Silencing the Silence: The Cacophany that is The Gospel

An Introduction of Sorts

We have challenges on our hands: the threats to democracy, the ecological cataclysms, the wanton killing in wars that will not let go of retribution. Why spend so much time talking, as I will do here, about Predestination (it is a sickness) and Free Will (we do not have any when it comes to God but we have all kinds of it when it comes to our neighbor and earth) and God’s Law (we confuse the Gift for the Giver) and Bible (a narrative of Divine Giving and not Requirements for Human Salvation), or how to find God (and how even Atheists are in that business when they should know better) or how to find Serenity (and how most Theists are in that business when they should know better as well)?

We do so, all this talk about all these God topics, because this business of God is the fuel that fires the engine that Drives the Bus.

I know in electoral politics we like to say “it’s the economy, stupid!” But I submit that there is something even more fundamental that is the force to which we are to reckon and which calls the shots: Religion and God. Think on this: Why do the so-called Evangelical Christians want to outlaw abortion, or use public tax dollars to fund chartered schools that are not accountable to the standards we set for public schools (and draw money away from public schools in the process)? Why do the so-called radical Islamists want to destroy America? Why do the so called Ultra-Right Orthodox Jews want to claim land and not share land in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank? Or, as a more transparent display of our interest in God as a germane subject, how about our U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaking publicly about how God is directing him to the position as Speaker? Or, how about the fact that on a road trip this past month I actually saw billboards along the highway that simply asked “What really Happened in the Garden of Eden?” Really? People are paying money to put that question on a billboard? Yes, and for good reason. I’m guessing that message is paid for by religious fundamentalists, with whom I disagree, to put it lightly, on most everything, but it’s actually a good question and one that theists and atheists alike would be right to ponder.

So, if we dig into what we believe about God that drives our concerns over our identity, our community, our meaning and our destiny, I believe we have a much better chance at solving the challenges of political liberty, environmental sustainability and nations co-existing peacefully.

So, to begin.

The Problem of God is Only Solved by God: How Being Spiritual is still being Religious and How Religion is a Construct of Humanity, not of God.

“….Leonard Cohen. His dense, unsparing songs refuse to believe that the world is soluble or any transport permanent; they push unflinchingly into bafflement and betrayal, even sin, the order of punishment he never shies away from. Here, I think is Buddhist practice: simply systematically picking apart every inconstancy to remind us that we cannot count on anything other than a mind that is prepared to live calmly with all that it cannot control.” (Aflame: Learning From Silence, Pico Iyer, 2025)

It is the “on anything other than” that is the problem. There is no “other than.” There is nothing in our relationship with God, with Destiny if we want to call it that, that we can control and this is not controlled, this uncontrollability, with a control! Not even a “calm mind.” Martin Luther had a metaphor that describes this attempt to work on this unworkable dilemma: “the gouty foot laughs at your doctoring” (The Bondage of the Will, 1525).

There is no getting rid of the accusations of God. There is no getting rid of the Accusation that is God. Really? Ok, just try it. Try this “calming of the mind.”

It can be therapy to be sure. It can be a consolation. I do not deny or decry it’s redeeming and helpful application. But it is no declaration of peace. It is no salvation. The moment one serenity is known, another agitation arises.

“…he too is beginning to look shaky. He’s been diagnosed with something for which there is no cure. Of course, he offers with unsleeping irony, we’re all suffering from something for which there is no cure. But this is specific and depleting.” (Aflame, Pico Iyer, 2025). Iyer visited Cohen at Cohen’s home in Los Angeles and made this observation about Cohen. The thing, of course, from which there is no cure, is not only death, but the thing also which kills us daily quite before any permanent demise: predestination sickness. It’s our spiritual gout and, again, as per Luther, “the gouty foot laughs at our doctoring.” This sickness, this condition of having no control over our destiny, is not curable.

But we try. Religion passes as devotion to God when it is actually spiritual calisthenics, what Luther called speculation, to improve or impact positively in any way whatsoever this sickness, this disease.  Many do not want to participate in these religious notions (for numerous reasons, not the least of which is because in its fundamentalist forms they jettison science or even in its mainline forms too often give emotionally and intellectually deaf answers to questions of disparities and injustice like “why do the wicked prosper?” and “why do bad things happen to good people?”). But while rejecting spiritual religions many turn to philosophical religions like Skepticism with its answers masking as questions or Stoicism with its firm upper lip or Epicureanism with its carefree and careless living.

So, religion doesn’t cure the disease. Neither does philosophy. The problem of God can only be solved at its origin. The problem of God can only be solved by God.

A Look at the Christian Bible’s Story of God

The Christian Bible is normally read by us through a religious lens. That is to say, a view that sees Us as the Subject and God as the Object. It’s a view where our actions get reactions from God rather than the other way around. It’s a view where our agency (whether that be belief or behavior) is the governing force or power that effects change. The reason we read Scripture through this religious lens (religion = transactional relationship between people and God wherein God responds to our activities/actions with either blessings or curses) is fairly simple: we refuse to be taken out of the eternity/salvation game. We will not be benched! We are players and players play! So, it’s really hard for us to read the Bible non-religiously wherein God is the Subject (aka Owner/Manager of the Team who decides who plays) and We are the Object. This reading, this lens, is a place where God’s actions impact us, not vice-versa.

Let me share some examples from Scripture, some of the Big Stories/Narratives where God does the work (in Promise/Demand) and we get the goods. God/Subject acting on Us/Object.

-The Story of Creation and Humanity’s Devolvement

The actions of God created Good (Genesis 1:31) and when things went south God took action and called Abraham and Sarah to do that major creative blessing again (Genesis 12:3)

-The Story of Joseph

In the pit (Genesis 37) Joseph’s salvation is not in intellect (“I didn’t do anything wrong, there must be justice done because this is an injustice!”) nor his character (his determination, his grit, seeing him through) but rather actually paying attention to, remembering, his initial promise from God and holding on to only that promise.

-The Story of Moses

When put upon by the people for their trials and Moses complained to God that the people were terrible….the solution was not a reversal of the circumstance but a reliance on the original promise of God to make this Exodus and Settlement happen (see the Book of Numbers for this but for all of Moses see most of the Torah: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy).

-The Story of Prophets and Kings

The injustices done to the people by the ruling elite were not made right by correcting the wrongs but by this very strange solution of solely worshipping Yahweh (God) in the Temple in Jerusalem and nowhere else. Seems to be such an “out of touch with reality,” non-practical, other-worldly solution. But worshiping only in the Jerusalem Temple does fix the problem of Israel “doing what was right in their own eyes” (see the Book of Judges) since scholars tell us that the “doing wrong” was not ethical failures but rather cultic wrongs (Temple location only please!). However in the eyes of the biblical chroniclers, it’s right worship that sets the stage for right living. So, if you fix the worship the justice will follow. So, here’s what happens in correct worship: attention to the original promise of God, by God, to Israel: I am God, you are creation and you will be creatively blessing the world with me (justice).

-The Story of Jesus

The Book of Hebrews puts it this way: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways, by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son…” (Hebrews 1:1).

Jesus shows up on the world stage not as another Sage giving us patterns of belief and behavior to right the ship but instead as the very Mouth of God to shut up and shut down our religiousity and give us God-Self, God’s Life, Promise/Demand, in terms that again, take us out of the game of salvation (this time for the last time and for all time) by setting the Table and Serving Up himself (John 13, Luke 23, passim) by washing our feet and giving us his body and blood (life) in that bread and wine.

What God is Doing to Solve the Problem of God: A Look at Eden

So, back to “the problem of God can only be solved by God.” God has always been Promise/Demand, bringing the blessing first without any requirements or stipulations in order to have and know the blessing.

I’ve been using this word combination of Promise/Demand to describe what God brings. Or better yet, perhaps to say, who God is. It may be a bit strange to hear God described in this way in that we like to think that God is all Lightness and Goodness, all Gift-Giving without any requirement of payback. All Promise. In fact, that’s how I have described God up to this point, even as I’ve used not just the word Promise to describe God, but also have used Demand. How could there be Demand along with the Promise if God is all about “Gift-Giving without any requirement of payback”? This question takes us squarely back to the Garden of Eden, a story told, by the way, not to get at the physical and chronological origins of humanity, but rather at the foundational relationship that all of humanity has with its own mortality: humanity is in fact mortal but at one and the same time, simultaneously, embraced in the immortality that is the Beginning and the Ending of all that is mortal (God).

In this accounting (Story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis) there is this Tree of Life and a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. A Demand is given: no eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That sounds an awful lot like an expectation and stipulation. Indeed it is.

But watch what it is not: a requirement, a payback that God demands in order for the Promise to be delivered.  The Promise, the Tree of Life, is already given. Adam and Eve have already gotten it. There is no earning the Promise, no deserving the Promise. Then why the Demand?

[Excursus: This is the epicenter of the battle royale throughout church doctrine history of how and why God gives Law if with that Law there is not inherently given not only the expectation for adherence but the requirement for adherence to this Law. Martin Luther said there were two pieces he wrote in all of his voluminous work that were worth holding on to: The Bondage of the Will of 1525 wherein he (Luther) responded to the theologian Erasmus’s writing to him about The Freedom of the Will (1524). The other: The Small Catechism of 1529, a summation in pocket form, of God’s engagement with humanity. It is this first one that is this “epicenter.” It is where Luther answers Erasmus’ argument that the Law is given in order for us to obey it so that we can be and will be in relationship with God. Luther says no. Rather, the Law is given so that we can be in relationship with each other (not killing and stealing, for example, makes for a better community!) and so that we can see that any relationship with God is dependent on God, not us. Doctrinally, because of this argument, we have said that the Law has two “uses,” two “functions”: one, civil harmony (peace and justice in society/community), and two, spiritual clarity (humanity inherently distrusts/disobeys God and needs God to not only help us sit up and fly right but also to let us off the hook for not doing so).]

Just a bit more here about Free Will and whether we have it or not.

There is an argument in favor of Free Will that posits that because God is Love then the most loving thing to do, the most loving relationship that can be established, is to have each partner in the relationship choose to love the other. Love cannot be and should not be coerced. Love that is coerced is not really love, it’s manipulation.

God, then, in creating humanity and being loving, would not create humanity without the ability, the free will, to make the choice to love God. There therefore must be human free will in this relationship with God in order for there to be an honest and authentic relationship.

However, let’s stop a minute and talk about honest and authentic. The truth of the matter is that we don’t love God, we hate God, for taking away not only our life (we are mortal…that death and taxes thing) but also any pathway that we can traverse to immortality. Psychologies and theologies on love notwithstanding, there is no love for God without hating God first.  Religion works to fix this dilemma, giving us things to believe and do. The whole of Western, if not Eastern Christianity, is built on this doing things and believing things to reach that pinnacle of loving God. If it’s not attaining heights, its submission to depths. It’s always something.

Once we quit the love game, and realize and accept the fact that God bothers us, we are positioned for some real action. We hear a word of Promise/Demand and faith appears! It’s the unconditionality of it all, “Pushout by God” (more on what I mean by that below) upon us, that blows our mind and opens our heart. Faith is not an appropriation of propositions about God, nor is it managed doubt. Faith is done to us by the undoing of our doing and believing by us and the doing of God’s doing and believing in us and upon us. Luther had a favorite Scripture passage that baldly describes this: “The Lord kills and makes alive…” (First Samuel 2:6). There is a headline descriptive in corners of church life and theology that puts a dogmatic name to this: “Justification by Faith.” Once here, once found in Faith, the liberation happens!].

Again, why the Demand if there is no earning or deserving the Promise?

Simply put, to drive us back into the arms of the Promise: when we don’t kill ourselves physically (check out those 10 Commandments) we are living in the justice that is the Promise and when we always know we are forgiven as we mess up the justice with injustice we are spiritually set free (no more striving always to earn and deserve the Promise).

Yes, there are expectations laid upon the Promise. There is Demand.

But something happens (Sin, something the Bible takes no time to explain where it comes from at its origin but something we are and do that ruins our reliance on the Promise) that takes this Demand that is meant to drive us always to the Promise and instead drives us to protect our autonomy and agency in relationship with God by setting up requirements that we should accomplish in order keep a good relationship with God.

Some More About Seeing All of This in the Christian Bible

These are written and described as such as what I call Pushback by Us against the radical grace that is Promise that, again, threatens us by taking away our agency and autonomy. By “Pushback by Us” I mean the Scripture that is written by us, human beings, and so is filled with the stuff we have written to mitigate the Promise and give us some Demand that we can bite off and chew and swallow that will comfort our hunger that is the need to do and be something to get in the game of salvation. What a minute! Am I saying that we wrote all of Scripture (it was not supernaturally transported to papyrus) and that some of it is Promise/Demand but some of it is Religion, requirements and transaction living where deals can be made by us to get God off our back? In addition, some of it is culturally bound by social norms that push back against the social upheaval that a Promise/Demand ethic brings? Yes, I am saying that.

I don’t think this is surprising given our human penchant for Sin:  taking a pure gift and turning it rather into a commodity we can manage and control and ultimately be something for which we can take credit and too, decide who gets to share it with us. A significant example: Scholars tell us that the “blessings/curses” gambit that is all over the Book of Deuteronomy is right out of the Suzerainty Treaty playbook that the Sumerians developed and used heavily in subjugating conquered peoples. The tribes of Israel thought this a good model for setting up their relationship with their God Yahweh and adopted it and adapted it for how Yahweh related to them. “Do this, and good things will happen to you. Don’t do this, and bad things will happen to you.” But this is not how Yahweh operates. It is a corruption of how Yahweh operates, but it makes total sense to our endless need to try to get good things to happen to us.

Another significant example: Scholars tell us that Paul’s actual writings in the New Testament are seven only (I Thessalonians, Romans, Galatians, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon) and that the other six books that are attributed to him are actually written by others. This is significant for various reasons, but one big one is that there are disparities between the seven and the six that reveal a significant difference in teaching on social norms regarding equality of persons by race, class, and gender. In the seven, Paul follows the ethic of Jesus where there is a radical equality of all (“…there is no longer Jew or Greek, Male or Female, Slave or Free…but all are one in Christ Jesus,” Galatians 3). In the other six, First Timothy for example, where women are to be seen, not heard, and Ephesians, for example, where slaves are to obey their masters, there is a definite “push back” against the radicality of Paul’s actual writings and Jesus’ actual teachings.

“Pushback by Us”: we just can’t take it that God simply gives us everything we need and we do the same with each other.

How is it that with so much “Pushback by Us” (religion: keep the law and make sure others do too!) in the biblical narrative that any “Pushout by God” (Promise/Demand: give the Gospel and the Law) gets through to us? It’s a miracle. But, then again, actually not so much. For who doesn’t resonate with a word from God that actually liberates instead of imprisons?

God Can’t Help Being God

It’s not God’s fault that when God gives demands we take that to mean that God is Demand. What is God to do when we take God giving the Law to mean that God is the Law?

The demands (e.g. Ten Commandments, Holiness Code) have a job to do that is actually life-giving, but we turn them into constrictions that are death dealing. The demands actually function de facto not only as community building and life-saving regulations (stealing, killing, coveting and all the rest actually are not a good idea if you’d like to have a peaceful life!) but also function, again de facto, as a mirror for us to see who we really are as people, who, in our own self-righteousness mess up and miss the mark of being humanely human just as much as the next person [take a moment here and recognize the powerful story told by Jesus (see Luke 15) of the two brothers who both squandered their father’s generosity. The Younger Brother who ran away and profligately wasted and the Elder Brother who stayed home and stingingly stockpiled. The focus, the point, of the story is not the wasting or the stockpiling, and certainly not singularly the wasting (the story is often entitled by us “The Prodigal Son”). The focus/point is the generous father who can’t help being generous, come what may. Hence, as others have pointed out, a better title of the story is “The Waiting Father”].

What, then, is God to do but be God? What this means is that God will continue to be Promise/Demand come hell or high water.

And there is hell to pay, always, when you stick the legal system of requirements and judgment and punishment in the eye and simply give away the farm. “It is not Right!” “It is not Fair!” “There will be Chaos!” “We must have Order!” “People must get what they Deserve – both the Punishment or the Reward earned!” This, we remember, is exactly what happened to Jesus.

Now, to be honest, I don’t know exactly what happened in real time and space in what is accounted as the Resurrection of Jesus.

You can check out the formidable scholarship on that, but grant me this much:  whether Jesus physically revived for all time or his memory and legacy of unconditional self-giving love (that giving away of the farm) was resurrected and kept alive by his followers (even to this day), Jesus beat out and beat down all comers, most acutely and comprehensively the Law that killed him. In other words, it’s what Jesus’ Resurrection means and does to us that matters, not whether you buy into the scenario of a re-enlivened Jesus walking Palestine before taking off for eternity. My point here is that the Modus Operandi of the Universe that has always been operative, and in the event and person of Jesus of Nazareth has been laid down definitively as the Modus Operandi for all time, is Promise/Demand over Religion.

Once God is Totally Being God and Takes out God, What’s Next?

When religion is demolished by Jesus Christ (Romans 10: Christ is the end of the Law), then we are we free to look at each other and care for each other and look at our earth and take care of our ecologies rather than look at God and care about God. Not because God isn’t important or somehow adjacent to our dilemma and dilemmas. But just the opposite. And important because God takes care of the problem of God.

A couple of things now happen.

One, all the seeking of Silence can stop. Or, more correctly, all the seeking of God in and through Silence can stop. Not that quiet and solitude are not immeasurably valuable (I have taken three different week long Silent Retreats at Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky in the past several years) but because trying to quiet the pain and the restlessness with Silence is a futile cause because God cannot be found by us. Rather, God simply shows up, loud and proud.

The remedy, the salvation if you will, is rather the bold and audacious Sound of the Promise/Demand delivered regularly and with abandon: “You Have Enough! You Do Enough! You Are Enough! In Christ Jesus!” (otherwise spoken as “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” and “This is my body and blood, given for you” and “I forgive you, for Jesus sake!”). This, if you haven’t sensed it, is an advertisement for your local church. I know that this is a risky business because so many churches are in the business of religion (as I have defined it here) and not of God. But still. The Good News (Gospel) that puts an end to the Law not by completing all lawful things but by giving mercy totally outside any infrastructure of lawfulness (again, Christ is the end of the law) is a cacophony of words that bring the Promise/Demand in real time, bring what the church likes to call “The Word”, to bear, week after week after week after week until even after the cows come home, until the end of time and space. It is not a Silence that seeks to hear and see God as if God is back there on the other side of Silence. It is a Loud Sound (and “faith comes by hearing,” again, Romans) that is declared, nay, proclaimed, for all to hear.

You can find one of these churches. Granted, it’s not easy and you have to weed through a lot of outfits (churches) that say they are about Jesus Christ but they are not. This is not to say they are not well-meaning and in fact talk about Jesus a lot. At least most of them. It’s just that they are living Religion, not Promise/Demand.

And it’s highly likely that when you find such a church, one that brings Promise/Demand, it will not be fancy or flashy. Actually, it’s likely to be very pedestrian. No matter. So be it. You will find liberation there.

Secondly, care for neighbor and earth is our focus. Does your neighbor need anything? Help them out. And if you dance around with the question of who is your neighbor, check out what Jesus had to say about that when asked. Read Luke 10. Then, the earth. I’m certain that if earth was in the environmental crisis in the first century that it is now in the 21st century, Jesus would have pointed us to earth care. Why? Because it’s on the same level as neighbor: we don’t take care of the earth as much as the earth takes care of us just like we don’t take care of our neighbors as much as our neighbors take care of us (think you’re the autonomous type? Be honest about whose shoulders you are standing on). And so, neighbor and earth go hand in hand.

So, life is pretty simple once you’ve been done in by the Promise/Demand of God in Christ Jesus: 1) no more spiritual calisthenics, no more religion 2) take care of your neighbor and earth.

But once you are liberated (and a baptism is a good idea in order to have the liberation not be something you think you made up) don’t think you can stay there without regularly and constantly being told, in spoken word of Scripture and Sermon and visible word of bread and wine of communion with Jesus Christ. You won’t be able to do it. You will forget. You will go back to your old habit of being religious and thinking the Modus Operandi of the world is the law that must be obeyed by you and everybody else.

Conclusion: You Can Be Free!

By the way, I happen to agree with Pico Iyer that Leonard Cohen put out some serious jams. He wrote “unsparing songs” and so wrote poetically of our human experience like few others.

But I’m afraid Cohen, like us all, was caught by Predestination Sickness and like we all are wont to do, tried to cure it though he said there was no cure. Only God can cure it. Only God can solve the Problem of God. Perhaps Cohen knew that. Even though what I wrote here about what Iyer captured in conversation with Cohen doesn’t show it.

But you can know it. And I hope you do.