The Dispensable God

"Give us help from trouble, for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly, for it is He that shall tread down our enemies." Ps. 60:11, 12

"For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do, because of His good pleasure." Phil. 2:13

"...without me, ye can do nothing." John 15:5b

God is as much a necessity as He is a luxury. He is a luxury in that he is a delight to our souls and more than we ever could have imagined (or deserved). He is a necessity in that we cannot dispense with Him. To do so means death, of our souls and minds and bodies. He is the thing that we simultaneously want and need in the ultimate sense, though we are perhaps incapable of expressing such a fact adequately. He is such a luxury that man, in our darkened ignorance, still seeks to fill the void that separation from Him has left behind. He is such a necessity that we cannot even choose Him unless His word gives us the power to do so (Rom. 10:17). On all points, we cannot live without Him, though the world desperately tries to.
The Church tries to as well, sadly. The denial of God's luxury and necessity, of Him being what we most want and need, is a hallmark symptom of practical agnosticism, a curious yet obvious aliment of Modern Christendom. We view God as quite dispensable, like a hat that can be worn our not depending on season and climate or fashion and mood; and that's if we even think about Him at all. Perhaps if we got our heads screwed on straight and our priorities realigned, if we would stop treating God like something trivial (like a hat or other accessory) and return to treating Him like something vital (like air or chocolate), if we would simply dispense with the dispensable God and get back to our luxurious and necessary God, we would all be much better off, and our lives far more Christian.

-Jon Vowell