God Delusions

Let's face it, if you were to run your business the way the landowner in the parable ran his you wouldn't be in business for very long. For starters, you likely would have an employee rebellion, and second, it seems like it would encourage employees to make a minimum effort if those who worked the least got the same as those who worked the most. Using our everyday values as a measure, the whole thing is perfectly scandalous and outrageous!

This is one of those parables that literally knocks you off your feet.  What does Jesus even mean by telling such a story?  Is he really suggesting that God is like this very confused, perhaps eccentric landowner, who's apparently lost all control and is doling out money liked a crazed lunatic whose just won the biggest lottery jackpot in history?

The temptation is for me to say too much about this parable. There are numerous possible directions I could go with this parable, but I won't yield to that temptation. I really want to focus in on one thing this morning and then sit down, and you can reflect on it. 

I believe one of the biggest temptations we face every minute of every day is to make God too small; to box God in; to make God as small as our aspirations; to make God fit comfortably into our lives; to conform God to our values; to shape God around our prejudices and fears; to paint a picture of God who fits our conception of who we think God should be.  The whole effort is based on our ability to delude ourselves into thinking that's the way God really is!  

When we lived in Alaska in the 90's, I'll never forget something that a friend of mine used to say about life there.  First I must say, Alaska is a great and awesome place, but there are some negatives: frequent inclement weather, short summers, long winters with little daylight, lots of clouds, gloom and drizzle for days on end, a penetrating dampness, a sense of isolation from the rest of the country.  My friend Don had a conviction that the majority of the people who lived up there for any length of time developed a specific coping mechanism.  Don often would say, "We who live in Alaska delude ourselves into thinking that we really like it here!"  I must confess that I probably was one of those deluded individuals. 

This was certainly at the core of Jonah's attitude problem. He was peeved that God called him in the first place, and then he was doubled-peeved when God didn't live up to his expectations and annihilate the Ninevites.  Instead, God had a change of heart and mind and showed the Ninevites excessive grace.  So, Jonah and his delusions about God went into childish pout!

A paramount temptation is to delude ourselves about God; that is to sculpt God into our image rather than allow God to sculpt us, especially when God goes off in a direction opposite from what from our sensibilities are telling us is rational and what our fears will allow.

In other words we prefer to play God, and the Bible from end to end chronicles human God playing:

- Jacob thought he could manipulate God into anything - he could not!
- King Saul thought he had god-like impunity - he did not.
- King David thought he had godlike authority over who lives and who dies - he did not
- The Israelites thought they had godlike exclusiveness - they did not.
- Peter thought he had godlike loyalty - he did not.
- Saul of Tarsus thought he had a god-blessed mission to wipe followers of “The Way” off the face of the earth - he did not.

Let's go beyond scripture:

- The Romans thought they had godlike ruling power - they did not.
- The Europeans thought they alone had a godlike image - they did not.
- Hitler thought he had a godlike right to take over the world - he did not.
- Religious radicals think the "end justifies the means." - it does not.
- Some Americans think they have god-given right to be self-indulgent and exploitative - we do not!

Whenever we start to play God, every time without exception, we overstep our bounds, and in the process, God is domesticated to look much more like us:   the god of my cause;  the god of my understanding;  the god of my nation;  the god of my experience;  the god of my generation;  the god of my race;  the god of my gender;  the god of my social class;  the god of my particular religious expression;  the god of my politics;  the god of my sexual orientation;  the god of the rich who feel they deserve more than the poor; the god of my whatever.

For all practical purposes God becomes the God of our stratagems and schemes.  And, if we get a sense that God might be bigger than the box within which we have placed God, we can begin to sound and look a lot like those disgruntled workers in Jesus' parable who admonished the landowner for his lavish recklessness; and we may end up looking like Jonah simmering in the stew of our own anger.

This parable provides a wry glimpse at the difference between God's designs and human desires and even accepted human values. The landowner's generosity is bestowed on these latter hired laborers much to the consternation of those who felt they deserved more.  And, the landowner does not  apologize for the bizarre accounting system that lavishes the same wage on everyone, regardless of the amount of time logged on the job. The only response the landowner gives to the disgruntled workers is, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?"

This parable is telling us that grace is something that flows from the heart of God not from us.  If grace was left solely up to us, I have a feeling there would be precious little grace in this world - and oh, how this world needs grace.  The parable profoundly suggests that given the opportunity we would gut God of grace. We would render God graceless.  And when we render God graceless, we eventually turn God into a weapon; to beat other people up; to leverage ourselves against others; to advance our own agenda over others. That’s a great deal of what our delusions about God are all about, and to a great extent how I see God being used in the public arena.

We are in the middle of numerous election campaigns; national, statewide and local.   One of the things there is an abundance of in an election campaign is conviction.  Nobody would argue that.  There is no shortage of conviction on the part of the candidates - and that is fine.   But all conviction is not the same.  There is conviction with grace, and there is conviction without grace.  It’s been my observation in the past and my prediction that the closer we get to November 4^th conviction with grace will almost disappear, and conviction without grace will increase.   Conviction without grace looks, feels and sounds judgmental; condescending; it gets personal; it oversimplifies everything, and is blatantly self-righteous.  Conviction with grace finds a way to be true to one’s values without diminishing the other – a rare commodity in this world indeed!

You see, that might just be it!  I think the real underlying reason the workers who had logged the most hours were so upset was that maybe they realized that if they hung around this goofy landowner who was so outlandishly lavish with grace for too long, that after awhile he might actually begin to rub off on them, and they might begin to resemble him, and perhaps even become as goofy as he was.  And they wanted no part of it. They wanted a graceless world.  They wanted everyone to get what they deserved.  And of course, since they were in the group who felt they deserved the most, they confronted the landowner, but the landowner would have no part of them.  In so many words he said, "If you can't get with the program in my vinyard; if you can't begin to base more of your life on the economics of the kingdom of God, then it would be better if you just leave the vineyard."

So what's it going to be for you? Are you going to risk it? Are you willing to risk continued employment in God's vineyard?  If you so, one of two things will happen to you.  I guarantee it.

The more you hang around this eccentric landowner, little by little, layer by layer, your delusions about God will gradually peel away.  And, there is the distinct possibility you might become so uncomfortable, and perhaps even so angry, that you will simply leave the vineyard and go back to your God-delusions.   OR, you might actually begin to resemble, in little ways at first, and then bigger ways later on, this wild and crazy landowner, who refuses to live by respectable methods of accounting, and open up your life to be transformed by God’s glorious, astounding, inconceivable, outlandish, lavish, excessive, unrestrained  grace.