God 5.0

Our Sunday Bible study class is doing a quick overview of Brian McLaren’s book, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be Christian (McLaren likes long titles). There are a number of interesting and challenging ideas in the book. Last week we took a look at McLaren’s challenge to make the theological migration to God 5.0.

The author suggests that as we mature from infant to child to adolescent to adult, our concept of God grows and develops with time and experience. Of course, God does not change but our perception of God does. He suggests several stages to this process:

God 1.0--the God you can trust, the way an infant trusts a parent or caregiver. This God meets our every need.
God 2.0--the God who encourages you to be polite and generous and play well with others. This is the Golden Rule God that we hope our children and grandchildren learn about in Sunday School.
God 3.0--the God who rewards the rule-keepers and punishes the rule breakers. Many of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day were stuck at this level of understanding God.
God 4.0--the God of affection and family, of the exclusive we, the one who takes care of our group but not necessarily those who have different beliefs. Many of us settle in at this point with this God of community--our community.

Of course, McLaren challenges us to go further and embrace God 5.0. This is the God who loves all of humankind and all of creation and wants us to do so as well. This God can:

Lead us away from thinking war can solve all our problems.
Save us from growing polarization.
Help us to love others including those outside our “tribe.”
Teach us to care for the earth upon which we depend for life.

One class member raised a very good question: “What would cause a person to move beyond God 3.0 or God 4.0?” I think that a number of life circumstances could be motivators.

If your God is God 3.0, what happens when you follow all the rules and your child dies of cancer, your spouse is injured in an auto accident, or your house is hit by a tornado? You followed all the rules and you still suffer. What gives? (Job was in a similar situation as you will remember).

If your God is God 4.0 and you see what is happening in our world, how can you not be moved to see the needs of those outside your own little sacred family? If we are compassionate, we strive to discover a God of compassion--one already taught and modeled by Jesus.

When life happens, we can play dumb, we can turn our back on our conception of God, or we can seek to find a new understanding of who God is. That is the path that leads us to God 5.0, the God who is big enough to help us deal with reality and motivate us to action.

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