Do you know any celebrities? I mean, we all “know” a lot of celebrities… otherwise, they’re not really celebrities. Of course, many celebrities have a persona that has very little to do with their ordinary selves. Fans like us live in a world of abstract concepts about celebrities: their albums, their movies, their sporting accomplishments. While we’re sometimes attracted to their “personal” lives, these usually retain the abstract element of celebrity – the big mansion, the crazy romance (and subsequent divorce). Nobody would buy a trashy-magazine with a celebrity on the cover going to the toilet – not because it’s too disgusting, but because it’s too ordinary.
Take the shock-rocker Alice Cooper, for example: his persona is one of a violent psychopath – off stage, he’s a golf-addict. I remember hearing him talk about he and Iggy Pop lamenting their poor short-game. But it had never occurred to me that people like Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop did ordinary things. I just assumed they lived in a perpetual concert.
It’d be interesting – and kinda weird – to speak to one of the ordinary friends of ordinary Alice. It might be difficult for them to explain the ordinary things they do with Alice, day by day, since they are so far removed from our expectations. We might even scoff at their discussion of him going shopping at the supermarket, to which they might say, “Well, you don’t know him like I do”. They might not even like to talk about their friendship with Alice, since it’s part of his personal life.
I think God Himself sometimes suffers from a similar sense of celebrity. In a lot of ways, He’s the Celebrity – most people have heard of Him, in some form or another, even if they have no direct relationship with Him.
One strange thing about how Christians often seek to prove the reality of God, is that we try to prove the celebrity side of Him – His abstract “stats”, like that He created the world (“… in seven days! That’s still a world record!”). This is all a rather odd thing for us to do, because we’re supposed to know God personally, as a Friend, and not merely the Celebrity. We’re supposed to have His Spirit with us as a Friend – and that’s because of God coming as Jesus Christ, Who is called in the Bible “Immanuel”, “God with us”, in relationship with us. God chose in Christ not to stay an abstract, distant Celebrity, but to become our Friend.
No wonder atheists often don’t believe in Him! Many have never met Him, personally. I struggle to conceive Alice Cooper on a golf course. They struggle to conceive of God in relationship with people like them, and us. Alice Cooper’s friend isn’t going to convince me he plays golf by talking about his stage-show. So why do we Christians consistently talk about abstract things in God?
There are two answers to that. The nastiest one is to suggest that some “Christians” are living a sham, and gave up
having a personal, experienced relationship with God long ago, if they ever did. All they have left is the abstract notions about God. But I suggest that other Christians are just victims of our prevailing secular culture, that has squeezed their personal life with God into their “personal life”, that privatised secret world, and they feel they’re not allowed to discuss it. I suggest that we Christians need to get back to talking about the God we meet every day. People can argue forever about the abstract nature of an abstract celebrity, but it’s much harder to argue against the intimate relationship we have with a friend.
To my atheist friends, I can tell you that I chat with God every day (sometimes, actually, on the loo), and many times I’ve felt Him chatting back. I wouldn’t be a Christian if it was just knowing about the Celebrity God – I want to know Him, personally, relationally. And seriously, He keeps going on and on, all the time, that He wants you to know Him too. For some of us, we’ll respond that such an appeal to the experiential is too personal, too subjective. We want to talk about rational proofs for the Celebrity. That’s fine, go ahead.
But for some of you, you’re tired of just hearing about the Celebrity. Well, I’ve got Someone I’d like you to meet…
Matt Gray
In my previous post, I suggested that in order to make sense of our little and everyday stories, we need a view from above. Like a cosmic director, God has revealed the broad contours of an ongoing script, and invites us to make sense of our lives from His perspective.
dom of peace and love. He called us to switch scripts, and align with God’s form to be forgiven and free. As the perfect character, Jesus stood in for our failures. He took the blame, and absorbed evil in love, crucified to cover our sin. He took the worst the world could throw at him, but after it all, rose from the dead—a real historical event worth checking out. This demonstrated that death was defeated, and the story would go on. …
ailure to God, turning from our way to trust the Director’s solution in Jesus, then a new act begins. God starts the process of healing us from the inside out—revealing the part only I can play—so we can go together in the power of His Spirit to help heal a hurting world. We partner with God to restore relationships and a broken planet. No waiting until the story’s happy ending, we have a mission right now to give the world a preview of the play’s final scene. Until we exit the stage, our role is to follow Jesus by absorbing evil in love, and reconnecting everyone with a good God who designed us to be free.
ng when Jesus will return, judge the world, and set everything right. We’ve all fallen short, so we need God’s mercy. As the curtain closes, every actor is brought back to give account for their actions. If you’ve accepted God’s forgiveness, your real story is just starting: a restored earth with no hate, pollution, poverty, or war. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—will be the centre of it all, and we’ll be free in this love. But what should God do with those of us who reject Him? Everything good, true, and beautiful comes from God, so apart from Him, all that’s left is Hell. Hell is when we exclude ourselves from the Director’s plans for a do-over.
But not necessarily. Like a sonata, we may add note upon note of immanent experiences, and never understand the transcendent song. Our apprehensions from below may be beautiful, but we require revelation from above to take ethereal sounds from the unknown God and return them heavenward in a reverent cantata of praise. To switch metaphors and put it simply, our little stories only make sense in light of the Big Story. So as this new year is taking form, and that we may not miss the forest for the trees, I thought it timely to tell the old, old story once again. But let’s begin with you: what kind of story are you in?
e and step into the following epic: a story with five scenes.
Scene #1: Designed for Good. The epic starts with God. Drop the images of a distant deity wilding lightning bolts. This story’s Director is passionate and relational, an artist who paints an Oasis and plants us there. And in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Why? Well, He made us to love God, love each other, and cultivate the world as good gardeners should. (Imagine connection with your Creator, society in harmony without selfishness, and work which you enjoy that helps the world thrive.) This is the form in which we find freedom. But just as love is only real when it isn’t forced, the Director gives us all a choice. And clearly we’re not in Eden anymore.
Scene #2: Damaged by Evil. “Who’s God to tell me what to do?” So we, the actors, rebelled against the Director and tried writing our own script in a form we preferred. We’ve eaten the forbidden fruit, and tried to play God. Meaning? We’ve ignored and despised God, abused each other, and vandalized the planet. That’s sin—missing the mark for which we were made. We’ve turned inward, and act like the universe revolves around us. And we’ve built our lives around good stuff that can never satisfy like God: relationships, sex, status, sport … our symptoms differ, but the syndrome’s the same. The result? The world’s damaged, our relationships are divided, and our identity (our heart) is a mess. We’re broken, and we break. Worse, we’re to blame. God is loving and just, so what’s a passionate Director to do?
René Breuel
Ben
Matthew Gray
Jessica Ann Hughes
Dave Benson
profdrs
Jeremy
Hélder Favarin
Guests
Madi Simpson
Matt Stauffer
Paul McClure
Michael Keller
Ryan
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