MONDAY
Christianese If You Please
“God helps those who help themselves.”
This Christianese is not only cheesy but it’s also really bad theology. Throughout Scripture we are directed to our desperate need for God and, on the other hand, the pain, suffering and destruction we tend to bring when we ignore our need for God and try to go it on our own.
This week we are continuing on with the phrases that should season our vocabulary as followers of Christ. Last week we talked about speaking blessing to God and to one another. This week we are going to talk about the simple statement, “I need you.”
Now, I know this sounds like a line from a cheesy love song from the 90’s or early 2000’s, (it probably is) but its meaning for Christians is incredibly important, both to our relationship with God and with one another. “I need you” is a phrase of dependence, surrender, and desperation. It is an expression of deep longing. It reveals that which our hearts desire so much that we simply cannot live without. Ultimately, it is a simple admittance of the reality that we so often fail to realize.
We should have no qualms about saying this phrase to God in worship. However, it will sound a little weird to say to one another. So, I get it if we don’t say this to one another, but it should certainly be the disposition of our hearts. Perhaps we can find other ways of saying this to each other that wouldn’t be found in a cheesy love song or Christmas rom-com.
This phrase is one that our sinful nature and our cultural values despise. “I don’t need God” and “I don’t need anyone” are more in line with our natural inclinations and cultural mantras. These, I would argue, are the great lies of the West, and possibly Satan’s greatest deceptions in the modern world.
Nietzsche’s madman (who is only perceived as the madman by the rest of the characters in his story, but in Nietzsche’s view was the hero of the tale, seeing the truth before everyone else) famously declared that God is dead and we have killed him. By this he was expressing a common sentiment in Modernity—the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution have explained away God with reason, facts, and science. The ancients believed God made it rain. Now we know the causes of rain are natural and predictable, for the most part. Therefore, God is no longer necessary to explain the phenomena we experience. For the most part today, the dominant cultural mood has moved to Postmodernism which is much more open to the spiritual and existence of the supernatural, but the influence of Modernism certainly still remains in pockets of our society.
These sentiments, I don’t need God and I don’t need anyone, when believed, leave us disconnected from God and from one another. In this state we are isolated and more vulnerable to further deceptions and evil. These are the lies beneath the lies that move us further and further away from God and God’s people.
The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution were, of course, necessary correctives to many God-of-the-gaps explanations for natural phenomena.* We don’t know how this works so it must be God. Yet, the naturalistic explanations fail to recognize the true depth of our need for God. We need God for far more than to cause the rain.** Without God our answers to life’s biggest questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny are shallow and unsatisfactory.
Though we may not know it or often live like it, even in our current day we are still desperately in need of God. So we declare with the Psalmist,
Psalm 73:26 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 40:17 17 As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God!
*Ironically, many of the early scientists of the Scientific Revolution were Christians attempting to discover how God designed the universe.
**I would argue God is the ultimate cause of everything, even natural phenomenon, because we cannot have an infinite series of regression. Eventually we must come to the “Unmoved Mover” as Aristotle posited, who was the first cause. This must be God.
Reflection
Reflect on the dominant cultural posture towards our need for God and others. Are there any areas in your life that you have believed these lies—you don’t need God and you don’t need anyone else? If not in your life, how have you seen these sentiments in others you love?