The Heart of the Matter
This week the famous owner of the New York Yankees baseball team George Steinbrenner died. Listening to people talk about him on sports radio was an interesting phenomena. People couldn’t figure out how to characterize him. They argued over his legacy. For some he was a magnificent owner who brought the New York Yankees to enduring prominence. For some he was a ruthless tyrant. Some spoke of his accomplishments, but others focused on the means by which he brought about those accomplishments.
About Steinbrenner everybody had a different point of view. I am sure that the man was dynamic and complex, but listening to these divergent opinions describing him as both deliverer and demon – they couldn’t all be right? He was iconic in that everyone knew of him. Everyone had heard a story that seemed to reveal either his competence or his treachery. All the things said of him could not be co-equally true. His celebrity gave rise to everyone having a suppositional opinion, but you wonder how few actually spoke to the truth of his character.
I think the world has the same issue with God. He is referenced in almost every venue of daily life. People speak of God with respect to the majesty of the mountains or the perfection of a newborn child. Some thank God for their food. Some acknowledge their desperate need of God in every area of their lives.
At other times people curse him in the face of natural disasters. They question God’s sense of justice in the face of violent crime. Some say the belief in him is the root of all wars.
Some see him as an evil task master.
Some see him as an absentee landlord.
Nietzsche declared him dead.
The delusional stand on street corners claiming to be God.
Everybody has a portion of conjecture about the character of God.
Our American lexicon now has a phrase that exemplifies this phenomena. In many circles the deity is now referenced with the words, “God, however you see him”. It is as if how we chose to see him defines who he is, rather than the truth of who he is being revealed to us.
The largess of God, combined with the limitations and inadequacies of the human mind have left God or the concept of God to be the repository of all of our hopes, our dreams, our insecurities, our terror and our fears. Somewhere on this earth most every adjective and every invective, in every language has been used to describe the person and the character of God.
Having no concept of size or fear of ever meeting him, we have treated God as a community Christmas tree. To which, every passer-by is invited to hang upon him the ornament of their own choosing. Eventually the man-made adornments simply hang from one another both gaudy and gauche. The majestic obscured by the mistaken, the malicious and the mundane.
The ever blind, but never mute, point to the ridiculousness of this convoluted and contradictory mess that man has made and declare that there is no God. It has always been this way. We mocked the idea that God would humble himself, come in the form of a man and allow himself to be beaten, spit on and abused.
Mark 15:29-32
29 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days,
30 come down from the cross and save yourself!”
31 In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself!
32 Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”
For a time, God allows his character to be maligned. We are allowed to pile on all of our misconceptions and fears. We hang upon him our insecurities, our arrogance and our greed. We have made such a travesty of beauty that we look for it everywhere but its source.
No truth can be found by adding to, or attempting to rearrange this repository of bad doctrine and cast aspersions. You cannot reveal the original beauty of an image-marred by slathering on another layer of make-up.
We must look for the truth of God as a child opens a present on Christmas morning. Tearing at the trifle of wrapping paper, bows and slick packaging. Casting everything aside to reveal the gift. Just as some children prefer to play with the wrapping paper and the box, so many of us placate ourselves with the trappings of half-lives or dead religion that few continue on to find the prize.
Each of us must look at the artifice we have used to assuage our guilt and fears, and begin to peel back the layers in search of the truth of the heart of God. Why somehow does it seem easier to attempt to change God, than to allow ourselves to stand naked before him as he is found? I fear it a greater reflection of our frailty than his.
We jettison the declaration of 1 John 4:8 that “God is love” as trivial, because he is also described by others as so may things that we fear. If our hearts do not fail and we find the courage to peel back the layers will we find a tyrant or the highest concept of love?
Tags: baseball, Character, Christ, Christianity, Church, George Steinbrenner, God, grace, Jesus, life, love, sports, Yankees
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