Chalke Talk 48: Whose God is it anyway?

The story of the ‘Good Samaritan’ would have an identical message but a different name if Jesus were telling it today.

Instead, it might be called – depending on the audience –  the ‘good leaver’, the ‘good remainer’, the ‘good evangelical’, or the ‘good Trump supporter’.

In the 20 centuries that has follower Jesus’s radical teaching to love your enemy, very little has changes.  Steve argues that we are all inclined to stick close to those who are ethnically, economically, culturally and educationally similar to us.   

“We are always imprisoned by our exclusion of those who are different to us, never released by it,” Steve says.   “Besides anything else we need them for our own wholeness, for it is only as we build bridges with those who don’t see life our way that we begin to confront and deal with the hidden and ugly parts of our own souls – our, until that moment, unrecognised prejudice, unconscious bias, and hidden fear. Without those who are different to us we are diminished

Steve concludes by calling on us all to reflect on a couple of challenging questions:

In a world where we can be friends with whoever we like, why do we choose only to befriend those who are strikingly similar to us in opinion, outlook, ethnicity and income?

In a world where we can believe in any god we like – why do we choose to believe in a protectionist, tribal, exclusive god who is made in our image and confined to the limits of our imagination; a deity who, in the end, is little more than a projection of our own fears and prejudices?