Bob Schneider is one of my favorite musicians on the planet. He is a songwriter of catastrophic talent and his lyrics are beautiful and challenging. He once wrote a song about God. It explored some really interesting concepts about who God is in some ways that could easily be taken as offensive. So, Bob was forced to change the lyrics and in a brilliant stroke of sarcasm explained the whole situation this way:
“We had to change one word in the song. Basically because I was just afraid we were going to offend a lot of people. Basically I’m all about the money when it comes to making records. It’s cash first. It’s give me the money and you know ^&*# art, as it were, %8#@ the original artistic integrity of the song. Just make sure that I can appeal to as many people as humanly possible so that I can make the most amount of money so that I can have the biggest, fanciest steaks and most comfortable socks to wear on my feet. So, anyways, we changed one of the words.”
One of the reasons Bob had pushback was that some people understandably felt the song made light of the Lord. It did not respect the seriousness of God. And I was reminded of the Bob/God incident recently by a comment someone left on this site. It was a good comment, well written and I felt very honest, but one of the lines stuck out to me:
“Children’s programs that substitute for regular services do your kids the disservice of not inculcating the seriousness of God.”
I confess, I had to look up “inculcating” because I’m not so smart and it means “to teach.” That sentence is only one line of a much longer comment and the next line starts out with “God is joyful,” so it’s not that the author sees God as a monster of seriousness. But I was paused on this line because it forced me to wrestle with a question:
“Do people have a harder time seeing God as a serious entity or seeing God as a joyful, loving entity?”
I know the answer in my own life. I have never, ever struggled to see God as a serious individual. I have never doubted that when you enter His court, there are serious issues on the table and serious discussions and serious missions. In addition to writing about how I have often “painted God mad,” I would say that for more than 30 years on this planet, I have been awash in the seriousness of God.
But love has been so much harder. Seeing God as someone that laughs with me and kids with me and rolls down hills of grass with me on lazy Tuesdays in June has been such a bigger challenge. Seeing Him as someone that cares about the little things that no one else notices or as someone that collects my tears in a jar as Psalms says has been difficult. Believing that it gives Him joy to see me writing or playing Frisbee or a million other things has been hard.
Things are changing though. In the last few years, He has been showing me that He is more flowers than thistles more laughter than wrath, more open hand than closed fist. Is He serious? Without a doubt. Do I still feel like it’s a big deal to come into His court? Certainly, only now I think it’s OK to arrive there by water slide.
Bob Schneider closes his song about God, which I am not saying you should go listen to, by writing something I think is true of my own life now.
and I can believe
what can’t be known for sure
the things that might be
the things that never were
and still not know a thing in the end
and still believe that God is my friend
I’d like to close this post with a small opportunity. It’s been a wild, beautiful week at SCL with 120 comments on bringing kids to church and more than 85 on Jessica Simpson. And next week is going to get a little wilder with some of the topics we’ll discuss.
I thought it might be cool to share something today. I’d love to just open up the idea of expressing who God is. To confess or laugh or shout or share or whatever you feel like doing on a Friday.
I’ll go first with three of my own “God is” statements:
God is serious, serious about loving me in any way possible.
God is ridiculous to me.
God is big enough for my anger, small enough for my whispers and strong enough for my worries.
So what do you think?
Finish this statement as many times as you want:
God is ________
God is ________
