A Closer Look
A Glacier Melting into the Sea
These Bears Drowned Before They Could Reach Solid Ice
Rainforest Clear Cutting Destroying Habitat of Endangered Species
In the early 90s there was a popular song called “From a Distance” and was sung by several well known artists, including Bette Midler and Kathy Mattea . The lyrics imagine how we look from God’s perspective, which the writer visualizes to be from somewhere out in space looking down on this sphere we call Earth. Listen to the lyrics:
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.
From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.
From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.
From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
what all this fighting is for.
From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.
This is the song of every man.
And God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.
God is watching us from a distance.
Its certainly an interesting perspective, and it was a popular and pretty song. But it is rotten theology. It says everything looks pretty good when viewed from afar. Which is, of course, often true. I even joke that I look pretty good – from a distance!
The theological implication, however, is that “from a distance” is precisely how God sees us. This God conjured up in the mind of the lyricist is remote, distant and most of all, obviously blind to what is really going on “down here” on earth.
And, seeing nothing out of order, oblivious to the details of our lives, he simply watches. He doesn’t DO anything. He just watches. He watches like we would watch a bunch of ants carrying off a moth, or like we watch a far off tornado or a hail storm, fascinated but uninvolved since it doesn’t affect us.
But, up close to the action, down here on earth, it is, in fact, quite a different story. The icecaps are melting, glaciers are disappearing, polar bears will likely be extinct in the wild in my lifetime, all because of global warming. The forests are decimated as are hundreds of mammal, reptile, and insect species. The streams, rivers, and seas are polluted.
And we humans use our greatest powers of ingenuity and creativity for humiliating and destroying other human beings. People suffer and die; people lie, cheat and steal, poverty runs rampant, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Of course, none of this is visible “from a distance.” But, when viewed up close and personal, it is all too much. Our world, and too many of our lives, are a complete mess.
The song does have a moral message, a positive, hopeful humanistic message. The lyricist wants us to become who we appear to be when viewed “from a distance.” From a distance we are one, no one is in need, harmony echoes through the land, and hope dwells abundantly in every home.
However, for the songwriter, in order to do this we must climb out of the hole we are in. God is “up there” and “looking down.” – but he isn’t doing anything, and he has no intention of doing anything.
The song suggests that God cannot save us; only we can save ourselves. The changing, the peacemaking, the forgiving, the healing, and the saving is our work. There is no hint that there is far more evil in this world than man can even imagine, let alone hope to end. There is far more pain than we can heal, far more greed and hatred than man alone can handle. It has always been so.
If that is true, then what do we do? Do we throw up our hands and just give up? Who do we turn to to help us when we cannot begin to create our own future? When everything seems to be going to hell in a hand basket and nobody seems either to care or to be able to do anything about it if he or she did care, do we just give up, turn in 0n our selves and ignore the reality of our human condition?
St. Paul has an answer to that, but his is an entirely different perspective than that of the lyricist. In his letter to the church at Phillippi he urges the congregation to repentance, change, and holy living not because God is far away, but because “The Lord is near.” (Phil 4:5b).
Paul, like the song writer, is concerned about the gap between humans and God. However, unlike the song, the unified thrust of Paul and of all the biblical writers is this: we, through our sin, created the gap between God and man. But the gap is closing, and we aren’t the ones closing it.
The chasm is being filled, the road is being made straight, cleared of obstructions, being made ready for the coming of the Lord. The great gulf between God and humanity is being filled, but the filling in is coming from God’s side. God is coming closer.
God’s increasing nearness is not because we have climbed up higher to get his perspective on things. We have already tried that with the building of the Tower of Babel. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. We are incapable of climbing up to visit God; and we are not wired to solve all the injustice, cruelty and destruction that our minds are wired to conceive.
No, the great gulf between man and God is being filled by God because God has climbed down, seen what is going on, and made a decision to do something about it!
Paul didn’t just make this idea up. From the beginning the prophets of the Lord have urged us to get our act together because “The Lord is Coming.” John the Baptist, in the tradition of the prophet Isaiah, appealed to God’s certain coming – as a way of urging humans to live justly and mercifully with each other. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” John shouted. “Make his paths straight.” God will come, John announced, and in that day “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Lk 3:6).
The Gospel of John (Jn 1:1-14) tells us that God is not content to watch from a distance as we go on bungling our stewardship of creation and mangling each other. Rather, God is coming; the gap is closing.
To be sure, there is a very real distance between God and us, as there must always be between Creator and creature. We are the work of God’s hands; we are not now and will never be God. Our ineptitude is obvious even when written in the most positivly slanted of the histories of the human race.
Unfortunately, many people assume that the distance between God and us is so grand and infinite that is unbridgeable. And, since it is unbrigeable it is irrelevent. The song writer clearly implies this to be the case, and appeals to us to do whatever it takes to make the distant view of earth a reality. We are to create the perfect, peaceful world that God thinks he sees because he is too far away to know any better!
Would that we could! But we can’t. We aren’t God, and while we must try to do our best to stop the stupidities of our own destruction, we need help, and a lot of it! Like maybe we need a God that cares enough about us – in spite of our sin, - to come to us! – for we surely can’t get to him on our own. And how many centuries of incompetent stewardship of this creation do we need to live before the obvious dawns on us? "We can't do this by ourselves!"
And yet, ironically, that is precisely the good news that Advent brings! The good news is that the gap between God and man has been breached. God has rushed into the world to meet us. In a few days Christians throughout the world will celebrate the truth that God has traversed the distance between him and us.
In a week Christians will celebrate our belief that God has come down to live, teach, preach, heal and begin the reconciliation that was prayed for by kings and rabbis, urchins and prophets. Over two thousand years ago on a cold night in an improbable village, born to an improbable young woman God arrived – up close and in person – God took flesh and entered this messy world. Or, as the Bible so eloquently puts it: “the Word became a flesh and dwelt among us.”
As we near the end of this Advent season the waiting, and listening, and hoping and praying that God will, in Isaiah’s words “…tear open the heavens and come down,’ is coming to an end. And a Christmas truth believed by all Christians will be proclaimed: that the long awaited miracle has happened: Christ has come, Emmanuel, “God with us.” And never can it be said that he knows us only “From a Distance.”
My prayer is that all, regardless of religion, belief system, or personal faith, will know the joy that comes from feeling the closeness of God in their lives. And if you do not acknowledge the existence of God, if you have no belief system or personal faith at all, if your personal spiritual journey has not led you to faith, I hope that you too will find peace, love and the friendship that enables us all to help to do our part to make this small planet a better place than it was when we inherited it.
Monte
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Comments
Blessings,
Monte
If you are a believer then it is up to you to make the connection with God. And if you aren't a believer then it is up to you to make that connection with others who share your views on caring for the planet and others.
And, whichever we are we've got plenty to account for, and a whole lot of work to get back anywhere close to even.
So, you are absolutely right, there is always hope. I have always thought how very awful life would be without it. I think I finally figured out how bad that would be about 45 years ago when I first read Andre Malraux's "Man's Fate." That depressing and oh so real little existentialist book captures the meaning of lost hope like no other I have read since.
Thanks for dropping by and commenting. Good to see you here now and then. I appreciate it.
Monte
Another wonderful, beautifully written piece on the power of faith and God's presence in our lives. It is such an easy choice when one realizes that not only is God not at a distance, he is in every one of us, inexplicably. He inhabits us, our thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, sorrows and our doubts. He is there, in all forms. Living God, all encompassing entitity that has given life and can take it away. He loves us, unconditionally; more than anything else we can expect from this fleeting life. He loves us even when we doubt He exists. He is there and will always be there for each and every one of us, no matter our beliefs, our faith, our ego driven destiny and our ultimate end. "Seek and ye shall find." "Ask and ye shall receive." These are words to live by and whitness the marvels that we can bring about by simply accepting that there is an omnipresent, spiritual being, greater than us. And He is with us, in us, watching over us with tender mercy and loving open arms.
Monte, you inspire me with your words and then I just run with my own. Peace.
I am excited for you that Mary is coming for an visit and that you can catch up on so much that is literally impossible to do on the phone or in writing. There is nothing like person to person face to face communication. How can we hug an email?
Thanks, as always, for your wise advice (in your PM a while ago) and for your comments on this post.
Blessings,
Monte
It is always important to remember, is it not, the simple truth that God is love, and how could any love, let alone the greatest love, ever exist or function without the most immediate form of involvement with the beloved. To be sure there is an inherent distance between creator and creature, and therein lies our freedom of will. But if we use that freedom of will to allow God to close with us, I believe we can find not just the spiritual peace but the clarity of judgment needed to amend our lives and our world.
Hopefully we will be able, my medical situation allowing, to get away for a week after that to head to South Carolina to the beach. I can't walk very far these days without triggering a huge flare up of the erythromelalgia in my feet so I will have to give up walking on the beach. Those flares are then trigger nodular leukocytoclastic vasculitis, small fiber neuropathy and a rebound Renaud's flare. So it is best to avoid them when I can.
But Sue can still walk the beach, which she loves to do, and we hope to get a beach front room with a balcony where I can sit and keep my feet propped up and enjoy the sight and sounds of the ocean.
I am having a bit of a struggle dealing with this "new normal" but I do feel God is near and is guiding me to better acceptance than I had even a few weeks ago. Meanwhile I am hoping still that the specialists at the Cleveland Clinic will find a magic pill or something. But that is not often the case with rare medical syndromes.
So these reflections and your good comments and the comments of other wonderful folks like you help keep my mind on things that are important and eternal and off of my temporal problems. I have no doubt that whether or not my medical problems persist I will be able to continue to live life to the fullest extent given the circumstances I face.
Your comments always contain such kind wisdom that I look forward to them.
Thank you again for your insight.
Monte
Ain't the sound of crashing waves the best, though? Thank goodness you crave Atlantic beaches. Those placid bathwaters of the Gulf and those frigid Pacific shores just aren't the same.
I needed to hear this this morning. Sometimes, I look in the wrong places and lose my sight. It gets hard to stay on the right track in the world - yesterday or today. I can't thank you enough for putting this all down in words. It has pointed me back in the right direction.
I hope many more will come to know Him and enjoy all the miracles and wonders He offers and has waiting for us. Many blessings to you and your family.
Merry Christmas :)
This was a great post to wake up to! The "From a Distance" theme seems very appropriate doesn't it. It reminded me of a joke about two aliens viewing Earth from space.
One alien mentions that he sees the Earthlings have nuclear weapons.
The other alien says, "So they are an intelligent species?"
The first alien says, "No, They have them aimed at themselves!"
In my mind you have become one of the best writers at OS. I love your wisdom and the way you are able to reflect that wisdom in a simple to understand manner that leaves no room for doubt in your meaning.
Hope you are able to make your trip to the coast. Just sitting by the coast and watching the waves either lap gently against the shore or roar with furry is always both therapeutic and humbling.
Until next time Monte, Peace
I think we should all embrace what we have, appreciate it, and be thankful to Whomever you feel appropriate. I know I am.
Many folks have it FAR worse than me and my family. I thank God (personally) every day for each day.
Thanks for sharing this. I know it's deeply personal for both of us.
RATED
Happy Holidays to all,
Greg
To them, they call it "pork", I call it saving a species.
Merry Christmas to you (personally). May you continue to be blessed and may our friendship continue to grow.
All the Best,
Greg
I am sooo happy you have been writing these. I am sorry this is the last. May be you could reconsider that?
This piece is as well written as it gets for me. I love the 'flow' of this post.
I hope you 'listen' to the ocean for me. I am planning a camping trip after xmas to enjoy the weather, come what may. I am feeling as good as can be expected right now. I pray for your feet to heal. I mean that, my friend.
I do hope you will continue some of this. I love it.
peace for the season!!
Suzy
That is all I know about God. But I do know it.
I am very sorry to hear of your health afflictions, some of which I must admit I'm not familiar with. But they do make your ability to maintain perspective all the more impressive and inspiring. I look forward to your Christmas post and wish you and your loved ones a blessed, beautiful Christmas.
We certainly will try to get to the beach for a few days. I know it will be good for both of us.
screamin mama, thank you so much for your comments. I share the difficulty of sometimes looking in the wrong place and losing sight of what we need to keep our eyes on. I too have to really focus myself on what is important to God and not what I think is momentarily important to me. The true saving grace to my way of thinking is that God patiently waits for us to find our way back to him, no matter how far or how long we may be lost.
Monte
Greg: Again thanks. You have become a dear friend and, dear friend, we all have bad days. I started to feel that yesterday even before you stated it. You just weren't your usual up beat self. Wouldn't it be nice if we never had those days? Then again, if we didn't have them how would we know to appreciate the good ones? My best and my love to you and yours. Enjoy the holidays with your family. That is the best therapy any of us have.
And all I can say about the polar bear picture is that when I saw it and read the story behind it I choked up. The picture looks so innocent, but it is infinitely sad. We need to see pictures like that, though, to wake us up.
Suzy, dear heart, I am glad that you are feeling well enough to write. This last flare of yours has had me worried and praying all the harder. I hope that the camping trip becomes a good time for you to continue to heal and to bring you closer to God. Try to enjoy the holidays as best you can. As always, my prayers are lifted for you.
Advent is over in a few days so I will not be posting on Advent any more this year, but I am working on a Christmas message that I will post, probably on Christmas Eve. So that will be a little gift to you and to all my wonderful friends here on OS.
Ben: great to have you back reading these reflections. While we don't agree on religion I do appreciate your commenting anyway. And I agree at least with the last half of what you write. What we think of God does make all the difference. If I were to say that I believe in God but have no interest in trying to communicate with him or think, like the early deists did, that he is a watchmaker who sets the cosmos into motion and sits back to watch, then that God would do me no good at all. But if I believe, as I do, that God matters and cares, well, yes, that makes a huge difference. Thanks again, Ben for sharing your thoughts.
You write: ""Feeling the closeness of God in their lives."
That is all I know about God. But I do know it. "
That statement says a whole lot. It is the beginning of a wonderful walk with God if you decide to take it. The awareness of a higher power than ourselves is vital to beginning to envision our personal faith journey. Nobody can take that journey for us. It is strictly up to us when we start, where it takes us and what it means to us. And that is something we have to decide for ourselves. I wish you the very best on yours.
Thank you, Libertarius, for your kindness and I wish you and yours a very blessed Christmas as well.
When my medical problems hit last March I was clueless about what they were and even if they had names. When friends asked about why I was retiring for medical reasons I told them to Google the individual pieces of the syndrome because it was so hard to envision it.
My internist was completely baffled. I went out on Google and eventually found names for all of the parts of the syndrome based on my symptoms, and shared that with my internist. She was unsure and sent me to the Cleveland Clinic where the doc there confirmed my amateur diagnosis through a series of gruelling tests. So far they have found no cause, but it is not for lack of trying. They have found two meds help by reducing the pain, which is a singular blessing. So I am far from pain free but it no longer feel intolerable. So I persevere knowing that many, many people, including many here on OS, have it far worse. In my own simply way I try to reach out to them with a word of comfort and a prayer.
Monte
Let me just share one reason why I think that deep conversations are essential to discussing religion. Many people have told me through the years that they cannot believe that there is a God or that God does not care, etc. I cannot talk them into believing so I don't try. But, as a beginning, and only that, to having an honest discussion I ask them to sit down with me and tell me about the God they do not think exists or the God they think is irrelevant, or unconcerned, or oblivious. And they do that, clearly and openly, etc.
And what I find is that the God they describe as nonexistent, or the God they describe as remote or angry or hurtful, etc. is a God with whom I am totally unfamiliar. Their God, or non-God, bears not the slightest resemblance to the God I worship, pray to, and have given my life to. And if I thought that the God they describe were actually God I would want nothing to do with that God either.
That kind of dialogue must take place in person, perhaps over a period of weeks or months.
The key to finding mutual understanding, if not mutual agreement, is not in writing blogs or exchanging emails, but in face to face discussion. I wish that were possible here, but it is not.
Thanks for your additional comments.
Monte
I have a difficult time managing my emotions when it comes to the how we interact with and treat our natural environment. This magnificent planet which provides us with all that we could ever need or want. I cannot for the life of me understand what goes on in the heads of people Like George Bush and Sarah Palin who call themselves Christian's and yet wo think so little about human/animal life in general (as long as it is not "unborn life" -but that is another subject for another day). Frankly, it breaks my heart that the lives of our soldiers, Iraqi and Afgani citizens can be washed away in statements by the likes of Bush/Cheney as "well, so what?".
I too, have been on a long spiritual journey in this lifetime of mine. I have recently come to believe more firmly that Jesus would shake his head at those who use his name to trump up their own misguided beliefs, delusions of grandeur and raping of our natureal environment. Indeed, God does not sit up high above us, not at all. He is between us and amongst us when we show one another compassion, kindness, humility and love.
My life and relationship with God is so simple. I ask for nothing for myself, give thanks for every single blessing (and everything in my life is a blessing, even the painful icky stuff), and try to be the best person I can be every day. I also believe that God is where we make good: helping other's to grow and thrive, to overcome adversity, and to be and become their true potential.
I only wish that others could see the simplicity and sacredness of ourselves, each other, and the natural world instead of trying to dominate and control others who opinions are different, misguided and/or misunderstood from our own.
I do however, pray for peace and enlightenment of man, I figure it can't hurt and it certainly makes me feel better.
Merry Christmas to you and our family.
Sara
Nothing gives organized religion a bad name like the ilk of Bush and Palin who flaunt their alleged "Christianity" and use it as a club to justify unholy actions. It makes me sick. I think since evangelical Christians, starting way back with Falwell and the "Moral Majority," decided to try to influence politics that both religion and politics are much worse off.
Organized religion has a very bad name, even the that who have nothing to do with these right wing fundamentalists, and politics has become far more polarized when "true believers" who have never heard of give and take and compromise come in and insist that it is their way or the highway.
I think you, Sara, sum up what faith is really all about:
"My life and relationship with God is so simple. I ask for nothing for myself, give thanks for every single blessing (and everything in my life is a blessing, even the painful icky stuff), and try to be the best person I can be every day. I also believe that God is where we make good: helping other's to grow and thrive, to overcome adversity, and to be and become their true potential."
God bless, and may you and yours have a blessed and joy filled Christmas.
Monte
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
The point you make about "...whenever I have the experience of a kind word, a gesture of friendship from a stranger, or a well-written lesson from you, I know that s/he is no more distant than the source" is so very important and so many people completely miss it.
We tend to think that we should wait for some direct word from God, some sign, some miracle, something loud and overt and tangible. And when that does not happen we think either that He does not care or that we are not worthy of a word from him.
But the truth is something else entirely. The fact is, and the Bible confirms this over and over if anyone would bother to read it, God works, not quite exclusively, but primarily through people. So we look for God somewhere "out there," when, in fact, God might more easily be seen in the kind gesture of a friend who brings a casserole when you are too ill to cook; or when a stranger picks up your wallet that you dropped when checking out your groceries at the store. Were we to look into those eyes we might well catch a glimpse of God. And when we do sweet or noble or simply unselfish things toward others, then we too are sharing a bit of God's love that lives in us with the world.
God spoke directly to Moses very few times. And the first time God did Moses did not want to be God's representative because Moses had a stammer. But God was not to be deterred and told Moses that Moses was her/his man so get used to it. And then God said, don't worry about your speaking ability for I will also call your brother, Aaron, and he can speak for you when you feel you can't. From then on until he died God spoke through a mere man with a slight speech impediment. A man who would be forever known as the greatest of the Old Testament leaders.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting.
Monte
I'm sorry to learn of your health troubles. I hope that you'll feel well enough to be able to get to the beach. Even if you don't walk on it, there's plenty of beauty to soak up just by gazing at it.
Have a wonderful Christmas!
I am expecting that we will get to the beach. I am certainly ready for a change in scenery. I have lived with these problems for over nine months now and I am getting better at making the adjustments I need to make. Once I stopped saying 'Oh poor me" and learning how to change to fit the new needs I started feeling better emotionally, and some of the new pain meds, while they don't solve the problem, make it far more bearable. So now there are only a couple of hours each day that are really bad, and that is a great improvement. So I thank God for that.
Have a blessed and joy filled Christmas, Lisa.
God bless,
Monte
Glad you are back, friend.
Monte