There is a song from my childhood that just came to my mind yesterday, for some reason. If you are my age or older, you may remember it. It’s an old country song by a couple of country music legends, George Jones and Tammy Wynette. I had not thought of this song in years until, out of the blue, the words and the honky-tonk tune just started playing in my head:
God’s gonna get’cha for that,
God’s gonna get’cha for that,
There’s no place to run and hide
For He knows where you’re at.
God’s gonna get’cha for that,
God’s gonna get’cha for that,
Every wrong thing that you do,
God’s gonna get’cha for that!
Like I said, I don’t know what made me think of that, except maybe I had caught myself in some failure to behave or think the way I wanted, and the devil was trying to discourage me, to convince me I am hopeless and, in the end, God is going to “get me.”
I know as a child, this was my overriding picture of God. An impossibly good and powerful being “up there” who kept a close eye on all of us impossibly bad and weak beings down here, just waiting to catch us acting out (or thinking out—a concept which terrified my young mind). My particular faith tradition holds the hours between sundown Friday and sundown Saturday to be holy, God’s time. There is much discussion in my church about what it means to honor this time, to keep the Sabbath holy, but one thing that was pretty clear to me was that I wasn’t supposed to be at a country music concert on Friday evening, after sundown. Yet here I was, with my family, listening to worldly music and, in my case, watching the skies to see if Jesus might just happen to come back right smack dab in the middle of my sin and catch me red handed. The truth is, the sky did look a little ominous, even apocalyptic, that particular evening, and I was several shades of terrified much of the night.
On another occasion, I can remember waking from a dream in a cold sweat. Our church was in the middle of a prophecy crusade, a multi-media portrayal of prophetic themes from Daniel and Revelation, using slides and music and what-not. The pictures were pretty graphic images of (depending on the night and the topic) multi-headed beasts, evil-looking painted women, fire raining down from heaven, people coming out of graves, and similar stuff. In my dream this particular night, I was standing at my window looking out, having heard a great commotion outside and gotten out of bed to look. I saw in the night sky, angels flying here and there, and various people floating through the air, upwards, towards a bright and glorious light that looked for all the world like the painting from that evening’s sermon on the second coming. I knew instantly that this was it and that Jesus had come back to earth as he had promised. I began to sort of subconsciously try to raise myself off the floor and float myself out the window, but nothing happened. And no angel came to my window to assist me, either. Gradually, as the noise and light dimmed and faded, I realized I had been left behind, lost and forsaken.
Then I woke up. In time the despair and fright faded and the memory has become a more or less antiseptic recollection, but that sense that God is “gonna get me” has hung on far longer. I have lived much of my life sort of spiritually looking over my shoulder waiting for the other shoe to fall from heaven. It’s not that such a worldview is unreasonable, either. Much of the Old Testament is filled with stories of God “getting” wicked people. Even in the New Testament, we have stories like Ananias and Sapphira, struck down on the spot for lying to God. That’s as clear an example being “got” as I can think of. And yet, there’s a lot of context to these stories that don’t come through the plain Jane narrative. Some of that context is provided by the life of Christ as recorded in the gospels. His was not a “gotcha” ministry. The weakest, most sinful, most vile, members of society called him friend and clamored to be near him.
The only way I can fight the temptation to view God as a gotcha kind of deity is to look at Him as He is revealed through Christ, whose life and ministry is an eternal reminder that, in a sense, God is gonna get me. Only he’s not gonna get me for that, he’s coming to get me from that. The Bible reminds me, through stories of his interactions with people like Matthew the tax collector, the demon-possessed Mary, the sexually promiscuous woman at the wheel and the same kind of woman caught in adultery, that Jesus came to, “seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10). Jesus told his disciples in John 14 that he was going away to prepare a place for them, but that he was going to come back and “get them” so that the disciples (And me. And you.) could be with him forever.
I’ve had enough of trying to fly myself out of my own window. I want to live the grace that says I am saved through Christ, and any saving that is to be done, he, the author and finisher of my faith, will do (Hebrews 12:2). In my life, I’d like to rewrite those lyrics to something like this:
God’s gonna get’cha from that,
God’s gonna get’cha from that,
No sin so deep he can’t pull ya out,
God’s gonna get’cha from that!
God’s gonna get’cha from that,
God’s gonna get’cha from that,
Take you home to live with him,
God’s gonna get’cha from that!
