Where God Lives

Once in a Hebrew School, a boy who was studious and not well known---thus not so well-liked, was subject to much harassment. One day the other boys gathered around taunting him and thinking to stump him asked him, “so since you are so smart, can you tell us where God lives?” to which the boy replied, “Can you tell me where he does not?”

One of the virtues of the media world is that we can bypass the world of corporate and popularity-controlled media to communicate on a more positive level. We hear all about the harassment and negativism of online communities, but there is another side.

Lately, I have been paying more attention to online posts. Each day I get notices that people I know have posted something they want to share. I have been pleased to see that my friends have posted stories of wonderful acts of kindness as well as personal pictures and very funny animal clips.

Usually, we only hear of how badly teenagers behave. But this week a story appeared about a group of teenage boys who got up before dawn and shoveled the snow in their entire neighborhood ---sidewalks and driveways of 63 homes! This is not what we are led to expect of teenagers. Yet, there are still those who “pay it forward” just because it is the “right thing to do.”

This is the wonder of the World Wide Web. We can share stories that we will not see on the evening news. Stories about human kindness---that counterbalance the stories of horror and cruelty that fill both print and radio/television media.

Independent media outlets have a chance to show us something about ourselves---not always flattering. A video I came across recently was shocking---but ultimately very uplifting. As a social experiment, a young boy was put out on a busy street in NYC wearing only jeans, a torn T-shirt and socks—no shoes, and a big black garbage bag. He stood for two hours in 5-degree weather. Finally, the only help he got was from a homeless man who had been sitting nearby. Watch it here, and listen to the uplifting message of the homeless man as he gives the boy his own coat and counsels him.

It is a modern-day true enactment of Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 29-37). Help comes from an unlikely source, and it is more generous than could be expected. Having given the boy his coat, he talks to him, encouraging the boy, telling him “I messed up in life...”

Our world, dominated by television and online media grabbing for headlines and attention, often (if not almost entirely) omits stories of service, sacrifice, and acts of kindness by those who reach out, and take the Good Samaritan role.

Where is God? We ask that question in every horrific act of violence and devastating natural disaster. We find ourselves constantly wanting to ask God to stop this violence or to heal the one we love. And in the end, we often find ourselves grasping for answers that do not come easily. If God is in control, the most often asked question is then: Why does such evil continue?

As Dr. Mickey Efird at Duke would say, “That is the wrong question.” We do not live in a world of magic and wizards, even though we love to create them and read about them. Would that broken limbs be healed with a magic wand as in Harry Potter stories. Yet even there, where magic rules, evil abounds.

Theologically the Christian Church has espoused several doctrines over the centuries that attempt to explain God and God’s role in the world. None have ever been satisfactory, but all have had to be accepted in the face of no other answer.

The only true danger in an unexplained presence of evil is that we often wind up blaming God for what goes wrong. So many times I have heard cancer, the death of a child, or a fatal accident, explained as the “will of God.” That is not acceptable. Jesus talks of a God of Love, not fear. This tendency to blame God for evil is one reason we need a better understanding of our Bible. God does not will early death, drought, famine, fatal accidents, natural disasters, murders, and on and on.

This is where our dogmatic denial of a dualistic worldview causes confusion. The reality is that we live in a world that has fallen from grace---a world in which we are no longer in the Garden but forced to toil for our living and be subject to “natural laws.” This creates a dualistic worldview where our real failing is the inability to take God’s gifts of reason and creativity and build a just society. Thrown out into the world, humankind became selfish, and there began evil. There was the fertile ground that has been cultivated since the “fall” by what we term Satan or “the evil one.”

However, that is only a personification to help us identify an element that is actually within ourselves—a resistance to doing good. Just as in Jesus’ parable, and in the video, how often have we---like those on the road or those on the street in NYC, not stopped to “do the right thing?”

The real power of evil, whether we call it “the Devil”, “Satan,” or any other name, is in our collective individual willingness to avoid stretching ourselves---risking ourselves, to do good. In the absence of those efforts, evil thrives. Lives are destroyed, and society is riddled with fear.

Yet there are those who remind us where God lives. There are those who see and take the opportunity to reach out, even if it means giving up their own coat.

The video ends with a powerful (if perhaps a bit grammatically incorrect) statement:

“If you wait until you can do something for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up doing nothing for nobody.”

Where do you say God lives?