No Room in the Inn, Plenty at the Coffee Shop
Earlier this week, Katrina, Alan and I met up with a Metaphysics discussion group at the Mercury Cafe on Chicago Ave. It’s an amazing cafe, but even more amazing was the discussion! The evening’s topic was “What is God?” About 12 people were present, and each of these strangers had met online to discuss metaphysics – and the sparks began to fly immediately!
The conversation was wildly diverse, there were spiritualists, neo-pagans, Polish Catholics, agnostics, atheists, and more. I was so moved by the lives of pain many of these people overtly expressed in their pursuit of God (or fleeing from God). We questioned assumptions some brought (is God male, and singular? Is he imaginary? How does one experience God? Where did religion come from?) Some became offended at the assumptions others made. Still others were quiet and pensive.
It was a strange sensation. The discussion on God was not like most I have of him. Most of my life God was never brought up outside of family discussion or Sunday School. Now I was in the midst of the urban matrix and having to upend my framework and typical language for God in order to speak about who God is and how God pervasively impacts my life.
Someone brought up the deist idea that God sees us as his ant farm, who is at least marginally interested in the creation as a whole, but otherwise does not care about you and me. I found out later that her dad had kicked her out of the house and forced her to leave Canada. I talked about an infinite being that could keep track of the infinite “ants” and know each spot on the back of each ant, know their dreams, their personalities…people couldn’t do this, but for God this is possible. Many resonated with this idea.
An atheist who had grown up Hindu was perplexed that we did not talk more in terms of science and instead we had focused on intuition and sociology. Someone else concluded that God exists outside of space and time and therefore lives outside the language of science, yet he is also holistically integrated into our world and so completely related to science that we couldn’t not speak of God when contemplating science. He is no where, he is now here. (Is this why God nicknamed himself YHWH “I AM”?)
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The conversation at the cafe got me thinking. The vast majority of people in this city feel left out of the conversations about God. They feel the church has rejected them. Their tatoos or alternative lifestyles or responses to their pain have exiled them from the the forum of spirituality, and therefore many have resigned their lives to meaninglessness, or have left their search for God and placed it with a search for knowledge in science.
They have been told by the church, “There is no room left in the inn.” For my new friends at the Metaphysics discussion group, they might feel a bit like Mary and Joseph, left out in the cold and in crisis.
Pregnant with God, but no where to go – that is the reality of millions in Chicago and all across this world. But the stinking stable in the midst of such a crisis is where God finds you. That is where God has been all along. Waiting for them in the stable. The nurses and doctors for Mary and Joseph should have been the best in the world fit for the King of the Universe, but instead they got donkeys. Instead of a royal blessing, the young couple received from Herod an attempt on their baby’s life.
The places of power hold for society the conversations of meaning – Main St Churches, City Halls, etc. This is where God’s character is voted on, and dogma is standardized. But God is outside the forum’s of man’s best theological guesses. He is helping Mary and Joseph in the freezing cold. God is patiently whispering into the ears of the millions who have been marginalized by the church, hoping to awaken them to who God is.
Are followers of Christ willing to be the donkey, or the sheep, waiting next to a scared Mary as she lives completely shunned by an embarrassed family, and suspicious religion elite? It begins by listening humbly to the hearts of those who do not have a place in the official forums, and honoring them for their “birth-pains” as God is birthed within them.
John Bailey, and 
Josh Frank 10:02 pm on March 21, 2009 Permalink
Sounds like a really great night and an intense conversation. So glad to hear that it is happening!
John Bailey 4:34 pm on March 22, 2009 Permalink
Great post!
Mark 8:59 pm on March 22, 2009 Permalink
Thanks guys! John, what’s your scoop? NAMB north american missions board I presume? What are you up to there?