What if the "God shaped" hole was actually God?

We have heard it said that humans have a "God shaped hole" in our souls that we try to fill up with different things. We are then told of the many different material things we seek to fill that hole: money, sex, power, etc. It is a common sermon and a common beginning to a Bible tract.  

Recently Peter Rollins has been asking the question, what if the God shaped hole was not a void at all, but what if that hole was God.

Part of what he is getting at is that the church is set up like a market place. The church says there is a void in your life and we (the church) have the solution: Community, God, Love, etc. 

This is a problem, because God is not a commodity that we can "sell".

So rather than trying to "fill the hole", the questions are raised: What if God is not something that we 'plug into' our lives like a new technology to fill a (fabricated) void? What if God is the hole in our lives and we are called to embrace that emptiness and chaos and darkness? And when we embrace that chaos within us, then does death lose its sting? 

Jason Valendy

Husband, father of two boys, pastor in the United Methodist Church, and guy who is interested in the desert mothers and fathers. The idea of Orthocardia is the pursuit of having a “right heart” over the pursuit of having a “right belief” (orthodoxy) or a “right action” (orthopraxy).

www.jasonvalendy.net
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