

4. How have you recognized the abuse of creation (physical earth or inhabitants) rooted in a view influenced by total depravity?

5. What parts of panentheism resonate with you? What parts are hard to integrate?

6. How does panentheism affect the way you think about the impact of your life choices?