On Not Defending God--August 7, 2020"[Christ] himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." [1 Peter 2:24]
Okay, we need to get two things perfectly clear: first off, any God (well, "god") who needs to be defended isn't the real deal. If your deity needs human effort to protect it from being hurt or damaged or broken, what you have is an idol and a fraud, not the divine.
Of all the things you can say about the God we meet in the Old and New Testaments, one that seems absolutely foundational is that the real and living God doesn't need our help, our defenses, or our protection--it's the other way around. Like the old saying goes, "You defend God the same way you defend a lion--by getting out of the way." The God we meet in the Bible--whose frequent title in the Hebrew Scriptures, "Lord of hosts," means something like, "the One who commands countless angel armies"--doesn't need to be wrapped in bubble wrap, hidden behind bulletproof glass, or sequestered in a bunker when danger comes. The God we meet in the Scriptures is not susceptible to being hurt--not any more than you can threaten the sun by throwing a pebble up into the sky or upset the moon by shaking your fist at the starlit sky. We humans just don't have the ability to hurt God, and therefore God doesn't have the need for any of us to rush to God's aid to fight off insults, mockery, or curses from anybody's lips. Whatever other things you may have in your personal litany of worries to keep you up at night, you can cross "What if someone hurts God?" right off the list. That's not a thing.
And yet--and this is the beautiful, profound mystery of the Gospel--this invincible, indestructible, un-hurtable God saves us and is revealed to us most clearly, of all places, in the act of getting lynched at the hands of an arrogant empire on a Roman death stake. The un-woundable God brings us to life, it turns out, by bearing the wounds of the cross. The Almighty heals us by choosing weakness, rather than running from it. The Source of Life grants us resurrection through death, through the grave, through being hurt. And God doesn't flinch or cringe or run away from enduring that hurt, or cry out for worshipers to form a human shield to protect God, but rather Jesus offers his own body up to protect our own lives. No real God needs defending or protection from being hurt--but the Gospel's truly audacious claim is that God's way of saving our lives is exactly by being hurt, all the way to death, and bearing that violence in order to break apart the power of deadly violence.
Honestly, this should be like Christianity 101, basic, ground-floor, entry-level theology here. It goes back even further than Christianity, to be truthful--that phrase First Peter uses here about being "healed...by his wounds" is a quote from the famous Servant Song in Isaiah 52-53 that goes back centuries before Jesus himself walked and talked in Galilee! In other words, the whole Bible not only insists that God doesn't need our help in defending him, or in defending God's Word, either, but also insists that God's way of bringing us to life is exactly by bearing hurt and suffering and death in self-giving love.
And yet... there are so many voices around us that get it all backwards, inside-out, and upside down! The conventional wisdom assumes that we have to rally in defense of God, as if God will puff out of existence if too many people say mean things about God, or doubt God's existence, or if not enough people pray or got to church, or if the "wrong" people are in power. The conventional wisdom--or at least what passes for wisdom from the loud voices in the public square--seems to think that God is like Tinker Bell from Peter Pan, as if God will faint or die if too many people say they don't believe. Or sometimes you get the impression that those loud voices think God is like the Death Star from Star Wars: you know, pretty powerful and impressive, but vulnerable at just the right spot if someone gets a shot in the wrong exhaust port, and therefore that God needs the defense of people to keep away any attackers, or else God could explode.
It would be laughable that those voices are even listened to at all, except that their theology is flat-out dangerous. Any time we think that God needs our defending, we end up being willing to do terrible evil, convinced it is in the service of "protecting God" or "defending our religion." Like Pascal wrote, people "never do evil so completely and cheerful as when they do it from religious conviction." When we believe the lie that God needs our defending, or that some "them," real or imaginary, can "hurt God," we end up demonizing the folks we don't like and ignoring the rottenness of the folks we think are on "our side." When we accept the bad logic that we need to protect God somehow, we end up being willing to dehumanize others, hate others, or harm others in the name of "keeping God safe." And that runs completely counter to the Gospel. It is, quite literally, anti-Christ.
So today, don't fall for it. Don't fall for the voices that would have us believe God needs our help defending God's reputation, or power, or anything else. The tortured, naked body of the crucified Jesus makes it clear that God was--and is--willing to lose all of it, in order to bring us to life. The cross shows God's clearest power isn't in sending in the angel armies or wielding lightning bolts but in taking the nails and praying forgiveness on his murderers. We don't need to defend God from being hurt, but rather God's willingness to bear the hurt we have inflicted on God is what brings us to life. The wounds of the invincible God are what heal our hurts. The willingness to look foolish and weak and defeated is exactly what reveals God's wisdom, and strength, and victory.
And then remember, dear ones, that this is how you are loved. The Gospel's promise is not, "If you come to God's defense and protect God from imaginary bogeymen then God will reward you with a spot in the afterlife," like some kind of heavenly transaction; but rather, the Gospel says, "God has chosen to become vulnerable unto death in order to break apart the power of death, and brings you to life again as a free gift." That's what God's love looks like--the willingness to bear hurts for us, with us, and as one of us. That's how you know the God we meet in Jesus is the real deal--Jesus doesn't ask for our protection, but gives us his, even at the cost of his own life.
See? Any Savior worth his salt doesn't need to be defended. And Jesus is definitely worth his salt.
All praise to you, Lord Jesus, for your way of reigning from a cross and saving us through suffering love.
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