Do Not Fear the Breaking

This story is about the biggest idol of all time. 

Not Billy. God.  I’m talking about God. God is the biggest idol of all time and I don’t mean “celebrity.” It’s ironic really.  C.S. Lewis called God “the great iconoclast.”  For those of you who are not seminarians or Church historians or word nerds, iconoclast means “image breaking.”  Icon—“image.”  Clast—“break.”  There have been many iconoclastic movements throughout Church history usually focused on breaking/removing religious icons/images from worship and the spiritual life of the Church.  Protestants are especially sympathetic to these movements—the Reformation being perhaps the most sweeping iconoclastic movement of all. What Lewis means by calling God the great iconoclast, is that God constantly breaks all of our images of God. Lewis explains: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence?” The irony is that Lewis never understood fully the truth of what he was saying. For there was one image, one idea of God, that for Lewis could never be broken—the image of “He.”  For the iconoclasts of Church history, an image that we refuse to break is no less than an idol because we have ceased to worship God and have begun to worship an image of God.  And yet we have, by and large, as a religion maintained an idolatrous adherence to the image of God as a man.  And that makes God, ironically, the biggest idol of all time. 

I have been an idolater.  I still am and probably will be when I die.  Isn’t the point of spiritual growth to be constantly casting down our idols?  Unless we can really reach perfection in this life, that is a job that will never be done.  And it becomes quite difficult when your most cherished idol is God.  A long time passed before I understood that I saw God poorly. I only knew the Father, Abba, the divine husband-lover. That's who God was to me, end of story.  And I thought he was God, that silly idol.  I thought he was God. But God is so much more and so much less than that piece of shit.  Ezekiel’s words not mine.  That’s what the infamous prophet likes to call idols.  People never translate it into English that way.  They translate the phrase only as ‘idol.’  But there is a Hebrew word for idol and Ezekiel doesn’t use it.  He calls them pieces of shit—“dung pellets” for the less profane.  But Ezekiel had guts.  I think he’d say SHIT and say it loud.  He had no patience with idols—at least the ones he recognized.  So I learned that from him at least: have no patience with idols.  There will always be idols that elude us but when we see one—tear the damn thing down! 

The Father idol has not been an easy one to break--personally.  As a faith community it has been near impossible.  We love it so much.  We fear it or we fear losing it.  Images and symbol systems form us in our bones; they lead us into a way of being not just knowing.  The Father idol isn’t just an abstract idea; it is something we know and believe down to our toes.  And rooting it out and breaking it up takes a long time and a lot of effort.  But God helps us if we let Her.

For one thing, She speaks. Sometimes I wish I heard an audible voice, speaking clearly and directly, answering me in speeches or simple yeses and noes.  But God does not speak that way. You know the story about Moses on the mountaintop looking for God in the fire and the earthquake and the whirlwind?  And God is nowhere to be found, but after the whirlwind, there comes a still, small voice.  And that still, small voice was God. Hearing God is hearing a voice that cuts through the whirlwind in your spirit with its profound stillness. Sometimes there are no words but there is a voice nonetheless. Sometimes there are images, feelings, and movements even, which speak profound meaning without really speaking.  God isn’t flashy like a fire. God isn’t violent like an earthquake.  God is so much more deeply present than that.  God is as close as our skin. So, She communicates in the intimacy of a whisper. Shouting would be absurd.

One day I told God to fuck off.  She stuck around anyway.  Typical.  She just acted like I wasn’t speaking to Her but to someone else.  When I looked into Her face She seemed so proud of me and I realized She was right—I was speaking to someone else.  I was speaking to Piece-of-Shit God. And there was a moment of breaking.  This is how God helps us chip away at our idols—by being Present.

Several years ago I was reading one of the Twilight books and thinking how horrible the dialogue was when God said to me—“I love you kind of like that.” 

God, this dialogue is absurd so if you’re trying to insult me—kudos. I felt God smile.

“You know what I mean.” I did. She meant—“My heart aches that way sometimes because I love you so much.” I groaned.

Edward Cullen is a control freak! Are you gonna put me under house arrest if I start hanging out with someone you don’t like?

“No, no.” She replied, “I said “kind of.” I will never try to control you. As if I could.” She smiled and winked. “My power is not a controlling kind of power.  It’s a freeing power.”

Ah. That’s the part I can’t believe.

“I know.” 

Here was another part of the idol that needed chipping away.  Edward Cullen is not exactly an original character—aside from the sparkling vampire thing.  You can find traces of him everywhere—even the Hebrew Bible.  He’s not so dissimilar from the way the prophets often describe God.  The divine husband so passionately in love with his “bride” that her “infidelity” drives him, reasonably, say the prophets, into fits of madness.  God was very clearly telling me--I do love you passionately but I’m not the least bit interested in controlling you. I am not a jealous God. I’m just not.

I believe that now.  There have been many of these moments, too many for one blog; I imagine there will be many more.  I have learned that I am truly created in the image of God.  She knows my body the way a woman would.  She walks in my shoes, she knows my burdens.  I have learned that God is a different kind of angry.  I have learned that God is in and around not just out and about.  Often when this topic is raised people get defensive and freak out.  I understand.  I remember feeling that way.  God can still be our Father but only after the Father idol has been shattered. into. bits.  The Father idol needs to be broken so that God can speak to us prophetically about fatherhood rather than having fatherhood speak restrictively about God. An image that is broken can be remade and can, like a humble friend, offer us new life, new love, new beauty.  An image that is never broken becomes a tyrant.  It will offer us slavery in the guise of freedom, guilt in the guise of grace and control in the guise of love.  We have a deep-seated attachment to our Father idol. But God is indeed the great iconoclast, whose presence is marked by shattering.  Do not fear the breaking.  The breaking and remaking, not the image, is where we find God most truly.