We Exchange the Truth About God for a Lie

"they exchanged the truth about God for a lie..." Romans 1:25. I don't know about any of you, but I've done this. A lot. It hasn't been until recently that I've been confronted with the reality of just how many lies I do believe about God--and how these lies have drastically impacted my emotional and spiritual health during various seasons of life. See if any of these sound familiar. "God wants me to do better, try harder, or be a better person." "If I would just be able to get _____ under control in my life, I'd be a better person and God might love me more." "God blesses me when I am good, and punishes me when I am bad." "God is angry with me." "God causes bad things to happen to teach us lessons, therefore we can't trust God because God is so vengeful." We don't like to admit that we believe these things, but studies show that a huge percentage of Christians in America do. These seem to be the dominant narratives that have somehow been communicated about God in our churches, and the problem is, they're lies. None of these things are true, but they greatly impact how we live our lives.

Author James Bryan Smith has written 3 books (book 3 will arrive in September) called The Apprentice Series, and book 1 deals with exactly this issue--what we believe about God, and, more-so, what do we believe wrongly about God. I'll be honest, most Christian pop-literature drives me nuts. I've never read (nor have I ever wanted to read) Rick Warren's book. I usually get about half way through a book on faith, prayer, the church etc and quit. That isn't the case with this one at all. I'm over half way through with The Good and Beautiful God and am already soliciting people to go through it again with me as a small group (it's designed for small groups, but I've been doing it individually and it's still amazing). I can't even tell you how much it's daily challenging and changing the ways I think about God, and the overwhelming sense of freedom I'm feeling as I think about how I relate to this God that I intellectually know loves me but don't always feel it.

He spends this book making the case that the only real way to understand the character and nature of God is to look to the person of Jesus, who says he came to show us the Father. How did Jesus act? What did his parables teach us? What does Jesus say about God? Smith writes that as we begin to know Jesus, we are then able to begin falling in love with the God Jesus points us to. Each chapter takes up a different character trait of God and involves spiritual disciplines to help us interact with this aspect of God's character to understand it in a way that is perhaps different from how we're taught Sunday mornings. Each chapter has a different discipline to practice throughout the week and great questions to think/journal/pray about throughout the week. For example, chapter 3 is God is Trustworthy and for a "Soul Training" exercise that week he has us spend time making as long of a list as we can of things we're thankful for--ways God has blessed us. As we intentionally take time to do this, we are reminded of all the ways God has provided for us in the past and that helps us understand God as the God we can trust with the future.

I haven't read books 2 and 3 yet (The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ, and The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love) but I'm excited to, and hoping to find others who will go through them with me. This is a man who has been mentored and has personal friendships with Rich Mullins, Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Brennan Manning and Henri Nouwen. With a cast of spiritual cheerleaders like that, we know he has something to say worth listening to!