Amen, Bill Maher!

I think Bill Maher is hilarious, most of the time.  He’s really funny when he’s poking fun at my religion.  In a recent broadcast called “New Rule”, he lambasts the movie, Noah, (which personally seems pretty dreadful to me), and indulges in a clever riff about the ludicrousness of Christians who believe in a tyrant God who punishes the world.  Here are some quotes:

What kind of tyrant punishes everyone just to get back at the few he's mad at? I mean, besides Chris Christie."

"Hey, God, you know you're kind of a dick when you're in a movie with Russell Crowe and you're the one with anger issues."

"You know conservatives are always going on about how Americans are losing their values and their morality, well maybe it's because you worship a guy who drowns babies."

"If we were a dog and God owned us, the cops would come and take us away."

I'm reminded as we've just started Lent, that conservatives are always complaining about too much restraining regulation and how they love freedom, but they're the religious ones who voluntarily invent restrictions for themselves. On a hot summer day, Orthodox Jews wear black wool, on a cold winter night Mormons can't drink a hot chocolate... isn't life hard enough without making shit up out of thin air to fuck with yourself?"  

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/15/bill-maher-god-psychotic-mas-murderer_n_4970831.html)

Here’s what I think, listening to Bill Maher.  “Duh!”  Thanks for pointing out the obvious for us, that Noah’s ark is not literally true, and that a God that decides to kill innocent people is a tyrant.  Like those of us showing up to worship this morning at churches never thought of that.  Like we are honestly going to church so we’re on God’s good side, cowering from his wrath, and storing up our plywood for our future ark.  Like we never thought of a metaphorical meaning for our sacred literature.  “Duh! Captain Obvious!”

To be clear, I’m not interested in watching the Noah movie.  Personally, it looks melodramatic and dreadful--an unnecessary and unimaginative film adaptation of an ancient myth.  Maher is correct, the Noah story is a strange one, and the main character is an angry God.  Most educated people today realize that if there was an ancient flood, it was not because God sent the water to kill all the naughty people.  Most educated people, yes, even Christians, realize the story is a myth to illustrate a point. What is the point?  I'm not sure, except that maybe in the midst of a fantastic disaster like a horrific flood that seems to be punishing all the world, maybe in the midst of all that mess, there is still a moment when the love of God shines through.

Thanks, Bill Maher, for pointing out the ridiculousness of a God I do not believe in, a God that is not preached about in my church, a patriarchal, vengeful God that no person would actually worship.  Of course it is ridiculous!  Who in their right mind would worship such a God?  I left that God behind when I left the church.  I returned when I realized I was missing the point and missing God.  The point is not that an angry God sent the floods.  The point is that the love of God is like the rainbow, the covenant, the promise that, no matter messed up things are, love will triumph in the end.

The God I found in Christ is not the God that damns the entire world to death.  The God I found is the God that sends the rainbow after the flood, to show his promise.  The God who became human, lived with humans, loved humans, surrendered to human violence, and redeemed mankind through the resurrection.  It is the God who loved the world so greatly that he came to save it, not condemn it.  It is the God who saves people when we damn ourselves, who is with us as we suffer, and carries us through our hardships.  It is the God that held me in the palm of his hand through the death of my father, who continued to love me through challenges in my life, who wooed and cajoled me into a relationship with the Divine, with the Great Love in Which We Live and Move and Have our Being.

I do not go to church because I’m afraid of the wrath of God.  I go to church to celebrate being saved from the wrath of my own self-absorption and sin.  I do not go to church or impose restrictions on my life to get right with God or to get into heaven.  I go to church to join the party of universal, undeserved, unadulterated Grace.  I go to church to remind myself of my relationship with God and with my fellow man.

Thanks, Bill Maher for your always entertaining diatribe against a ridiculous god.  You are 100% right that it is silly to worship such an angry, patriarchal, vengeful god.  If we worshiped that god in my church, I would run like hell.  Thankfully, we do not; we worship a God of love.