A couple of weeks ago I briefly mentioned the concept of a Tribal God. There are times when you hear or read about a concept and it really gets under your skin and festers (in a good way). For me, this has been the concept of a “Tribal God” I encountered while reading Brian McLaren’s book “The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World's Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian”. The idea of a Tribal God finds itself very well rooted in Old Testament times when each tribe or collection of people would have their own God or Gods.
“On learning that the ark of the LORD had come into the camp, the Philistines were frightened. They said, “Gods have come to their camp.” They said also, “Woe to us! This has never happened before. Woe to us! Who can deliver us from the power of these mighty gods?” 1 Samuel 4:6-8
“But even if he will not, you should know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue which you set up.” Daniel 3:18
In those days many people, like the Philistines, where polytheists believing there were many gods and that each people had their own set of Gods they worshiped and honored. Even the Jews who were monotheists considered the single God they worshipped to be very much the God of the Jews.
“And the answer will come: “Because they abandoned the LORD, the God of their ancestors, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they embraced other gods, bowing down to them and serving them” 2 Chronicles 7:22
It was not too many years ago that God seemed to be still split up between religions and denominations. This seems to be improving but in many ways, we have not moved very far from this Tribal God world view in the last 4000 years.
This concept of our god and their god has caused many conflicts and has been the root of a lot of suffering and pain over history. Since I have been made aware of the continued existence of a Tribal God I have been seeing it come up with alarming consistency in what I read and hear. Any time I hear the words “our God” it now makes me shiver. To me, saying our God means that God is something we can possess. As I mentioned in my blog post about contemporary Christian music you will hear that term in these songs. Every time I encounter “our God” in a song, article, book, or talk/homily/sermon I quickly think to myself is that needed? Could the “our” part just simply be dropped or rephased? For example, the famous worship song “Awesome God” by Rich Mullins has the chorus:
“Our God is an Awesome God”
Would it make the song any less true and less of worship to God if it was changed to:
“God is an Awesome God”
Before we Catholics get too comfortable by pointing to Vatican II and it’s milestone acceptance of other faiths we can hear terms like this in every Mass:
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”
“to pray for me to the Lord our God.”
“Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”
“through Christ our Lord.”
The longer I am on this world more convinced I am that the words we use really do matter. It can be easy to dismiss things like this saying they are only words, but the words we hear constantly influence how we think and perceive. To say “our God” implies it is not “their God”. We as followers of God must truly believe that God is the God of all and that no faith tradition has the right to proclaim “our God”.
Enough ranting for one week. More to come next week…
Peace, blessings, and prayers,
Deacon Richard
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