What We Talk About When We Talk About God Read Free Page A

the new challenges we’re facing and knowledge we’re acquiring? Quite a lot, actually, because the universe, it turns out, is way, way weirder than any of us first thought. And that weirdness will demand that we be open.
    So first, Open.
    Then we’ll talk about talking, because when we talk about God, we’re using language, and language both helps us and fails us in our attempts to understand and describe the paradoxical nature of the God who is beyond words.
    First open,
    then Both.
    And then, after those two words,
    we get to the three words,
    the words that will shape how we talk about God in this book. The words are (I feel like there should be a drumroll or something . . .)
    With,
    For,
    Ahead.
    With, because I understand God to be the energy, the glue, the force, the life, the power, and the source of all we know to be the depth, fullness, and vitality of life from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows and everything in between. I believe God is with us because I believe that all of us are already experiencing the presence of God in countless ways every single day. In talking about the God who is with us, I want you to see how this with ness directly confronts popular notions of God that put God somewhere else, doing something else, coming here now and again to do God-type things. I want you to see both the irrelevance and the danger of that particular perspective of God as you more and more see God all around you all the time.
    Then for, because I believe God is for every single one of us, regardless of our beliefs or perspectives or actions or failures or mistakes or sins or opinions about whether God exists or not. I believe that God wants us each to flourish and thrive in this world here and now as we become more and more everything we can possibly be. In talking about the for ness of God, I want you to see how many of the dominant theological systems of thought that insist God is angry and hateful and just waiting to judge us unless we do or say or perform or believe the right things actually make people miserable and plague them with all kinds of new stresses and anxieties, never more so than when they actually start believing that God is really like that. I want you to see the radical, refreshing, revolutionary for ness that is at the heart of Jesus’s message about God as it informs and transforms your entire life.
    Then ahead, because when I talk about God, I’m not talking about a divine being who is behind, trying to drag us back to a primitive, barbaric, regressive, prescientific age when we believed Earth was flat and the center of the universe. I believe that God isn’t backward-focused—opposed to reason, liberation, and progress—but instead is pulling us and calling us and drawing all of humanity forward—as God always has—into greater and greater peace, love, justice, connection, honesty, compassion, and joy. I want you to see how the God we see at work in the Bible is actually ahead of people, tribes, and cultures as God always has been. Far too many people in our world have come to see God as back there, primitive, not-that-intelligent, dragging everything backward to where it used to be. I don’t understand God to be stuck back there, and I want you to experience this pull forward as a vital, active reality in your day-to-day life as you see just what God has been up to all along with every single one us.
    All of which leads us to one more word to wrap it up: so. So what? So how do we live this? So is the question about what all this talking has to do with our everyday thinking and feeling and living.
    To review, then:
    Open,
    Both,
    With,
    For,
    Ahead,
    and so.
    One more note about notes: all of the places where I cite Scripture verses, as well as credits for other sources for information and suggestions for further reading, are included in the endnotes, organized there by theme or key phrases.
    It’s a fair bit of ground to cover, and