Our Porcelain Gods

So I haven't posted in a while cause I've been busy with this new campus ministry at Tech, among other things. I just finished a great book called Signs of Emergence by Kester Brewin, a challenging and creative read on the emergent church. He works with an alternative worship group called Vaux, a city group of artists who desire to see and release God amidst the chaotic bustle of diverse city life. There are many points he makes which I feel would challenge the status quo in today's church but one I found interesting so as to post here.

They put this up on a wall one day and invited people to their worship time. The statement read, "God is found in the shit." Now, after the aftermath of the expected backlash to such a statement, the truth of the matter began to surface and people began to realize what exactly they were saying. Brewin writes, "It was used after a lot of very intense and careful debate in the group, who decided that its clearly shocking language actually forced us to accept the difficult and profound truth that God really does never leave us, in a way that more polite forms simply could not." As Collins explained, "We struggle with the propriety of putting God and shit in the same sentence. Yet the incarnation brought them into closer contact than that." Brewin goes on to say, "If God can be found here, then we have grounds for genuine hope, regardless of our background and situation, regardless of what we have done..."

I think for some the shock to our minds is exactly what we need. We're so use to concluding that God behaves this way or always does it like that or I can always guess God's next move, when in fact He is completely other-than. The term holy means set-apart, unique, not white robes, not boxes, not predictable formats, not religious answers. If we are to be holy as He is holy then we need to listen and watch for His uniqueness to surface in the dirt of our cities, in the difficulty of life, in the unpredictable movements of seasons and stop dressing up in our white robes, spouting out verses which mean about as much to us as does the next Clive Custler novel.

God is indeed in the shit and if He wasn't, I wouldn't be where I am today, or with a hope of where I'm going. He's always more ugly than we want, more ready to get down on his knees and spit into our images of who we've made him, not to prove himself right and us wrong, but to show us the unlimited vastness of his love for us. I've found that more and more it's about admitting I know very little about it, and hoping he's got the room he needs to show me a little more.