Monday, September 28, 2015

Fallacies of the Church (part two) -- All You Need Is God

Maybe you've heard the joke:

There was a man caught in a flood because he didn't leave his house when he was told to evacuate. Rather than leave, he put his faith in God to save him. The waters rose higher and higher until he was eventually forced to climb out onto his roof. Once there, a man in a small boat came by and offered to carry him to safety. The man replied, "No, thank you. God will save me."

The waters continued to rise until he was sitting on the very top of his roof. A couple of men came by in a fishing boat and offered to carry him to safety. The man replied, "No, thank you! God will save me."

The waters continued to rise until he was forced to climb to the top of his chimney to sit. A helicopter came by and lowered itself and dropped a rope. The man replied, "No, thank you! God will save me!"

The waters continued to rise, and the man was swept away and drowned. Upon entering Heaven, he said to God, "God, I put my faith in you. Why didn't you save me?"

God answered, "I sent two boats and a helicopter. What more did you want?"

** ** **

Unfortunately, this joke is the perfect example of one of the greatest lies of "the church": God is all you need. And, hey, I get it; there are plenty of verses you can point to in the Bible that seem to say that, plenty of verses that talk about how God will supply your needs. Your physical needs. Except, the problem there is that those needs, with the exception of manna in the desert, don't magically appear. People provide them.

The thing is this: This is one of the most harmful lies of the church, this idea that God is all you need. It's always delivered in the context of someone needing help, which is what makes it so destructive. Are you going through an emotional upheaval, like a divorce? Don't worry; God is all you need. Are you going through a financial difficulty, like you just lost your job and can't make your house payments? Don't worry; God is all you need. Did you just suffer a physical trauma, like you found out you have cancer? Don't worry; God is all you need.

This line is always delivered in an effort to get the human(s) saying it out of any responsibility to be of assistance in the situation. "Oh, you don't need me. God is all you need." Then, if that situation doesn't turn around and end up in a positive manner? Well, there's definitely something wrong with the individual who had the problem. That person didn't "trust" God enough or, maybe, and even worse, God didn't like that person to begin with.

"All you need is God" is a cop out from "the church" and its members delivered on a weekly basis to people "the church" doesn't want to associate with.

What's worse (and it's worse because it's more insidious) is that it teaches people to not accept help, just like the guy in the joke. Accepting help from other people is some twisted kind of weakness and proof that you're not trusting God to... what? Who knows. Materialize a stack of money in your living room? "Fix" the spouse who is initiating the divorce? Heal you over night of the cancer? I'm just going to say this: If you're in need and someone offers help, fucking take the help! That's what people are for. Because God is actually not all you need.

What I know from experience from the use of this statement against people (and, yes, I do mean "against"), either from getting out of needing to offer help or people refusing to ask for it, is that when things don't work out, people feel abandoned by God and, therefore, abandon "the church," which, actually, might be for the better. However, destroying someone's faith is never for the better. And "the church" was put here to help people, not to tell them that they only need God and everything will be okay.

Look, I'm not going to get into a tit for tat verse argument about the validity of the statement; that would be pointless. Instead, I'm going to look at one particular event in the Bible, a foundational event, you could say. It doesn't even matter if you take this event as literal fact or some sort of metaphor, the truth that comes out of this is the same either way if you believe that God created man as a being meant to be in a relationship with Him. Let's look at Adam:

God is sitting around up in Heaven and, evidently, being a bit bored. All He has are Angels who don't have "free will," whatever that means considering a third of them rebelled against Him. Whatever the case, God decides to make a man, and He does. For a while, everything is great. God comes down to the special place He made for the man, Eden, and hangs out with him every night. Maybe they played poker? Or, maybe, they had a long running game of Monopoly going? You know with just two people that game can go on for ages. Or, maybe, they just skipped stones on the lake. I don't know.

What I do know is that, after a while, God realized that He, He being God!, was not enough for Adam. Adam was lonely and bored and couldn't handle all of the work of taking care of Eden all by himself. God was NOT all Adam needed. The end result of that is... well, people. Social people that need to depend on each other and cannot get by on God alone, as it were.

And I could go on and on. God appeared to Moses and told Moses that He would be with him, and Moses said, "Nope, I need a person." David had Jonathan. Paul had Barnabas. Jesus had his disciples! God, as man, needed people! Obviously, God is NOT all you need.

That the current iteration of Christianity is full of this message, "All you need is God," from the pulpit and pews to Christian music, is, well, it's horrible and destructive and a lie. In fact, it's undermining to the whole message of true Christianity. Of course, what we have in the United States today is more of a political movement, not a faith, and that message fits right in with that. A church that is preaching the "all you need is God" teaching is, more than likely, not a church you should be attending. Unless, of course, you're already bought into the same idea as a way of avoiding helping people.

20 comments:

  1. I spit out my coffee laughing from your line, "fucking take the help". Good one and excellent message! "All you need is God" does sound like a cop out statement.

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  2. I see it a bit differently - no surprise there, huh? I think God comes to us in many different forms of our Faith. So, yes, He showed up in the guys belief that God will be there to rescue him but He also showed up as the boats and helicopter. So, yeah, all you need is God.

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    1. Elsie: I think you missed the point. He didn't take the help that God sent because he was waiting for the Hand of God to reach down and pick him up.

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  3. I love that story; I think of it all the time.

    I agree: telling people all they need is God is wrong. People have twisted religion around to their own ends for so long that it's just a Gordian knot of conflicting stories by now. While I'm no biblical scholar, all the stories I can recall of Jesus in particular were of him helping other people. He helped the wedding by making wine. He fed people with the loaves and the fishes. Those are the two that spring to mind. He didn't say "Well, Mom, I guess all those people need is God, so don't bother me about the wine."

    I keep saying it in different versions, but it boils down to this: If the God you believe in lets you be mean or indifferent or hurtful, then you've got the wrong God -- either because you're misinterpreting Him, or because I don't want any part of such a being.

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  4. I just had to add: It's "For God so loved the world He gave His only Son." PERIOD. Not "He gave His only Son, which is quite a lot, but there were parts of the world God didn't love, like people who need a hand up or people who like others of the same sex, or people who have beliefs that differ in a tiny degree from your own, no He didn't give His only Son for them, I guess it was God so loved Those Parts Of The World That Got It Right."

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    1. Briane: Specifically, he helped the poor and destitute, not the Republicans. Um, I mean the Pharisees.

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  5. Ultimately, God is still all you need, but you have to understand that He will be using other people and things to help you.

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    1. Alex: If God was all you need, there never would have been women. Period.

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  6. I think the "refusal to use modern medicine" falls into this category, too. I get so frustrated with people who refuse to treat their children for religious reasons. if they want to be ignorant themselves that is their business, but to take the choice away from their kids is criminal.

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    1. Hart: Oh, yeah, it's certainly a subculture of all of this.

      And I think you're right about the criminal part. If I remember correctly, a couple went to jail not too long ago for allowing their child to die rather than accept medical aid.

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  7. I absolutely agree. There's nothing that's more infuriating, especially on my Facebook feed as of late, than seeing someone sit back and constantly whine, "Oh, life is so difficult right now. Praying to God to deliver me from this." And then they go right back to sitting on their ass doing nothing. Because they don't have to do anything. God is going to help them.

    Having faith is great. Expecting God to just magically bail you out of your problems with you do nothing at all is not.

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    1. ABftS: Paul's response to that kind of behavior was "let them starve."

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  8. That's something that has always bothered me about some religious people. They refuse to accept things like medicine because it's not god waving a magic wand and healing them. It's like if something isn't directly stated in (or somehow inferred from) the bible, it isn't valid. They're expecting god to be the answer for every single thing ever, even "What does 2 + 2 equal?"

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    1. Jeanne: You do know that 2+2 doesn't exist, right? I mean, that's not in the Bible.

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  9. I am not a religious person. I've never understood belief on an intellectual level. I know the God is all you need message is intended to comfort but it seems too easy.

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    1. TAS: It is too easy. And it ends up not being a comfort at all when the god you think you believe in doesn't come through for you.

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  10. I know someone who has been out of work for going on two years now. To see them constantly harangue on "God will provide" while they do nothing is driving me nuts. No, God will not provide unless you get off your ass and try to find a job.

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    1. Shannon: Yeah, it's not likely that a job is going to fall out of the sky and land on someone.

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  11. I think the "God is all you need" is a vast oversimplification of the message of the church or believers or perhaps an inability of stating the real message.
    In one sense I think it can be said that God is all that ultimately matters for any of us. God is the force that can pull us through, but that doesn't mean we should just wait for things to come our way or happen to us.

    God is a comforting statement for some who face futile circumstances of which they have little or no control. But in most cases I think God provide a means to attaining what we need and it's up to us to find those means and put them to use.

    Arlee Bird
    A to Z Challenge Co-host
    Tossing It Out

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