A Closer Look
A Glacier Melting into the Sea
These Bears Drowned Before They Could Reach Solid Ice
Rainforest Clear Cutting Destroying Habitat of Endangered Species
In the early 90s there was a popular song called “From a Distance” and was sung by several well known artists, including Bette Midler and Kathy Mattea . The lyrics imagine how we look from God’s perspective, which the writer visualizes to be from somewhere out in space looking down on this sphere we call Earth. Listen to the lyrics:
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.
From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.
From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.
From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
what all this fighting is for.
From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.
This is the song of every man.
And God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.
God is watching us from a distance.
Its certainly an interesting perspective, and it was a popular and pretty song. But it is rotten theology. It says everything looks pretty good when viewed from afar. Which is, of course, often true. I even joke that I look pretty good – from a distance!
The theological implication, however, is that “from a distance” is precisely how God sees us. This God conjured up in the mind of the lyricist is remote, distant and most of all, obviously blind to what is really going on “down here” on earth.
And, seeing nothing out of order, oblivious to the details of our lives, he simply watches. He doesn’t DO anything. He just watches. He watches like we would watch a bunch of ants carrying off a moth, or like we watch a far off tornado or a hail storm, fascinated but uninvolved since it doesn’t affect us.
But, up close to the action, down here on earth, it is, in fact, quite a different story. The icecaps are melting, glaciers are disappearing, polar bears will likely be extinct in the wild in my lifetime, all because of global warming. The forests are decimated as are hundreds of mammal, reptile, and insect species. The streams, rivers, and seas are polluted.
And we humans use our greatest powers of ingenuity and creativity for humiliating and destroying other human beings. People suffer and die; people lie, cheat and steal, poverty runs rampant, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Of course, none of this is visible “from a distance.” But, when viewed up close and personal, it is all too much. Our world, and too many of our lives, are a complete mess.
The song does have a moral message, a positive, hopeful humanistic message. The lyricist wants us to become who we appear to be when viewed “from a distance.” From a distance we are one, no one is in need, harmony echoes through the land, and hope dwells abundantly in every home.
However, for the songwriter, in order to do this we must climb out of the hole we are in. God is “up there” and “looking down.” – but he isn’t doing anything, and he has no intention of doing anything.
The song suggests that God cannot save us; only we can save ourselves. The changing, the peacemaking, the forgiving, the healing, and the saving is our work. There is no hint that there is far more evil in this world than man can even imagine, let alone hope to end. There is far more pain than we can heal, far more greed and hatred than man alone can handle. It has always been so.
If that is true, then what do we do? Do we throw up our hands and just give up? Who do we turn to to help us when we cannot begin to create our own future? When everything seems to be going to hell in a hand basket and nobody seems either to care or to be able to do anything about it if he or she did care, do we just give up, turn in 0n our selves and ignore the reality of our human condition?
St. Paul has an answer to that, but his is an entirely different perspective than that of the lyricist. In his letter to the church at Phillippi he urges the congregation to repentance, change, and holy living not because God is far away, but because “The Lord is near.” (Phil 4:5b).
Paul, like the song writer, is concerned about the gap between humans and God. However, unlike the song, the unified thrust of Paul and of all the biblical writers is this: we, through our sin, created the gap between God and man. But the gap is closing, and we aren’t the ones closing it.
The chasm is being filled, the road is being made straight, cleared of obstructions, being made ready for the coming of the Lord. The great gulf between God and humanity is being filled, but the filling in is coming from God’s side. God is coming closer.
God’s increasing nearness is not because we have climbed up higher to get his perspective on things. We have already tried that with the building of the Tower of Babel. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. We are incapable of climbing up to visit God; and we are not wired to solve all the injustice, cruelty and destruction that our minds are wired to conceive.
No, the great gulf between man and God is being filled by God because God has climbed down, seen what is going on, and made a decision to do something about it!
Paul didn’t just make this idea up. From the beginning the prophets of the Lord have urged us to get our act together because “The Lord is Coming.” John the Baptist, in the tradition of the prophet Isaiah, appealed to God’s certain coming – as a way of urging humans to live justly and mercifully with each other. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” John shouted. “Make his paths straight.” God will come, John announced, and in that day “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Lk 3:6).
The Gospel of John (Jn 1:1-14) tells us that God is not content to watch from a distance as we go on bungling our stewardship of creation and mangling each other. Rather, God is coming; the gap is closing.
To be sure, there is a very real distance between God and us, as there must always be between Creator and creature. We are the work of God’s hands; we are not now and will never be God. Our ineptitude is obvious even when written in the most positivly slanted of the histories of the human race.
Unfortunately, many people assume that the distance between God and us is so grand and infinite that is unbridgeable. And, since it is unbrigeable it is irrelevent. The song writer clearly implies this to be the case, and appeals to us to do whatever it takes to make the distant view of earth a reality. We are to create the perfect, peaceful world that God thinks he sees because he is too far away to know any better!
Would that we could! But we can’t. We aren’t God, and while we must try to do our best to stop the stupidities of our own destruction, we need help, and a lot of it! Like maybe we need a God that cares enough about us – in spite of our sin, - to come to us! – for we surely can’t get to him on our own. And how many centuries of incompetent stewardship of this creation do we need to live before the obvious dawns on us? "We can't do this by ourselves!"
And yet, ironically, that is precisely the good news that Advent brings! The good news is that the gap between God and man has been breached. God has rushed into the world to meet us. In a few days Christians throughout the world will celebrate the truth that God has traversed the distance between him and us.
In a week Christians will celebrate our belief that God has come down to live, teach, preach, heal and begin the reconciliation that was prayed for by kings and rabbis, urchins and prophets. Over two thousand years ago on a cold night in an improbable village, born to an improbable young woman God arrived – up close and in person – God took flesh and entered this messy world. Or, as the Bible so eloquently puts it: “the Word became a flesh and dwelt among us.”
As we near the end of this Advent season the waiting, and listening, and hoping and praying that God will, in Isaiah’s words “…tear open the heavens and come down,’ is coming to an end. And a Christmas truth believed by all Christians will be proclaimed: that the long awaited miracle has happened: Christ has come, Emmanuel, “God with us.” And never can it be said that he knows us only “From a Distance.”
My prayer is that all, regardless of religion, belief system, or personal faith, will know the joy that comes from feeling the closeness of God in their lives. And if you do not acknowledge the existence of God, if you have no belief system or personal faith at all, if your personal spiritual journey has not led you to faith, I hope that you too will find peace, love and the friendship that enables us all to help to do our part to make this small planet a better place than it was when we inherited it.
Monte
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