Prayer Likened To A Garbage Truck
Dear God, we come to you with everything
And we feel like, you know, like we come
to a passing garbage truck. For we throw all the things we
don’t want in a garbage truck. We cast all the dirty garbage
we have in our lives on you. We keep nothin. We throw it all on you…
A wha? A passing garbage truck!
I stopped eating breakfast. I felt like I was kicked in the stomach. Embarrassment and shock washed over me. The prayer sounded ridiculously funny yet gross at the same time. Soon disgust settled on me and it took some fuming and ranting to cleanse my spirit before I left home for church.
Yesterday morning in Barbados, I was listening to a radio station broadcasting the program of an Evangelist based in Antigua. A woman read the bible, and I soon became annoyed and had to scold myself out of it. Yes it’s one of my peeves. I like to hear the scriptures read well – clearly yet with emotion so that persons can be caught up in the mystery that accompanies reading such sacred texts.
The sister on the radio ‘counted’ each word. By the time she finished a sentence the meaning was completely lost on her hearers. After the scripture reading she began to pray. She launched off in the familiar and intimate language that has become so common. The kind where persons sometimes pray like they are addressing their personal and private god; a thing of wood or stone to be manipulated by our words. Only hers became worse…
With confidence and conviction she declared in the prayer, that praying to God was like approaching a garbage truck. Perhaps some of you might think it uncharitable to pick on this woman. Maybe I ought to feel sorry for her instead. It ticked me off. I believe some Christians just lack some basic principles about what are inappropriate references to be made of God.
Is this one person’s theological understanding of the Garbage Truck God? Should I excuse this as the woman using deep repentance language typical of Christianity? The kind of language that says, God saved a wretch like me, or that I am a worm..etc. So it makes it ok to project any and every attribute to God based on our self-perception? [And some of you rightly ask, so what else is new..]
Thus If we are worms then we could pray saying..
Our Father, the Great Worm-maker
Hallowed be your name
Rubbish! [no pun intended]
It’s not the first I’ve heard similar ‘loose comments’ made by preachers who think they are being ‘theologically profound’. For example, years ago I heard one preacher declare what he called ‘bread van theology’. He asserted that Mary was a Bread Van. Because if Jesus is the Bread of Life, and Mary carried this Bread in her womb then she must be the Bread Van. That kind of nonsense shouldn’t even be repeated.
Prayer and the Garbage Truck God is the kind of thing that comes from careless preachers. They have no idea how they move me to temptation to choke somebody in Jesus name – instead of being moved to worship God. I found her prayer offensive. It reflected a lack of thought and or misguided notions about God at best. It was irresponsible, loose and confirmed the bad impression sections of the world have of us.
Tell me, am I being too hard?
Marvia
No your not being harsh..but what happens to the thought promoted which says “God is everything to us”? What happens to “God in Context”?
Empress,
The ‘contextual God’ idea was at the back of my mind as I grappled with this. Just what is contextual theology? Coming out of the recent mission conference I attended in Jamaica – I’ll say something more on that question.
Personally though, I think that we can go too far in trying to make God ‘everything to us’. It creates problems. However your point is taken. And I’ll try to address this in upcoming posts I’ll do on the subject.