Why Does God SPEAK To Us Now?

That question might, quite sensibly, arise in someone’s mind. If we betrayed God’s trust and shattered the lines of communication way back—uncounted years ago—in Genesis 3, why might we be able to hear him now? The original communication lines have not yet been restored.
That question is uniquely answered by Christianity. As a faith, it stands absolutely unique among all other religions for this reason alone. Only in Christianity does God decide that is up to HIM to reach out to man (think of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) and restore some form of communication unilaterally.
In any other faith you can think of, man reaches up to, appeals to and propitiates God. Humans make the overture. Only in Christianity does God reach down to helpless humans, appeal to them, and make the propitiation (pay the damages) FOR them.
In other words, God, the injured party in Adam’s original betrayal, takes the responsibility upon himself to pay the legal penalties for the broken contract. He reaches out and offers peace to fractious, confused and defiantly unapologetic mankind completely on his own.
This view of God—and his relationship with men and women—can be found in no other religion. It is unique in that it makes no sense. The victor doesn’t plead for terms; the offended doesn’t apologize; the injured party doesn’t make restitution. That’s nuts.
But in Christianity that is precisely what happens. St. Paul writes of “the foolishness of God,” (which turns out to be “wiser than men”). He writes again, “The Gospel (the story of Christianity) is something religious folk find offensive, and the educated see as utter foolishness”.
Christianity makes no sense. If offends religious people. It is a joke to the educated. The Christian God, if we evaluate him from a rational point of view, appears to be a fool. No other faith has ever portrayed its deity as what appears, at first blush, to be a complete sucker.
C.S.Lewis makes this vividly clear in his children’s book, “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Aslan (Christ, if any one missed the point) offers himself to be humiliated, tormented by the enemy and killed for the sake of a whiney traitor who has earned nothing of it.
That sums up the whole point of the Christian faith. People generally dislike Christianity—at least initially—because it portrays a God who seems to act out of irrational caring and it portrays us in a most insulting fashion. We are depicted as treacherous, ungrateful, whiney, helpless, powerless and most unlovable.
Is that how you see yourself? We are told that it is how God sees us. We are “sheep without a shepherd”—befuddled and confused (sheep are not too bright—they don’t do well alone). We are, as St. Paul puts it graphically, people “whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things”. Not at all flattering. Many who reject Christianity simply will not accept this view of us as people.
It is possible that such people need to take a second look at the Nazi death camps, the Soviet gulags, the corpses of children after a drive by shooting in America, or what’s left after a bomb hits a house full of civilians. Or just the fear on the faces of people who based their entire future on an investment guru who turns out to have been a fraud.
In Christianity, all the initiative lies on God’s side. He is the one St. John describes as loving us so much “he sent his only son (to die) for us”—and ALL THAT WE CAN DO to help ourselves is “BELIEVE in him.” That is absolutely all Christianity sees us capable of doing for ourselves.
We can do nothing, earn nothing, accomplish nothing ourselves. As Christ says to his apostles, “Without me you can do nothing”. That’s not a flattering summation.
That leaves Christianity as 1) making no sense and 2) being very insulting. No wonder lots of people either don’t like it or choose to water it way down as they present it in their Sunday morning sermons.
But that is Christianity in its simplest, rawest and truest form. (As raw as Auschwitz.) When we finally get past this initial reality—that we are traitors incapable of pleasing or communicating with God in any form—then we become what St. Paul calls “the righteousness of God in Christ”.
After we have apologized and believed we become as virtuous and as pure as God himself—as he sees us (another icky part of Christianity) cleaned up by Christ’s blood. (Think again of Aslan and Edward in “Lion, Witch and Wardrobe”.) We come out the other side of Easter Sunday forgiven and on our way to being restored to the kind of friendship and communication man had before Genesis 3. God has no more gag reflex when he comes near us. The ugliness is gone.
Now God can begin to speak to us—and we can begin to hear and understand. It’s not easy. This is still an occupied world (think France in World War II). After all we gave it to the enemy. That was our treachery. This foe is still killing, stealing and destroying—whether it’s your IRA or your very life.
We hear God through enemy generated static like people in France listening to the BBC or VOA during World War II. It’s not as easy as chatting on one’s cell phone. But it is now possible.
Next time let’s see how.