God’s Not Dead but Let’s Bring Him Back to Life
She asks her dad for the keys to the car. He says, “No.” She screams, “I hate you,” before running to her room and slamming the door. Too bad she cannot wish her dad out of existence for giving her rules and telling her no when he thinks best like we do God. Of course, this is the simple version of what we do to God in our current culture but paints a true picture of why we want to dismiss God from every corner of our lives.
The Making of an Idol
Believing God exists has fallen out of favor. Generally, the god everyone thanks at the award shows for their trophy people tolerate because it has no name or face, and packs no punch. That one is not even an idol that people love or revere. But the culture’s general dislike of God happened intentionally.
The campaign to kick the God of the Bible to the curb started a long time ago. The campaign wasn’t mystical between demons and angels (not that it wasn’t that also). It happened in plain sight. Philosophers, scientists, and poets who wanted to discount the existence of God influenced the world with their anti-God conversations. The goal: Once we kick God off the throne, we can assume His position. We can be gods in His place.
Why Kill the God of the Bible
In contrast to the god that attends award shows, the God of the Bible has a name and a face and packs a punch. He sent His son Jesus to redeem the world because when God said “No,” instead of listening, humanity took the keys and got the world into a wreck (See Genesis 3). God has guard rails for living to protect us like the father who might deny his daughter the keys to the car because he needs to repair a tire.
However, in her tantrum, she misses the goodness of her dad’s intentions because she is so set on getting her way. The progression away from God stems from a desire to set the rules and throw off the restraint of the old ways of thinking. Influencers back in the day convinced people that Christian beliefs only impede our ability to express our true selves. They told us that we could think and feel our way through life.
After Freud stirred the pot, Darwin delivered the final blow, and Nietzsche declared God dead, we took the keys off the nightstand after dad fell asleep and headed out. Freud made sexuality a big deal. While he obviously identified an issue that resonates with people, sexuality expresses only a part of God’s beautiful design of a human being. Darwin, with his THEORY of evolution, equated humanity with monkeys. He essentially negated God as the Creator and the Redeemer who comes back to set things right. Darwin’s theory denies humanity’s connection to God. And in the end, we just die.
But, God’s Not Dead: bringing God back from the dead
The death of the God of the Bible is not merely that people think He doesn’t exist. It includes the various ways they keep God alive on life support by self-defining Him. A wrong depiction of God isn’t God. If God existed only in our imagination, then He could truly be dead. But we didn’t breathe life into God or make Him in our image. It was the other way around, so we can’t kill Him.
Like a good father who answers the distress call from his daughter who snuck out with his keys, God waits for each of us to realize that He’s safe. When we get over our tantrums because we don’t get our way all the time, and take a little time to experience God’s goodness, perhaps we will get off the throne and willingly enthrone God in our lives. Sometimes it takes a dose of reality or a blown tire to sideline us before we realize the one we “hate” is really the one we should love and revere.
This month we’re talking about our culture of idolatry and how it affects our lives. Read our last blog!
