Spiritual Conversations: Understanding the Cultural Language

by Ron Martoia

There is yet another God conversation the culture is having: the third person conversation about God. God as “It,” God as something out there, God as found and experienced in creation. Alongside the books and conversations about these first person god topics, there is a huge contingent of people who are increasingly concerned about the environment and Mother Earth and the living breathing organism of creation. This is the third person “it” view of God if you will. Whatever you think about the environment is secondary. Adam’s quite literal physical connection to the dirt (adamah in Hebrew, with Adam’s name being adam), and he and Eve being given a mandate to take care of the earth, should be enough for us to recognize people are hovering over material we should be willing to have God-conversations about. Certainly one of the more hopeful conversations going on in the church recently is the need for us to be tuned into the creation, the environment, God’s earth he’s given us to steward.

Again we need to learn to read the Bible with this new view. We have lots of passages that seem to indicate an intimate connection between God and creation. Consider Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.

Creation here is so intimately linked to God. In a passage like this, creation is personified as speaking, as God actually telling us something about himself. Romans 8 seems to be the New Testament counterpart to a passage like Psalm 19.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:18-22)

Again creation is personified as living, breathing, longing and injured.

Of course other passages could be listed but the point is clear: God has a deep connection with creation. And note we didn’t say God is creation. Just like the first person God caveats we noted, we need to offer third person God caveats as well. We need to maintain a view of God that says God is distinct from creation but intimately invested in and working in and through creation. And the issue is getting momentum these days. If Oprah is the goddess of the first person god conversation I would guess we would have to say people like Thomas Berry and more popularly Al Gore are the apostles of the third person god conversation.

Until recently the Christian conversation about ecology and God’s creation was mostly relegated to those who were considered tree-hugging liberals. But not so anymore. This is a huge issue that more and more people in the church are starting to realize is part and parcel of the very story we have been invited to live, a story that starts in the Garden of Eden. Again I need to say I am not suggesting God and creation are one and the same. But I am suggesting that for all the cultural conversation where creation is personified and nearly deified, we have within our Christian tradition and theological repertoire adequate and legitimate resources to enter into powerful conversations.

I can talk to any of my investigating friends about being made like god or having a charge from God to take care of creation, and every one of them instantly gets that and understands what I am talking about. When I use that entry point into the conversation I am starting where they are, not where I wish them to be. When I start there, I then open the possibilities of entering into second person conversation about God as Other, about the God who made creation, about the God that put this intuitive sense in them that they are divine or somehow connected to the divine.

I am afraid as long as Christianity is primarily understood as a batch of propositions where God is judging how well you execute them, we will have problems getting people interested in the story. And I would suggest their lack of interest may be a good thing. Their lack of interest in our truncated, abbreviated Fall-Redemption story may be the very thing we have needed to get us to re-read the story to see if we have it right.

READING THE SIGNS

What we have been talking about here is an exercise in what is called semiotics. The Greek word semion in the Gospel accounts is the word for sign. You may remember Jesus in Matthew 16 saying, “You can interpret the appearance of the sky but you cannot read the signs of the times.” Semiotics is reading the signs of the times.

As we have read culture, we have seen a couple signs that give us hints and clues to entry points into conversations we just haven’t understood how to have. My experience as I have talked about this with many Christians, is while there might be initial resistance to think in these ways, they are simply looking for “biblical permission” to think and interact around these topics because they are so common in the cultural airspace.

Semiotics is exactly what Paul used in his now famous Mars Hill interaction. And I want to make sure we touch on it because I think it is another permission giving touch point for us as we head into a spiritually interested culture but one largely hostile to the Christian version.

I realize that for many of us, we have come out of conservative Christian contexts where conversation like this might not only be perceived as off kilter but worse than that, out right flirting with the devil himself. Some of you will giggle, others of you are saying “no kidding,” and are hiding this Fermi Short lest another staff member see it and get you fired. But let’s look at Paul’s semiotic approach.

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. (Acts 17:22-23)

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