Taste Testing God

A custom common to many folks is to use the changing of the calendar as a moment to take stock of life and set goals for the coming year. We often call these goals "resolutions" as in "I resolve to" lose weight or clean out the garage. The standard New Year's joke is that such "New Year's resolutions" last shorter than the proverbial New Year's Eve hangover.

Perhaps the short-lived nature of these goals is because they are given too minimal a gestation period, coming as so many of them do in the closing hours of the old year or even during the lingering hangover the next day. And perhaps goals so conceived are best left at the party anyway.

I've tended to avoid New Year's resolutions precisely because of their sordid reputation. But I have been known to set a lot of goals in my life. Some I've achieved, some I've exceeded, and many others I've failed miserably at, even leaving a few behind the moment I've written them down. I'm not setting goals or resolutions this New Year, but I am continuing a process begun many months ago -- that of sorting through and taking stock of the essentials in life.

I've experienced something the past three years I thought I was going to avoid -- a mid-life crisis. It had to be one, occurring as it did at midlife (I guess) and it was a crisis (without a doubt). I won't go into the gory details, other than to say that I walked through a period of deep depression in which all the realities of life as I'd perceived them were vigorously shaken to the extent that what has come after is hard to connect with what went before.

And yet, I come to the other side of that dark valley in life amazed at how intact some of the most closely held values remain and have deepened -- such as my devotion to God, my love for my wife and kids, and my commitment "to reconcile the alienated, free the oppressed and embrace the misfit" (as I've phrased it on my website). Oh, and my quirky humor (sorry, folks).

What I've also determined is that I'm not going to let presumptions stick just because they already exist. It is too easy in life to believe that something is true merely because you always thought of it that way and were too lazy or too afraid to examine it and see if it really is as true as it purports to be. No exceptions. Not even God.

It is that "not even God" that makes people nervous, especially religious types who depend on there being a god in order for them to remain religious. But if God really exists and He/She really is God, then my thinking is that He/She can stand up to all the scrutiny the world can muster. And, surprise, surprise, God is not intimidated by our scrutiny. In fact, the God I know actually welcomes it.

Where is that line that says "taste and see that the Lord is good"? Happens to be in a Psalm of David, Number 34. Interesting note at the head of the psalm. David wrote it when he was pretending "to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away." Actually while the Psalm is as upbeat as they come, even when it talks about suffering saints and struggling sinners, it was a very low time in David's life, coming as it did when he was fleeing for his life from Saul and living as a man without a country -- and without a friend.

In the midst of that dark hour in David's life, he penned a song about checking God out to see if He is made of the real stuff or is just the sort of fake gods that Abimelech kept around his house.

I've eaten a lot of exotic foods in my time, being a guest to many a host ready to share his or her favorite concoction you've never heard of. They generally, being gracious hosts, only want you to try it and then smile and tell them how good it is before you tuck the rest of it under the cleaned-off chicken bones. It's what you tell your kids when you want them to eat that stuff out of the baby jar, the stuff you wouldn't eat in a million years. "Just taste it," you say.

And that is what David says. Taste God. Just check Him out and see if He really is all He's trumped up to be. If I get this psalm's context right, the time to do that taste testing is not when you're flying high in the good life. It is when you are either acting insane or doing it for real. Any old god can taste good when life is good, but only a true God will come through for you when you are caught between your arch enemies, Abimelech and Saul, who'd kill you first and then each other.

The nice thing about going through depression is that ever after you have an excuse for whatever it is you've ever wanted to do. "Poor thing, he's out of his head," they say. I've decided that, as with David, I'm going for broke. I'm taste testing God.