For many centuries, we have all been educated and entertained via media, primarily through books and print, until the 20th century. Ask any avid reader, and they will be quick to tell you about the magic of the printed word and how books guide you into worlds you have never known. But, there is one very important thing to remember about those worlds, and it is troubling: they disappear when you close the book.
I have had a fascination with the Bible for my entire life. Even when I was not sure I believed in God, the Bible struck me as different than any other book I read. In my spiritual experimentation phase, I read many other religious and spiritual writings. Still, I kept coming back to the Bible because it always seemed to be different than the rest. Even at the height of my hedonistic musician phase, there was always a Bible in my apartment, and when I got bored or curious, I picked it up and fell into its pages again.
But it was at this time that I noticed something. I was reading about the past and people that I had never met. Are these simply stories, or is there a real God that does real things today? This question haunted me until one night at 2 a.m. alone in the woods, God answered that question in one moment. I can’t properly describe that experience because it was like nothing I had ever experienced, before or since. I can only describe it as an overwhelming sense of God’s presence. Time meant nothing in that place, so I had no sense of how long this experience even lasted. But it changed me and the direction of my life.
I wish I could say that after that I did a bunch of smart things and life has been a bowl of cherries ever since. Unfortunately, after this encounter, I was still me, I was still a mess, and there was a long road ahead. But after this experience, I knew something amazing was at the end of the road.
Before this, I had a storybook god. A god that interested me and that I loved to read about, but it was also a god I could close the book on and walk away from anytime I wanted to. But a storybook god is not God at all. God is inescapable; He does not go away when you stop thinking about Him or stop believing in Him.
A storybook god is easy to think about and easy to ignore. When god lives in a book, all his power and miracles live there too. The biblical world begins to feel like Tolkien’s Middle-earth: a fun place to think about, but one that does not actually exist.
My meeting in the woods that night took me on a 45-year journey into real life. It was then that I realized that God is not simply a character in a book and that this earth is more than a rock flying through space. So for 45 years now, I have been trying to understand God, to know what He is asking of me. I have studied His word, listened to lectures, and read books, trying to understand. I have studied those who have gone before me, trying to learn the true path and how to walk it.
But like Christian in the story of The Pilgrim’s Progress, danger is never far away.
The Return of the Storybook god
As I burrowed into studying and teaching, one day, I realized that the storybook god had returned—but this time, in a different form. I no longer wondered if God was real, but following God had gradually become indistinguishable from knowing about God, theology, ancient culture and practice, and a hundred other things that were useful in their place, but crucially, were not God. God had once again become something that I could close the book on. I hadn’t stopped believing or trusting, but the goal of my study became preparing to teach or finish some project, rather than to spend time with God and learn his ways.
Why do we do such things? There are probably many reasons, but when I search my own heart, I can’t shake the feeling that we simply like control of our own lives. A powerful God that we read about in a story is fun to read about, and very safe because we can close the book on Him any time we want. But a powerful God in the present is frightening; a present, powerful God might do or say anything, and then, we would have to do something about it. A present, powerful God will demand things of us that a storybook god never could.
The Fear of the Lord
We are often uncomfortable with the term “the fear of the Lord.” But as I think about the storybook god phenomenon, I believe we are ultimately talking about the fear of the Lord—or, more accurately, a lack of fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord makes us all uncomfortable, as it should. So our fallen nature looks for ways to contain God, and if we can’t do that, to avoid him.
When we consciously or unconsciously turn God into a storybook god, we create a god we can manage. An interesting god who does awesome things in the stories, but who is ultimately a safe god that we can interact with as we choose.
This Week
So, what am I saying? I am absolutely not saying, stop reading your Bible. In fact, reading the Bible can be the answer to the storybook god problem, because in the Bible we see God described as he actually is. The answer is not less Bible, the answer is more God. More God at breakfast, more God at work, more God when no one is around, more God when I’m bored, more God when I’m busy.
The Bible should draw us into the presence of God by helping us to understand who He really is. The storybook god turns up when we want to deceive ourselves, when we want a god that great, but not someone who is going to interfere with our day. The storybook god turns up when we talk about God without listening to Him.
The storybook god is not a Bible problem, it is a heart problem.
This week as we read and study God’s word, let’s remember that God is not an historical figure. God is, and was, and will always be — God almighty, ruler of all things, including us; and that is a good thing. His power is real, and so is His love. We can’t separate the two.
This week, let’s live in the presence of the actual almighty God we find described in the pages of the Bible; and have a great week!
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