Who is this “God Almighty”?
Added about 4 days ago by Alan M. Suggate
In a world gripped by power and injustice, how can Christian faith reframe our understanding of God, humanity, and hope? Alan M. Suggate, author of Living Culture, Living Christ, provides a stirring call to live with integrity and compassion.
“British banks put £75bn into firms behind ‘carbon bombs’.” Humane values and purposes have long been expelled from the public realm, especially from economics and politics, so it is no surprise that power and money are now globally rampant: up front are insatiable wheeler-dealers, backed by financial and media magnates who elude or suppress any call to accountability. Hard-won international norms and agreements protecting humans and the environment are routinely derided and disregarded. Democracy is subverted into oligarchy and autocracy. Ordinary people, frustrated by their powerlessness, either passively retreat into their own little world or identify with the powerful and seethe with grievance. Violence is normalized; brutality becomes banal. And in all this the powerful repeatedly assure us they are benefactors, often with the blessing of God Almighty.
But who is this “God Almighty”? Christianity is a threefold practice of worship, reflection and action in the world. How does this way of life illuminate our understanding of God, humans and the world and enable us to discern and respond to the signs of our times?
The liturgy is not just about the individual soul communing with God; even less is it an escape route to a purely spiritual world (cf. Jesus’ prayer in John 17:15). For it is always social, an act of the community of the Church, local to worldwide. It is physical: the material we handle, see and eat is revealed in its fuller depth, saturated with meaning and value as it conveys divine life. And it shapes time and space: God’s act in Christ becomes powerfully present and opens the way into the future as God draws the whole creation into a final unity-in-diversity (1 Corinthians 15:28; cf. Ephesians 1:3–10).
This is the dynamic of the new creation, which brings to fulfilment the long story of the first creation. God simply is—uniquely eternal, entirely free to be God, so that creation is not the exercise of power over another. Rather, God is pure Giver, who freely speaks and the world is created. It is a limited world, completely dependent on God for its existence and flourishing. That includes human beings, who are also “in the image of God”, called into responsive communion with God. So God is entirely trustworthy and life-giving. This is our primary relationship, the guarantee of our dignity and freedom, since this God cannot be invoked to legitimize earthly power but holds it strictly to account. Yet we aspire to be gods ourselves with our fantasy views of “Almighty”, as is writ large in history’s catalogue of division and struggles for domination. For our integration we need to affirm that the real centre of the real world is God—and only God can deliver us from our self-centredness.
Jesus Christ faithfully upholds God’s trustworthiness. He offers loving acceptance to all and sundry. He does not seek or defend any space for himself but gives himself without limit for the flourishing of others. His authority is one of complete integrity, freely lived in humility and vulnerability, in solidarity with the most powerless and despised. He refuses ever to coerce our response, for he practises the renunciation of power and advantage. By his life of self-sacrifice he restores human life. In him the image of God in which humans were created is fully activated. And this creates a new relationship between divine and human life. His self-emptying on earth, resurrection and the gift of the Spirit open the way for our finite and historical self-emptying towards God and all others, human and non-human. By being incorporated into his Body, initially by baptism as adopted daughters and sons, we can become aligned with his humanity and so be caught up into the threefold relational life of God.
So the Christian life is a journey of transformation. Various images are used in the New Testament: we are being changed into God’s likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18), as creatures we partake of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Paul affirms the overcoming of the deepest divisions in the world of his day (which are still with us!): between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, men and women. All who are baptized and have “put on Christ” are already one in him (Galatians 3:27–8). But the powers of the old world are still vigorously at work and Christ’s work is incomplete. There is a perpetual tension between what is already realized and what is yet to come. It is part of the task of the Church, and especially the laity, to be active servants of God in society, working with others of good will to challenge the pretensions of the powerful and release Christ’s life into the world (cf. Luke 22:24–7). There are bound to be difficulties of discernment, and there will be disappointments and failures of practice. So it is crucial for Christians to live by a vision of God’s relation to humanity and the world, following the pattern of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. The journey will take us with Christ through the Garden of Gethsemane, as we lament our own failings and feel on our pulses the sufferings of the world; but we can thankfully and joyfully observe signs of the new creation and trust in hope that God has the power fully to bring in the Kingdom of truth and peace, justice and love (Romans 8:18–39).
Alan M. Suggate is the author of Living Culture, Living Christ (Sacristy Press, 2022).
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