Does God DO Anything?

The latest survey of American religious attitudes is out. The number of people who profess no religion at all is up—to 15% of all Americans. The number of people who identify themselves as “Christian” has dropped a point or two to just above three quarters of the population.
These figures may upset conservative and religious Americans, but they can hardly come as a surprise. Why shouldn’t the number of believers go down? Why shouldn’t the number of Americans who’ve said, “A plague on all your houses” go up?
Of what practical use IS American Christianity? Yes, I said “practical”. The church is tax free. That status is, in effect, a government subsidy. The theory behind every government subsidy is that the people are supposed to get something tangible in return for the extra taxes they pay to cover the subsidy.
So—what are we getting back for allowing churches, synagogues and mosques to occupy some of the most valuable real estate in America for free? Look, for instance, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St Thomas’s Episcopal Church and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian in midtown Manhattan.
Think of how much tax revenue is lost to New York City as they sit there. What do they give the city back? More than twenty years ago, during a terribly cold night in New York, then-Mayor Koch begged the local churches to allow the homeless to come in and spend the night on the pews.
You don’t even have to raise the heat, he said. Fifty-five degrees beats subzero outside. In all of New York City, with its uncountable hundreds of houses of worship, only two opened their doors. What could possibly motivate a homeless person in New York to look to a church for help?
The churches of the mainline denominations have often become elitist social clubs. Those with cheap suits aren’t really welcome. And they are the denominations that are losing the most members. I wonder why? For one thing, most have those pallid excuses for churches don’t have decent golf courses or heated swimming pools. What’s to go for?
I’ve listened to pastors in some of those churches tell us off the pulpit that much of the Bible is myth, that God is not to be taken too seriously. After all, what does he DO?
I asked that question for the first time when I was twenty. I had been raised in what is now called an “evangelical church”. There was some tension between members who said the stories in scripture were real and those who felt that there was a lot of figurative language there.
One day I went to see the pastor of our church privately. I was questioning. After he sat me down in his office, I asked a question that best translates as, “Does God DO anything?” At first he seemed unable to grasp what I was actually asking. I kept coming back to it.
Comprehension dawned on his face. With it came anger. Life, his voice rising as he said, is what YOU make of it. I, he said, got the GI Bill and worked my way through college and seminary—all by myself! It’s all up to you. Nothing, no one else, figures into the equation.
When I protested that God ought to be of some use in this life, the pastor got really angry. (Remember Soviet leader Khrushchev’s taunt that religion is nothing more than “pie in the sky” after a miserable life on Earth. This, he said, was why he was an atheist.)
“You,” the pastor snarled, “are nothing but a mystic.” To him that word was obviously as close to a curse as he allowed himself to get. He put me out of his office and refused to speak further.
To this day, if all I had to choose from was a denomination that believed in a God who does nothing useful for anyone on earth, I wouldn’t bother to attend.
I’ve better to do—especially on a beautiful Sunday morning. There’s sleeping late. There’s the Sunday paper to peruse. You could make a really nice breakfast. There are beaches. You could even clean the garage. Any of the above beats sitting on a hard pew listening to a vapid bit of moral uplift.
If God doesn’t care about me on this earth; why should I care about him?
That is why I am now an adherent of fundamental Pentecostalism. We believe in a God who acts, here and now, in this life—and cares what happens to us, and makes good things happen to those who are willing and obedient. Such a God DOES things.
Since my God is active in my life, I have no incentive to join the 15% who adhere to no religion at all. Oh yes, if you want to call me a “mystic”, go right ahead. It seems to me to be foolishness to waste any time at all on a faith that does not involve the mystical.