God, the Santa Claus of Spirituality; Jesus, the Easter Bunny of Christianity; the Holy Spirit, Tooth Fairy of Baby Teeth under the Pillow
Sunday Message
No, I don’t believe God is the Santa Claus of spirituality, but there are ways of making it sound as if it is true. When there is a need, whether it is for a parking space near the front door of Walmart or healing for a terminally ill loved one, prayer goes to God. Prayer isn’t a bad thing, but the language used for the rest of the story can lead to confusion, especially about God. It’s like writing a Christmas list weeks before Christmas. The list is dropped off at the post office for delivery to The North Pole and then you wait. Everything depends on how Santa responds.
On Christmas morning after barreling down the stairs you find a beautiful package marked with your name sitting under the tree. You are the person who wrote the Christmas list to Santa Claus. Since your name was on your list, it’s obvious Santa found you and left that box for you. To some people, prayer is exactly like that. Sometimes your prayer doesn’t come out the way you hoped, but disappointment is eased a little because people say it must have been God’s will, everything happens for a reason or, “God said, ‘No. Maybe later.’” When the prayer request is filled and there is a healing or the parking space is perfect, the story is retold of the gift God provided because, “God is good, all the time.” It’s exactly the way it happens on Christmas morning, don’t you think?
Just to clarify, I also do not believe Jesus is the Easter Bunny of Christianity, but he might as well be. We wait for Easter Sunday when the empty baskets of our lives will be filled with candy galore. In spiritual terms, that is one incredibly sacred life changing moment. Somehow with the Tooth Fairy, our old baby teeth are taken from under the pillow while we sleep and we are left with money to spend as we wish. The invisible world provides for everything, our wish list at Christmas, our broken stuff on Easter, and our special needs when we lose a tooth to make room for permanent growth.
It sounds like the stories of God, Jesus, and the unseen Spirit.
Well, hello!!! Good Sunday Morning! Welcome to your first experience with my unique views. It’s nice to be with you.
I thought I would jump right in today with this first Message for Pastor Gloria’s substack church by sharing one of my greatest concerns. We have been confusing people for generations, unintentionally putting labels that make no sense on their hearts and minds. In the process we prepare them to collect seeds for growing without directions about how the goodness of God really works. Barely existing and thriving are two very different results.
My basic problem is making God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit solely responsible for the physical world where we exist, creating stories and expressions the community around us thinks make no sense, but there is no alternative for it. When we explain God is in control as events take place, we rarely think of the process between a prayer and a special ending, the many steps and choices it takes for good to happen become lost in, “God is good, all the time; All the time, God is good.”
I am concerned because I am convinced the answer to our prayers does not lie in the hands of the unseen God. It lies in the hands and hearts and material abilities of the people around us, or, in other words, with us! It’s ironic, isn’t it? We know how the box under the tree at Christmas comes to be there. There are people in skin who care about our Christmas wishes. They work together to plan the surprise under the tree Christmas morning, It really is nothing magical. For an Easter Bunny to fill our empty basket with candy, it is people who remember their Easters searching for colored eggs and milk chocolate shapes. That surprise from the tooth fairy under the pillow is the strategic effort of grownups who hurriedly rush around on short notice and hope not to wake us in the middle of the night. Finding the tooth and swapping it for cash is as close to a magic trick as most adults ever achieve.
Could we go back to the story of God? What about not expecting God to answer the prayers, because God does not have hands, feet, and all the materials it takes to help? What if we stop making everyone around us feel as if asking for prayer is the only option and the outcome is always predetermined by a plan we can do nothing about but pray?
Unfortunately, this is my concern. When God is considered the one who decides, the one who knows what should happen, and the one with unexplained abilities to affect circumstances, most people are likely to believe in waiting for God. Things feel out of our hands so we take little action, expecting whatever happens will be up to the invisible God in spite of the fact the invisible one has no physical attributes to use. This, to me, is a dreadful misunderstanding. We are the team on the ground, the ones in skin, representatives in our world able to effect more than we think.
What an honor to be doing whatever can be done representing what a loving creator would like to do, but needs all of creation, especially us for the work! It’s a kind of partnership in the same way the Tooth Fairy comes under cover of darkness and a surprise ends up under the pillow when the child wakes in the morning. Nobody sees the Tooth Fairy. So it is with the spirit presence. The same volunteers who work within the image of a tooth fairy are here to work where there are tools to use and inspired actions to be taken. We who are here are always important in the way prayers are answered. We are equally important when no prayers are offered.
How does it work for those who do not believe in God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus? How can we presume – and it is presumption – everyone needs God? We cannot. Praying does not make the answer. Not praying does not compromise the outcome of circumstances. Prayer can be centering, unifying and reassuring. It can even bring an important idea to the surface. In those ways, prayer is meditative strength but the real reason for what happens is the engagement of all creation in the interest of everything good.
In a Facebook post I recently read a story about a Rabbi being asked why God created atheists. I think often about those living outside commonly taught godpractices. To me, living as if the traditional points of godreference do not exist says more about one’s spirituality than living according to them. It seems Facebook’s Rabbi agrees. “Atheists are the most important example for all who believe in God. When an atheist is moral, and good, and kind, and compassionate, it’s not from belief in commands from God or fear of punishment for being bad. An atheist performs acts some call righteous because they are the right things to do. This speaks of a [pure heart].”
The source doesn’t matter to the atheist since the atheist believes there is nobody else, no invisible presence to act without the atheist’s participation.
I have taken liberties with paraphrasing; however, whether or not that post is a true story, it makes goodsense, allsense, to me. As an illustration of spiritual confidence coming from within and bonding with what is without, it reflects the constant presence in my universe (the bubble where I live) impressing me to move into a new moment, walk through another door sharing in the good intentions of creation.
When I was planning the community center quickly closed by church leaders who relieved me of the precious opportunity, this was a core principle I am still convinced can be hugely effective. The community center concept was about using the facility for an assortment of activities open to the neighborhood. I will write about it here someday. It wasn’t going to be a place where what I believed about God would be necessary for anyone else. It would include anyone, and I expected over time the “anyones” who became part of it would catch the sense of more good and right things to do, eventually filling mentor and leader roles.
The one visional undercurrent was anticipating whatever we did there for ourselves would grow into something relevant beyond those our lives already touched and far beyond the doors to the outside. Can you see the core value of some unidentifiable spiritual confidence coming from within us bonding with what is from outside us and impressing each one to “move into a new moment, walk through another door sharing in the good intentions of creation?” That is what I call church.
Keep in mind, we are all nudged with thoughts about saying or doing something. We may not notice it because we haven’t thought of ourselves as significant in the story. Even if we do notice the nudge, it often appears out of context, unrelated to reason and we are in a hurry. Since it’s all unseen, we feel silly acting on an impulse, so we shake it off. After all, we think skeptically, God is in control. They say there is a purpose for everything. God determines what happens to the person in a nursing home, and answers prayers according to right timing for the couple with the marriage breaking up. Is this true, or, like Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy, are we the “boots on the ground?” We don’t often think of the answers coming right where we are as logical reasons why we (and all the rest of creation including our cells) are important to the results somewhere. Maybe we don’t think it, but we must.
This is Pastor Gloria signing off for now but telling you I absolutely believe we can live moment by moment this way and not only change our situations, but more importantly change the world around us.