cat and dog

I had the pleasure of talking with my cousins over Christmas concerning walks of faith, and keeping things together spiritually while in college. This can be a tough and challenging road, when the prospect of a world of possibilities waiting at your fingertips comes right in front of your face.

It’s almost overwhelming to hear about all that there is in this world, and to think that we’ve only scratched the surface so far. What can be dangerous about these thoughts is the slippery slope that society eagerly waits to feed down our throats: this world is all about you. Sayings like “seize the day” and “take what’s yours” bounce around in our head, and we are deceived by illusions of grandeur.

“Cat and dog theology,” very loosely, is the idea that we are either cats of dogs when it comes to our relationship with God. Picture yourself arriving home from work to your dog at home. They greet you at the door, jump up on your leg to be scratched on the head, run after toys and present them at your feet so that you might engage them in joy. They cuddle up next to you on the couch and crave the warm against you.

Now picture coming home to a cat. You open the door, and as you set your things down you glance around to see where the cat may be. You notice it glaring at you from a small spot in the front room where the sun is shining through the window. It gets up and padders away with what seems to you like “that’s right, look at me” type egotism. You fiddle fruitlessly with that little ball with a bell in it at the end of a string, to no avail. Cat’s not into it right now. You throw down some food, it munches for a moment, then scurries off back to the sun-warmed spot in the front room. After a while it rubs across your legs as you sit in your chair, purring faintly as it seeks the satisfaction of that rough spot on the edge of your tennis-shoe. You pick it up to pet it, and it tolerates it, for a moment, before leaping back down and scampering back to some corner to scratch on a post.

The idea is that we’re one of two types of people when it comes to how we relate to God. It’s frightening how close we are to the cat type. We may appreciate the times that God provides some cat nip in a cardboard scratchy thing (and we’re content with the simplicity of that), and somehow magically, the place where all the disgusting and defiling things we leave in a pile of dust is removed and freshly scooped regularly. As the days go by, we are gods of all things! There’s food, when we want it, when we desire a little back scratch, we muster up the energy to rub against whatever’s scratchiest, and whenever our owner comes through the door, we may glance at them, but nothing’s out of the ordinary. We’ve still got precious minutes left to nap in the sun. We can’t be bothered by the intrusion of the owner coming home.

This is a problem. As my brother and I discussed at length with my cousins, I can’t even count how many students I know, friends and peers of mine, and acquaintances I’ve met from here and there came across my mind. My fear is that as a global church we may have failed at recognizing the key factors in raising up a generation that seeks the right god in the house: God. (Not us)

I’ll always remember a sermon I heard a few years ago, where the preacher at the top of his lungs proclaimed that the church has failed at raising up who knows how many “millenials.” Students get to college, or move out of mom and dad’s house and are bombarded by a world of countless endeavors and the “sky is the limit” mentality. Thing after thing after thing to chase after and aspire to be… all the while forgetting the God that made all these things possible. Being ambitious isn’t a bad thing… but we’re not gods.

A beautiful song by As Cities Burn:

“we bear your name, and you let us say that you’re something you’re not.
as if you were made after we saw our own faces and knew we were gods enough.
I think we were made too pretty.”

We’re not the point. As I’ve said before. Surely we’re not what’s ultimate in the world. God was not invented in our own minds after we decided that “hey everything’s pretty great. I’m pretty much the best there is.” Cause we’re not what’s ultimate. Surely we don’t think that…?

The other type of relationship is looking to God as he comes through the door. Smiles on our faces cause we’ve been wallowing all day in our isolation with nothing to do, no one to look forward to. We crave the scratch of his hand on our neck. We look for anything we can that will bring pleasure to him. We’ve recognized the expectations set in place, we go to the door when we’ve got the filth, and we look to him for the measures by which he provides the atonement for what’s not needed in us. HE opens the door. HE lets us back inside. And it’s a joyous time. No mess on the floor, that stank is OUTside, our joy is where HE is. Our joy is found in him. Loneliness is not a part of our vocabulary or train of thought. Our purpose is confidently founded in who he is, not who we are.

What can be frustrating is that we approach Christianity, or we approach a relationship with God as something we need to sell. There are pros and cons, and once that’s all sorted out, we read somewhere that in the end we come out on top. This spits in the face of everything in this world tries to define for us. But His relationship with any of us is not something to sold. It’s something he already bought.

Justice is something we can agree on, right? Well justice would mean that we don’t measure up to perfection, there’s a righteous requirement, right? That’s a saying I’m on board with: “nobody’s perfect.” Which said in another way, “everyone is hopeless.”

But it doesn’t end there, because justice WAS paid. It was paid so that we could even have a relationship with God. And all the things of this world FADE in light of who he is. Are they bad things? No. Some are squeaky toys. others are a rope or a bone to chew on, a ball to chase… but the paramount intrinsic point of all of these things is that the JOY we find in them rests in HIM who gave them to us. In HIM who activates and motivates and energizes all of these things for us so that we find JOY in them and he can say, “This is not all I have for you. The joy you find in these little things that fall apart and fray to pieces is MINISCULE in comparison with who I am. My joy is undefinable! My joy is unfathomable!”

Galileo in 1615 studied and found proof to the theory that, guess what world? The sun didn’t revolve around the earth. The earth was not – is not – the center of the universe. Neither are we.

We so readily accept being cats in our relationship to God. Our satisfaction is found in us. Anything else that enters the equation, we’ll take it or leave it. How tragic our world and our minds wage war against the created order: that there is something, someONE who this is all for. Somehow we continue to convince ourselves that we’re still the point.

But we’re not.