DOG-GOD
[Jesus said,] “The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” – Luke 7:34 (NRSV)
I love dogs until they start acting like dogs: the barking, the licking, the crotch sniffing, the bad boundaries, the poor personal hygiene. In other words, I love my ideas about dogs without all their uncouth doggieness.
However, the dog with no boundaries is the same dog who loves unconditionally. Devotion comes with a side of drool.
I can view God the same way. I love God until God starts acting like God: the unruly welcome, the untamed love, the refusal to be constrained by lofty ideas and creeds. In other words, I love my spiritualized ideas about God without all the messy godliness.
Actual God is the one who shows up at the wrong dinner parties, with the wrong people, saying the wrong things. Jesus touched lepers, ate with tax collectors, and let a woman of poor repute crash the table to weep on his feet. He never once checked anyone’s theology first. Grace, it turns out, is unhousebroken.
Even as I like my God mystical, ethereal, and safely unknowable, actual God bounds in uninvited, muddy paws on my lap, rank breath in my face, celebrating me before I’ve had a chance to compose myself.
I can control an idea about God. The living God I cannot. Only one of them can change me.
Prayer
God, thank you for sniffing me out from behind my ideas about you and licking my nose.
About the AuthorMatt Laney is Co-Pastor of Virginia Highland Church UCC in Atlanta, GA, and the author of Pride Wars, a fantasy series for young readers. You can find original children’s stories by Rev. Laney on his YouTube channel, LaneyLit.