The Golden Ass

As I work through the Gravity Leadership material, they keep asking me what or which imagine of God influences me in this way or that.

Well, it's becoming abundantly clear to me that I'm a functioning polytheist.

Not including ones I haven't figured out yet, I serve gods fashioned in the images of Judge Judy, Rage Against the Machine, the hot golem Woman (think Jewish mysticism rather than Lord of the Rings lol) in "Weird Science" (1985 film, Google it if you want lol), and Regis Philbin dotingly hosting "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire."

And, half the time, multiple of these are at work at the same time.

I am a confusing mess! LOL

Thank you Jesus and Gravity Leadership for helping me sort through this mess who is me! Haha

It was a little less than a year ago when I wrote the above. I am now working through the same stuff while this time "leading" a group of people through it myself. In my original writing - here - I expounded on how my false Judge Judy god had shaped and formed me to see Jesus wrongly and to (thus) misread Luke 17: 5-10 (as but one mere example). I then - here - clarified some of the contextual background of the passage and how I am just like the disciples in their pride's governing their relationship with their own version of my "Judge Judy" god(dess).

I would like now to explain a bit more of what I mean by and how I actually experience the polytheism by which I tend function when left to my own devices outside of trust in Jesus. We tend not to recognize these as divinities, because we tend to assign them to the realm of the secular. We also tend not to see them as divinities who govern us and our actions, because, when implicitly asking questions of what or who governs us and our actions, we tend to have our eyes set on the comparisons between right and wrong doctrinal beliefs and between right and wrong behaviors.

With the help N.T. Wright and of Psalms 135 and 115, I have come to view the "forces" that govern my identity and my actions as idols, however, because: 1. They are images which govern our reality or realities, 2. Those images are made "by human hands"; they are fashioned in our own image(s), 3. We make sacrifices to them, usually in blood, 4. They shape our way(s) of life, 5. Our allegiance to and trust in them renders us blind and deaf to their very existence, and 6. They are usually originally good and fruitful parts of the created order that have puffed themselves higher and beyond their well-ordered role into, instead, someone or something they really arn't, leading us into all sorts of violence and calamity, death and destruction.

That these are gods rather than secular forces means that I can't separate the political from the religious and the spiritual from the profane from one another as I had been trained to imagine and think. It also means that "everything is spiritual." It, in turn, means that we're always being disciped, and it's not always by Jesus. This requires discernment.

So, who are these gods or goddesses? What do they actually look like? How do we follow after them? And what sacrifices do we make to them? I will not be able to give those questions the full treatment they are owed here. What is intended here is a brief snapshot. Others have already written about all of them, likely far better than I. But alas, here is a breif snapshot and beginning of my articulating my discernment of my spiritual formation, my discipleship into a kingdom that's foreign to that of King Jesus. I serve gods fashioned in the images of Judge Judy, Rage Against the Machine, the hot golem Woman, and Regis Philbin from "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire"...

My Judge Judy god scares me, and I feel like I have to exhaust myself to appease her, no matter what sacrifices I make to her. I tend to be paralyzed in fear of her. Her dehumanizing screams tend to drown out my voice. By the same token, her demands tend to shape the image of reality and of my identity to which I aspire. She is thus closely associated with our rather pervasive and powerful gods of White Supremacy and Meritocracy. As Christians, and especially as Protestants, we tend to falsely fashion the "justice" of Yahweh in the image of something or someone like this god. This week, an African American friend of mine named Michael Gonzalez helped me - here - to articulate what this god can come out looking like at times.

My Machinist god makes me feel like a mere robot, like everything is predetermined to a managed outcome, and I'm just a cog in a wheel of a bigger machine where every molecule is meticulously controlled. My very personhood is inevitably sacrificed to him (because that's how he works), and I tend to respond with a seething, underlying rage. This god is not fashioned in the image of any human being but rather of a clock, or perhaps a Clockwork Universe. Or, for some, perhaps it is fashioned in the image of an emotionally distant authority figure who is "supposed" to be humanely caring but who, instead, views his own role as that of a cog in a machine of efficiently predictable and controlled outcomes to drive revenue and earn a living. For some, this god looks more like an inhuman, bureaucratic machine that stands in the way of and between genuine human relating among one another. Christians, and especially Protestants, and especially Calvinists, tend to fashion the God of the scriptures in the image of this false god. Many Christians also tend to mistake the secular categories of "socialism" or "communism" for this god whose images, actions, sacrifices, and way of life are all actually defined by Capitalism, both historically and now.

My Golem Woman god is crafted in the image of my own sense of drowning in utter, alienating darkness of social isolation (see Psalm 88; it's the best articulation I've ever seen of my sense of social isolation growing up as a kid). I tend to respond by either holding onto nostalgic memories of relational connections lost to the winds of time or by feverishly grasping with offerings of steam-powered words from the Delphic oracle of eternal, half-substantiated optimism that Kelly Lebrock will randomly appear at the door of my bedroom lol. (You may have heard that it doesn't work that way LOL). Some have articulated or named this goddess as Eros, or perhaps Aphrodite. She is a very powerful goddess, expecially (for example) on social media these days. She sells easily. Many of our sacrifices to this goddess are in the form of the blood of unborn children.

My Regis Philbin god keeps asking me if I want to be a millionaire with no cost or sacrifice to me or anyone else. He dresses up as Santa at Christmas time. Easy money and my chicks for free. He wants to give me whatever I want but smiles manipulatively so I forget that he doesn't actually care about me or want me to flourish in the fullness of my humanity. Said humanity is the real sacrifice to this god, but I tend to indulge in the fantasy that he does care, that winning the Powerball WOULD give me the esteemed image of myself that I really want. Or - overwhelmed with wariness of my fear of Judge Judy and tired of indulging my Rage Against The Machine - I tend to forget that I care one way or the other. This is the god of our "materialism," which some in our history have named Mammon.

Then, quite contrary to all of these, there's Jesus. If God is like Jesus, and in God there is no unChristlikeness at all, then how do you imagine that Jesus is unlike the gods or goddesses I named above?