An Accommodating God?
I'm reading The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. So far, the book is a fairly basic apologetic work, and Keller is presenting the biggest arguments he's heard against Christianity (or religion in general), and laying bare the underlying faith presuppositions and world views that are based every bit as much on faith as Christianity is. His analysis isn't new, but he writes well and accessibly.
I haven't disagreed with anything he's said, but I also feel as though I'm getting only part of the story. He's made several references to his very successful church plant in the Manhattan area, and the broadness of appeal that has surprised those who told him such an undertaking was ridiculous. He's talked about the flexibility of Christianity, and while this is very true in some respects, it's not true as often as people who tend to make statements about Christianity's flexibility seem to think it should be. And so I find myself somewhat on guard as I read - something I don't enjoy.
In a chapter dealing with the argument about the constraining nature of Christianity, he says something that made tiny red alarms go off in my head (not big ones, just tiny ones), and I've been trying to think through them since I ran across this last night. To those that argue that Christianity is too constraining, Keller pitches the argument that Christianity is actually the most accommodating of religions. He talks about how the center of Christianity has shifted repeated through history - from Jewish Jerusalem, to the Hellenistic world, to the Roman Empire, to Western Europe and America, and now to Africa and Latin America. This is sort of an interesting argument, and while I'm not sure that it's addressing the question that he purports to be answering, it's interesting all the same.
But then he makes the argument that God is an accommodating God. As though God has said to humanity Fine, have it your way. You can't and won't meet my design for you, so I'll come down there in order to save you. In this context, the term accommodating is problematic. At least I think it is. It sounds to me as though God is switching to plan B. He was going to do things a certain way, but now He's going to mix things up a little bit, because He's just that cool of a God.
The question isn't whether or not God is cool enough. Create any universes lately? I haven't. A God that can create a universe that is intellectually stimulating and controversial enough for our incessant little noggins pretty much defines the term cool in my book. The issue is whether or not God is actually changing His plans in order to offer humanity a lifeline. I'm not sure that Keller says it this strongly, but the language seems to imply it a little bit. That God is going to meet us on our terms. That God is compromising, after a fashion. All tied up in the nuances of accommodation.
For me, this challenges the Biblical assertion of God as all-knowing and all-powerful. As though God created a universe and a humanity that threw Him off His game enough for Him to have to accommodate to us not to have to scrap us all and start over with a new universe. The God I read about in Scripture isn't surprised. Isn't caught off guard. Doesn't have to revert to Plan B. I read about a God who prepares for one course of action, and then when humanity responds appropriately, He forgoes that course of action to be merciful and forgiving. And of course, these are the primary essences of God - God is first and foremost a God of love, and only secondarily and out of righteous justice a God of judgment and punishment.
So is the Incarnation of the Son of God a Plan B? Is this evidence of an accommodating God, or is this all part of the original plan, and it only appears accommodating to us? Can we be faithful to the God of the Bible and still describe Him as accommodating?
The problem for me is the word accommodate. The word accommodate puts all the power in the entity that benefits from the accommodation. One entity accommodates another. The accommodating entity is the one who changes. The interaction is on the receiver's terms.
The God I read about in Scriptures is not an accommodating God. He does not do everything on our terms, rather he decidedly does things on His holy terms, as hard as they are to grasp sometimes. If God were to accommodate us, He would simply go away and leave us to destroy ourselves. Instead, God has taken dramatic action in the person of Christ, beginning the work of restoring His creation. God calls us to give up our supposed control over our lives and the world around us, trusting in His mercy and grace alone, in good times and bad. Jesus calls us to take up our cross, to lose our lives, to die! Hardly an accommodating call, I'd say.
We can talk about a constraining or accommodating Christianity, and perhaps we should. But we cannot talk about a constraining or accommodating God, because it automatically puts the conversation on our terms, on our definition of what is constraining or accommodating. God's Truth is neither constraining nor accommodating. It is Truth. It does not bend to us. We bend to it.
That being said, we can talk about a God who has redeemed us and revealed Himself to us in ways that, from our perspective, are enormously helpful. He gave us His Word in the person of Jesus Christ, a living, breathing, interactive human. Moreover, He has given us His Word in the Scriptures, in human languages that are readily comprehensible. In the Lord's Supper, He gives us His body and blood in tangible, nourishing form. Out of His infinite love, He has made Himself accessible to us, and for that we thank and praise Him. But this is different from saying He has accommodated us.
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Beautifully stated, J.P.!
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