I\u2019ve been dragging my heels on writing this post because referring to God as a \u201cvictim\u201d and \u201crebel\u201d elicited a fierce visceral reaction and pile-on from my conservative evangelical friends on Twitter a couple of weekends ago. But I had a realization the other week as I was contemplating the way that evangelicals like me end up with a banal \u201c<\/span>Mr. Rogers God<\/a>\u201d despite the best efforts of our youth pastors to make God appear as mean and strict as they possibly can. Basically, I think the problem is that even though Christians say propositionally<\/em> that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in practice many of us only relate to God as Father, that is, the all-powerful, completely in charge sovereign of the universe who implicitly endorses our power and privilege because of his uncomplicated omnipotence. I would contend that our conception of God\u2019s sovereignty needs to include the subversive ways in which God\u2019s reign dismantles our power and privilege through Jesus Christ as the crucified victim<\/em> of our sins and through the unpredictable rebel<\/em> wind that \u201cblows where it chooses\u201d which we call the Holy Spirit.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This reflection began at the closing worship service of the United Methodist campus ministry institute at the Candler Divinity School in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago. I had just written my \u201cMr. Rogers God\u201d post<\/a>,\u00a0reflecting on the way that I am more moved and convicted to repentance by the weak, crucified God revealed on the cross of Jesus Christ than I ever was by the angry Father I tried really hard to believe in who was supposedly pouring out his wrath on his Son from the clouds above the cross.<\/p>\n In any case, as part of the opening set of this worship service, we sang \u201cHow great is our God.\u201d I really try not to critique worship songs as I\u2019m singing them, but I\u2019ve never been able to get into \u201cHow great is our God\u201d when it\u2019s sung in the context of a triumphalist praise stadium filled with rich white suburbanites. It feels\u00a0like cheering \u201cU.S.A.!\u201d at an Olympic basketball competition where everybody knows the Americans are going to win again because they always win. Of course our God is great because we\u2019re successful and happy and safe, so we\u2019ll just keep on being fabulous as a way of showing the world how great our God is. For a bunch of privileged people to sing about how great God is seems kind of like telling everybody how \u201cblessed\u201d I am as a way of putting a divine stamp of approval on my material blessings that I wouldn\u2019t have if I just labeled them the product of \u201cluck.\u201d<\/p>\n Now I realize that this reveals my funky race issues as a guilt-ridden, privileged white guy, but for some reason, when the all-black worship team from Atlanta\u2019s Impact church led us in \u201cHow great is our God\u201d at the campus ministry conference, it made sense to me in a way that it wouldn\u2019t have if they were white people. And when I saw my black colleagues prostrating themselves and crying out to God during the song, I begged God to open my heart so that I could worship the way they were worshiping.<\/p>\n It made me think of how James Cone wrote in The Spirituals and the Blues<\/em>\u00a0that black people have never had the luxury of pontificating philosophically about whether or not God existed, because they needed a deliverer, and so they cried out to the deliverer they desperately hoped was out there. The Old Testament God who delivers Israel from their oppressors gains credibility for me in the black church context that he doesn\u2019t have when privileged white people are coopting him to validate our manifest destiny. I realize that I\u2019m probably offending white and black people alike by the way I\u2019m talking. I\u2019m just being real about what\u2019s gotten in my head, whether it\u2019s right or wrong.<\/p>\n In any case, God reminded me in that moment of worship of all the times I have cried out to him as my Father to deliver me, even though I\u2019m a child of privilege and I\u2019ve never really faced the desperate needs that many others have. There are so many times I\u2019ve been lost, due to mental illness or sin or a cancer scare or simply a lack of self-confidence, and I have needed to believe that the One who is completely in control of the universe has my destiny in his hands. So in response to the question I had asked a few blog posts ago about whether Christianity can \u201cwork\u201d with a Mr. Rogers God<\/a>, God said very loudly\u00a0nope<\/em>, that doesn\u2019t do justice to who I am. I\u2019m a mighty Father when my people need me to be their deliverer.<\/p>\n I absolutely believe in this heavenly Father, but I don\u2019t believe that his absolute omnipotence is the only form of sovereignty that God uses to relate to his people. For instance, God the Father isn\u2019t the one who convicts me of my sin. God the Father throws his arms around me like the prodigal son and says welcome home. His omnipotence means that I can\u2019t really do anything to hurt him. When we talk about God the Father, we\u2019re talking about someone who can handle anything, like a daddy who is completely unsurprised and unscandalized by whatever craziness his children throw at him, but simply responds with discipline according to their best interests.<\/p>\n Whenever people says that God the Father cannot \u201cstand\u201d the presence of sin as though he has an allergy to it or something, they are speaking in a way that diminishes<\/em> his sovereignty.\u00a0The most that we can say about sin in relation to God the Father with respect to his omnipotence is to say that sin offends<\/em> him since nothing can actually harm him. And when we reduce sin into something that merely<\/em> offends God, we\u2019re starting on the road to Rob Bell\u2019s universalist conclusion that God\u2019s love ultimately overrides his offense at our sin.<\/p>\n It\u2019s very hard to maintain the belief that God wants to torture people forever in hell because he\u2019s infinitely offended by sin. So many evangelicals like me end up with a Mr. Rogers Gods after being taught that sin is bad not because it causes actual harm to other people God cares about, but because it offends God as an abstract insult to his honor. The infinitely offended God just doesn\u2019t hold up conceptually in our world where earthquakes and hurricanes have \u201cnatural causes\u201d other than God\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n To really get the devastation of our sin, we need to see the God who became a weak and helpless man on a cross. Because when God\u2019s Word became flesh in Jesus Christ, the sins of the world didn\u2019t merely offend him; they\u00a0crucified him<\/em>. Through his victimhood<\/em> at the hands of our sin, God the Son convicts us in a way that an \u201cangry\u201d God who only has absolute power and lightning bolts at his disposal could not.<\/p>\n Yes, Jesus triumphs over death and our sin, but he remains eternally wounded as a vindicated victim, presiding over heaven as a slain lamb<\/em> throughout the book of Revelation.\u00a0Every time we do anything to hurt the least of our brothers and sisters, we crucify Jesus. That\u2019s what he says quite plainly in Matthew 25:31-44, which is not just an exhortation to engage in acts of justice, but a commentary on what we are supposed to recognize in the cross he talks about immediately after that passage in Matthew 26.<\/p>\n When we say that Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead, we\u2019re not talking about an aloof, transcendent judge like the dispassionate, blindfolded Roman goddess Iustitia with her scales. Jesus judges as a plaintiff<\/em> who has been directly harmed by our sin and has the authority to drop the charges and forgive the defendants. He\u2019s not the only plaintiff. It is the people of the world versus Morgan Guyton in the heavenly courtroom because I have contributed with my personal sin to the demonic forces in the world that bring oppression and misery to all.<\/p>\n Jesus stands in solidarity with all the people I have hurt directly through my participation in the world\u2019s injustice and indirectly through my idolatry which is the source of all injustice. While Jesus\u2019 forgiveness is unconditional, it is my choice whether or not to accept it. If I say thanks for forgiving me, Jesus, but I really didn\u2019t do anything wrong, I am rejecting eternal communion with him and the other victims of my sin. It is only in falling on my face before him and saying, \u201cLord, have mercy on me, a sinner\u201d that I join in the fellowship of those who live under God\u2019s mercy and are thus a completely safe community for each other.<\/p>\n In two of the most important conversion stories of the New Testament, Jesus convicts the converts into repentance\u00a0as a victim of sin<\/em> rather than the triumphalist warlord that many Christians today want him to be. Peter concludes his first sermon on the day of Pentecost in the Jerusalem Temple in Acts 2:36 by saying, \u201cTherefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.<\/em>\u201d It says that the three thousand who were baptized that day were \u201ccut to the heart\u201d by these words (Acts 2:37).<\/p>\n In other words, they were convicted by their participation in the murder of their messiah<\/em>, which is completely different than being overcome by fear of some kind of looming punishment from an omnipotent warlord. Peter didn\u2019t say anything remotely resembling today\u2019s sidewalk evangelism question, \u201cIf you died tomorrow, would you go to heaven or hell?\u201d He convicted his listeners based on their personal crime against Jesus<\/em>, not any threat of God\u2019s omnipotent power to punish eternally.<\/p>\n Likewise, when Saul, the first great persecutor of the church, is thrown from his donkey by a bright light on the road to Damascus, Jesus doesn\u2019t say, \u201cDo you know how powerful I am and what I can do to punish you eternally?\u201d He says, \u201cSaul, Saul, why do you persecute me?\u201d (Acts 9:4). Jesus confronts Saul not as a triumphant heavenly warlord, but as the victim<\/em> of his persecution.<\/p>\n By choosing to make himself a victim of our sin, Jesus extends the dignity of his lordship to the people we step on. On his cross, he writes in blood the fact that \u201cjust as you did to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did to me.\u201d When we allow ourselves to submit to Jesus as the victim of our sin, our hearts are wounded by his mercy towards us in a way that they could never be if we only see ourselves as sinners in the hands of an angry, omnipotent God who has never put himself into the hands of angry, murderous sinners.<\/p>\n Through Jesus, God handed himself over to be victimized by our sin, so that in Jesus\u2019 resurrection, he could defeat our sin and liberate us from it in a way that he couldn\u2019t if he merely tortured sinners eternally after they died. God could have chosen to reign over us merely as an omnipotent Father, but he deemed it more effective to let us crucify him as God the Son and thus have our sin crucified and exposed before us so that its chains could be completely broken.<\/p>\n The dimension of God\u2019s sovereignty that I see expressed in the Holy Spirit is God\u2019s rebellion against the boxes we try to put him in.\u00a0I say rebellion because we in the church are always building a self-validating, slightly corrupted order in the name of God that perpetually needs to be disrupted and dismantled by God lest we come to a place of total epistemic closure and idol worship. Yes, we are the ones who are actually in rebellion against God, but we believe so zealously that we are in the right that it is appropriately offensive to call God\u2019s rebuking of our idolatry an act of rebellion against us. We have never stopped building towers of Babel up to the heavens that exist for the purported purpose of honoring God but ultimately serve to legitimize and glorify ourselves as his royal priesthood. And so God will continue to knock our towers down with holy Pentecostal<\/a> wind that refuses to be institutionalized.<\/p>\n