God as the cosmic slot machine...

At the church where I serve, we are in the middle of a sermon series entitled Distorted. During this series, we are spending our time together addressing six distorted views of God that flow from a distorted perception and assumption about God and that can result in us shaping and molding God into our image. And as we go through this series, our hope and our prayer is that God would move by the power of the Holy Spirit in our heads, hearts, and hands to enable us to rid ourselves of any distorted views that we have of God and replace them with an accurate view of God so that we would be able to experience a growing and maturing relationship with God.

This week I would like for us to spend our time together addressing another distorted view of God that flows from a distorted perception and assumption about God and that can result in us shaping and molding God into our image. And the distorted view of God that I would like us to address is the view of God as the cosmic slot machine.

This distorted view of God is the result of two different dynamics that we can experience as we live out our day to day life. The first dynamic involves the mystery of God. This morning, the timeless reality is that there is mystery about God. As finite beings, we are unable to wrap our minds around an infinite God. There is mystery surrounding the nature of God. For example, just take the concept of the Trinity. How can there be one God with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, all considered distinct in their personhood? There is mystery surrounding the character of God. For example, a common question that is asked is “How can God be both loving and just?” And there is mystery surrounding the activity of God. For example, people will often ask “How can a good and loving God send people to hell?”

The second dynamic involves the uncertainty of life. The timeless reality is that life is uncertain. Life has a tendency to bring the unexpected. Life is often unpredictable. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. And sometimes good things happen to bad people. Sometimes people seem to do all the right things and yet still experience tragedy and misfortune in life. And sometimes people seem to do all the wrong things and yet still experience prosperity and blessing in life.

As a result, for many people, the uncertainty of life and the questions that flow from the uncertainty of life lead us to draw one of three conclusions. We can come to the conclusion that God is involved in every detail and has a reason for everything, even though it might be beyond our understanding. Or we can come to the conclusion that God is biased, and those who are either “blessed” or “cursed” are living proof of the bias of God. Or we can come to the conclusion that God is random, and “what you get is what you get”. What you do with what you get from the randomness of God is up to you.

So for many people, the mystery of God and the uncertainty of life lead to the view of God as the cosmic slot machine. For many people, both God and life are viewed as being one big gamble. God is viewed as the cosmic slot machine, where life has little to do with love and instead is all about luck. God is viewed as the cosmic slot machine where you win sometimes, you lose sometimes, and, at the end of the day, the best you can hope for is to break even at the end of your life.

Maybe I have just described your perception of who God is and how life is. Maybe you view life as one big gamble that is driven by luck, not love. Maybe you view God as being random and that” we get what we get” from God. However, this image of God as the cosmic slot machine damages our perceptions of who God is and damages how we live out our day to day life here on earth.

You see, when we view God as the cosmic slot machine, the seeming randomness of God will lead us to hedge our bets and play it safe for fear that we could lose it all. As a result, we end up living life as though we are playing the nickel slots. We never really win big in life, but most importantly, we never risk losing it all in life.

The problem with viewing God as the cosmic slot machine is that, when you really think about it, and if we are brutally honest with ourselves, every person we have ever known and every person that we have ever read about in the letters that make up the Bible, those who play it safe and hedge their bets on life never really live life. Those who decide to play it safe; those who hedge their bets on God never really know God.

However, to view God as the cosmic slot machine that views life as being one big gamble that we hedge our bets on is a distorted view of God. We see this reality revealed in a section of an account of Jesus life that is recorded for us in the Bible called the gospel of John. And it is in this section of this account of Jesus life that we discover a timeless truth that can help us rid ourselves of the distorted view of God as the cosmic slot machine and replace it with an accurate view of God.

Tomorrow we will begin to look at this section of the gospel of John…