Beginnings—God on a dirt road walking toward me

1) What’s your gut response to the following statement? “Today I wonder why it is God refers to Himself as ‘Father’ at all. This, to me, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake.”

At first, you have to wonder what Miller means—a marketing mistake? But when you sit back and reflect on what this means, he has a point. If God wants people to come to know him, why would he want people to call him Father, if almost every human has had some struggle with their earthly Father. Getting over our image our dads can be a hard thing to do. It takes some people a long time, but when we finally do it is a great experience. When we can truly experience God as he was meant to be experienced is truly an amazing thing.

2) What significant memories can you recall that you believe influence your approach and assumptions about Christian spirituality? (I realize this is one of those “can-o-worm” questions, so take as much time as you need.)

I grew up in a conservative Lutheran church and attended there until I was 18. My memories from here mainly deal with how Christianity is a system of do’s and do nots. There are certain things that you must do to “worship” and other things are not “real” forms of worship. You put all this together it is easy to see how people thing Christianity is all about morality and nothing else and that we make it a system rather than a relationship.

Then when I was 18, I started going to a non-denomination church. It was here that I found a group of believers who still were conservative but were willing to acknowledge that faith if more than a system, it is about a relationship.

3) Where does guilt come from?

Guilt is result of sin. Once sin entered the world, we were all given the capacity to feel guilt. We all, whether Christian or not, have some sense of right and wrong. Where does that come from? We all know when we do something wrong and when something is right, thus we have sense of guilt when we purposely do wrong over right.

4) Does Christian spirituality seem more like an aspirin to alleviate guilt or a Godlike slot machine with a lever to pull rather than a relationship?

In the area where I minister, I would answer with God is a slot machine. We want him to fix our problems, we want him to help us, though we are not going to do anything for him, we go, and go and go again to him hoping that the result will come out in our favor.