Looking For God

I was reading a Jason Boucher’s blog a few days ago and he mentioned this book by Nancy Ortberg. He talked about how he read it in one sitting. Now, I know what pastors are like: if he made the time to read it in one sitting, it must be a good book! So, I went out and bought it.

Do you ever pick up a book and think to yourself, “This is going to be dangerous!” That’s the sense I got when I opened this one. I felt that way when I read “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” by Philip Yancey or “The End of Religion” by Bruxy Cavey. I knew those books would affect me. I get the same sense with this one.

I hope to read it this weekend and will share a little more with you then. But just to give you a taste of it, here’s the introduction. Who knows, you might want to grab it yourself. And, if you live in Ottawa, Salem Storehouse has it on sale for $14.

Here’s the intro:

I think I have spent my whole life relearning who God is. Usually I get it wrong. How could I not, with God being so big and all? Perhaps this is why we need eternity: One life is not nearly enough. Eternity is about the amount of time it will take to plumb the depths of this God of ours.

I don’t think I am unusual (well, yes I do, but not in regard to this). No matter how great our parents were, how deeply we think or feel, how much we hear and read, we just don’t get it right.

How could we?

He’s God and I’m not, so the plumbing and learning and discovering continue. It’s been a great adventure, though. Much to my surprise, God is much gooder than I thought. Of course the red, squiggly line on my computer just underlined gooder as improper usage, but I’m sticking with it. I spent such a long time thinking God was grumpy, angry, distant, arbitrary, and withholding. But since He is God, I figured I’d better just grin and bear it. How delightful to discover how mistaken I was!

There is a movie from the 1970s called Soylent Green. It stars Charlton Heston and is sort of a futuristic, bleak movie about what life could be like after decades of overpopulation and pollution. People live stacked up next to each other in dilapidated high-rises, and exist on a manufactured food called Soylent Green, since growing crops has long ago ceased. The dramatic surprise ending probably should have landed Heston an Oscar nomination, but it’s another scene – before the ending – that has always captivated me.

In the movie, Edward G. Robinson plays Sol Roth, an old man who shares a tiny apartment with Heston’s character, Robert Thorn. Sol Roth had been a man of letters, and his book collection is the only remnant of a kinder and gentler world.

In order to offset the dangerous and draining overcrowding of the world, the government offers an incentive for elderly people who volunteer to be euthanized. Before receiving the fatal injection, they will be placed on a gurney and taken to a room that contains a theater-in-the-round. In exchange for their lives, volunteers will be treated to a surround sound and vision experience of the world the way they remember it.

When Robert Thorn learns of Sol’s intent to end his life, he races to the government facility where Sol is undergoing his final experience. Robert breaks into the room just as the screens are filled with magnificent scenes of a world set right. The only thing Robert has ever known is a gray world devoid of beauty. Now, with Sol watching in delight, he sees deer in a forest drinking from a stream and flowers exploding with color in a grassy meadow. He sees mountains covered in snow and the ocean crashing onto the shore, all set to the swelling strings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. With tears falling down both men’s cheeks, Robert Thorn shakes his head from side to side and whispers, “I had no idea. How could I have known?”

I love the wonder in his voice. I want to have the same reaction when I think of God. For many years, I thought things like longer quiet times would get me there. They did not.

I’ve fought hard to find this faith I’ve longed for, this God I’ve imagined. And I have found Him in the most unexpected places. Surprises have clarified for me who God is, and I’ve found that challenging the prescriptive path has actually opened up the God of the Bible to me. As my understanding of God has grown, my faith has also grown – sometimes in ways that interfere with my life.

Annoying, yes, but also glorious.

This book is about the things that have sustained and propelled me toward God.

I had a lunch meeting recently with a man who goes to our church. He and his wife just moved here from the United Kingdom and are launching an organization that connects churches with third world market products in order to help break the cycle of poverty. I asked him about his faith journey, and he talked about growing up in Christian circles and becoming increasingly disillusioned in his young adult years. Then, with great passion on his face, he described finding his way back, discovering this magnificently good God that he somehow had missed the first time around. He called it his “reconversion.”

I understood completely.