whose hope is in the LORD their God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry. Psalm 146:5-7
One of the classic problems of religion is its tendency to become utilitarian. Faith easily becomes about getting God on the side of me and mine. God becomes a resource to be employed and even exploited for my good. "God bless America" does not necessarily fall into this trap, but it does whenever the petition contains an unspoken "and not them."
Utilitarian religion invariably imagines that God is more like us and less like them. This, of course, is the beginning of creating God in our own image. Religious people on both the left and the right presume themselves to be in the right, and so it only stands to reason that they are more like God than those who disagree with them. But this presumption that we are in the right is seldom a judgment dispassionately arrived at by considering the attributes and will of God. Often our "rightness" is relatively unexamined and based in little other than the fact that it is our position.
Christian faith, along with many other faiths, speaks of being made new and transformed. For Christians, this is a matter of becoming more Christ-like, which we understand as the ultimate human embodiment of godliness or being like God. Yet most of us Christians fall so short of being Christ-like that our critiques of other Christians who are not as in the right as we are border on being a farce.
Today's morning psalm touches on a few attributes of God "who executes justice for the oppressed." As the psalm continues we hear more about what God is like and cares about.
The LORD sets the prisoners free;
the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
I've seen a few articles this week critiquing the Church for its failure to really address some of the great societal problems in our culture. Of late, the problem of racism comes easily to mind. These critiques were aimed more at the progressive sorts of congregations where I am most at home, and that might seem more likely to engage issues such as racism. Yet somehow much of our energy ends up going elsewhere. There are so many places where we do not much resemble the body of Christ, yet so much of what we do and how we do it remains unexamined and simply assumed to be right and correct.
The Apostle Paul writes, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation." Lord, make it so. Reshape us in your image. Trying to cast you in ours is not working out so well.
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