I recently sent a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. It was a small attempt to always be ready to account for the hope that is within me. On Good Friday, they published an article called, "Re-defining God". The general theme of the article was the adoption of "less personal" images of God by many of the mainstream Protestant churches. The hidden theme was that these images are "kinder" and "gentler" and, by implication, better. If you get a chance to read the article this letter may make more sense. If you don't have it but want it, I have a faxable copy.

RE: "Re-defining God", Wall Street Journal, Good Friday, 2000

To The Editor:

Traditional theologians have always recognized God as the Fire in the Burning Bush, the Dove at Christ’s Baptism, tongues of flame and a roaring wind at Pentecost, and the Lamb Who Was Slain in the Apocalypse. But they also have believed that God has revealed Himself to humanity in a way that enables us to have a relationship with Him - and that that revelation can actually help us to better know God. In other words, traditionalists believe that we call God our Father, not because the person who wrote scripture was a male chauvinist, but because that is the way God has revealed Himself to us - not because He is in our image but because we are in His. Traditionalists have always recognized that this idea of God as Father does not actually indicate a physical, old man on a throne in heaven. Traditionalists have asserted, with Jesus, that God is a spirit and those that worship Him must do so in spirit and truth. Michelangelo did not paint God’s "hand" reaching out to Adam because he believed that God had a physical hand but because he believed that God reached out to bring life to Adam - and "spirit" is notoriously difficult to paint.

Your Good Friday article, "Redefining God", was an excellent example of the use of the "straw man" fallacy to support the myths of modernist theology. Your subtitle - "An old bearded man or a force in the wind?" posits an inaccurate view of the traditional God of Christianity. You then set modernist sub-personal views of God against this "faux-traditional" view in an obvious implication that the new views are "kinder, gentler" and, thus, better.

But "wind", "rock", and "fire" cannot be kinder or gentler so what is actually being sold here? Modernist theology relies heavily on the myth of progress and the rejection of Revelation. The real change that has taken place is that people have traded in the reality of a God who reveals Himself to mankind for impersonal concepts that do not require the effort of a relationship, the humility of service, or the pain of repentance. This trade ensures that we know less about God, about ourselves, and about the moral life required of us. Ignorance is bliss so knowing less may seem "kinder" and "gentler". But kinder ignorance will not result in the "sea change" or metanoia required to remove suicide as one of the leading killers of our youth, abortion as the leading cause of death for babies, and flagrant and habitual dishonesty as one of the leading tactics of public life. It will not end 30 years of the legacy of the deification of sex resulting in widespread adultery, the failure of over 50% of marriages, and the acceptance of perversion as commonplace.

Some truths are sober and hard. Some truths require repentance and a life-change. No amount of redefinition will change these cold, hard, objective truths. Redefinition only changes our attitude so that we do not feel the increasing warmth of the water before it boils.

Pax Christi,
Mark D. Steele