Do people make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods!” – Jeremiah 16:20

Today’s Scripture Reading (February 24, 2014): Jeremiah 16

“The Death of God” was a book written in 1961 by French Protestant Theologian Gabriel Vahanian. Vahanian believed that God could not survive in our modern society that had lost the capacity for the sacred. At some point our society ceased to that the capacity to imagine a God big enough to be our creator. God began to be defined by the language of our culture. According to Vahanian, our reality is that God has become nothing more than a cultural artifact in our society. But he also seemed to believe that the death of God would eventually lead us back to God. “If we can no longer assume that God is, we may once again realize that he must be. God is not necessary, but he is inevitable. He is wholly other and wholly present. Faith in him, the conversion of our human reality, both culturally and existentially, is the demand he still makes upon us.” (Gabriel Vahanian, Wait Without Idols, 1964)  It would seem that the path away from God must necessarily lead us back to God

Actually, Jeremiah would seem to agree with Vahanian. The real problem with God is that we have created him in our image. Our culture would not allow for any other kind of God. But such a God is doomed from the very beginning because this god would be much too small to fit our need. Our need has never been for a God that we could understand. In fact, any God that we could understand must be a God of our creation. And according to Jeremiah, any god of our creation is not really a god.

And, eventually, the straw gods that we create will fail. But that failure will only underscore our need for a real God – one who is beyond our understanding. God is not necessary, but he is inevitable. And all roads lead back to him, once we can discard the gods of our own creation that have cluttered up our lives and have led us in wrong directions.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 17