What Does God Feel Like?

I often ask returning summer staff about their experience since the previous summer. Their stories are sometimes refreshing, occasionally alarming, but all too often similar in pattern. The story sounds something like this: "I went home so excited to live for Jesus and make a difference, but after a while I got so discouraged. I just couldn't feel God anymore..."

What they mean, I think, is that their experience of God at home is not what it was in the hyperbolic environment of camp. They are disappointed that the euphoria they felt when God seemed so near - when a camper put their trust in Jesus, or the worship around the fire was so pure - that this ecstasy should fade the third week of algebra class. It raises for me a question about the emotions we should expect in the presence of God.

What does God feel like?

It seems to me that when biblical characters come face to face with God, their most common emotion is utter terror. What does he (or his messengers) always say? "Fear not!" (to use the well-known phrase from the King James). Even John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who lay back against Jesus to ask a question as they reclined at the Table, when he encounters Jesus in the first chapter of Revelation falls down at his feet as one dead. God can feel like fear.

Perhaps the greatest source of foolishness among believers is the loss of the fear of God, for "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10). Should we be afraid of God? The analogy you may have heard me use is about my stint as a mountain guide when I was about 19 or 20. There was this great cliff I liked to show my clients. The top of it was at about 2600 meters elevation, and the bottom was about 1000 meters below. You could drop a rock off the edge and it wouldn't hit a thing for 500 meters. Being young and foolish, I used to hang my feet over the edge like this:


But don't let the photo fool you into thinking I wasn't afraid. The adrenaline rush was amazing: it felt like I had the entire universe behind me, shoving. I didn't simply walk to the edge and sit down; I hung my toes over first; then wiggled so my feet hung down, then slowly sat up; then with my heart racing looked over the edge... Feel that? It's fear. It is one of the things we might feel in the presence of God. It is no small thing to sit at the edge of the abyss that is the wrath of God. Like the fear that keeps our hands firmly on the wheel as a semi passes us on either side, the fear of God keeps us from anything foolish enough to evoke his hatred of sin.

So it follows that guilt is another common emotion in the presence of God. Isaiah in the temple. Peter with Jesus in his fishing boat. I am an unclean man. Like a spot of mustard on a brand new t-shirt, our smallest sin is in stark contrast to his purity, his utter holiness. If we think we are experiencing the presence of God and our harboured sin does not throw us on our faces in the dirt, our exhilaration is something other than worship. As Adam and Eve discovered, God can feel like shame.

What did you expect God to feel like?

True, he is the God of all comfort, but he "comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God" (2 Corinthians 1:4). He does not comfort us in our sin or complacency or stubborn rebellion; he often removes comfort. "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world" (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain). God can feel uncomfortable.

Or he can produce in us great confidence. It's like when you are playing a board game, maybe Monopoly or Killer Bunnies, and suddenly all the odds are in your favour and you're schooling everyone. Sometimes the presence of God makes us bold, even daring; God is for us - who can be against us? We are God's masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus, doing the very thing he prepared in advance for us to do. Better not get in our way.

Perhaps your disappointment about not feeling God anymore is because you thought he only felt like one thing: joy or contentment or some other warm fuzzy. I am sure God has felt like that at some point in your experience, and maybe what you felt was a very small taste of what you will experience forever in heaven, every tear wiped away. But surely you didn't expect him to always feel like that on this side of eternity.

And what about when you don't feel him at all? Nothing, just a dull emptiness like he is a million light years away? I want to say to you that sometimes God will feel like a great void, and that he intends it. Let Psalm 42 tell you why:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"

These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

God desires that we hunger after him, thirst after him, that we seek him with all our heart. To bring us to that place, we sometimes need to rediscover the vast gulf that stands between us and him and that is bridged by his Son; that deep pit in the emptiness of our lives that can be filled only by him; that sense of utter loss that prompts a frantic search until he is found.

If that is how God feels today, anchor your drifting hope in him. This is what God feels like, today. Tomorrow is another story, and whether God will feel like terror, remorse, confidence or uninhibited joy, he is near. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Save Money, Live Better

A little while ago, I took a group of students to Wal-Mart, because that's where they wanted to go. It's not my first choice of store, and I have heard many things about their unethical practices. While I was there I bought a pair of pants, and I'm sitting here and wearing them and feeling very guilty.

Wal-Mart's new logo and theme right now, found in all of its advertising, is this:


Ouch. What they are really saying is, live better by making other people live worse. Or, let's make the gap between the rich and poor even greater. My guilt is not simply about my decision to support a bad, bad company. It is on a much broader scale, and it is likely that you share my sin:

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you. - James 5

Wal-Mart's new logo flaunts the sin of our two nations. We save money so that we can live in greater luxury and self-indulgence. How do we do that? By finding ways of producing goods more cheaply. How do Wal-Mart and many other retailers manage that? The cost of materials doesn't usually go down, so they reduce the cost of making the products. That is, the workers make less money. They live worse so we can live better.

Here's how it works: Wal-Mart finds vendors willing to negotiate a lower price to produce their brand. But their "clear policy" is that the price must decrease year after year, so the vendor has to find ways of producing it cheaper every year, or Wal-Mart drops them like a hot potato. That usually first means moving production to a third world country, where labour is less expensive. But then it means finding workers willing to earn less and less, in worse and worse conditions. It is like what Pharoah did to the Israelites when he forced them to produce the same number of bricks without supplying any more straw. In Canada, Wal-Mart has actually closed stores whose workers tried to unionize for fairer pay and more reasonable working conditions.

We're fattening ourselves for a day of slaughter.

Think of that next time you see a price roll-back.

So, what am I saying?

In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul provides some basic financial principles that cut across the grain of Western capitalism. He wants the church to understand the importance of giving to the fund he is collecting to help the church in Judea through a famine. His principles are the kind of thing that would make a socialist smile and the typical American nervous:

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little."

Would he say the same thing to us? Maybe, but I know for sure that Wal-Mart's new logo would make him puke. His principle is pretty clear: Work toward economic equality and fairness.

It is sad that the church seems so far behind in the practice of fair trade (like we were with recycling, conservation and respect for copyright). Fair Trade should have been our campaign, because it is surely a vehicle for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Stores like Mountain Equipment Co-op - which is as secular as you can get - have been doing this for thirty years, while many Jesus-followers still have never considered why the deals are so good at their favorite stores.

The tough thing is knowing what to do about inequality and injustice in our world. It is so huge, and though perhaps some of you may one day do something huge in response to the problem, what the average individual might do can seem so insignificant. Kinda like voting in a federal (or provincial) election. Who is there to vote for? What difference will it make? Our difficulty is that none of the parties are so very bad, or so very good, to motivate us to vote. But what if there were just two parties, one clearly corrupt, and one just and fair. Would that motivate us to vote?

Every time we shop, we vote.

Every time we shop with a company that has corrupt principles, we "vote" for corrupt practices. Really, we probably could pay a little more and shop with a company that demonstrates greater integrity and fairness, and it would not take that much extra effort. By doing so, we would "vote" for fairer trade and support movements toward equality.

I am such a newbie when it comes to knowing where to shop ethically, and thus where to vote. I welcome all suggestions - provided that you can back up your claim with credible (not Wikipedia) references. And as always, I welcome your comments and helpful criticism.

What do you think about spending more money and letting someone else live better?

PS - For an interesting take on this issue, check out The Story of Stuff With Annie Leonard.