Christian faith and the world are becoming increasingly segregated. The Apostle Paul suggests we live in the world; I often feel like I’m on a different planet. In a post-Christian Canada, how do we keep the conversation of faith in God alive?
I host “GodTalk,” a radio program that airs on a local Winnipeg station. Recently we decided to run a live show from the student centre at the University of Manitoba, in cooperation with a Christian student group called The Navigators.
But what to talk about?
We asked God this question: “If we were to create a conversation about You smack in the middle of Canadian culture, what would it sound like?” We were looking for a cultural doorway, an entry point, perhaps a wardrobe (I couldn’t resist).
What we heard was, “O my God!”
Simple idea
The idea seemed simple enough. We would ask students from various faculties in an open forum, “When was your last ‘O my God’ moment?”
But first we decided to test it out. During a lunch meeting at a campus pub, I turned to the group of university students sitting next to us and asked, “When was the last time you said, ‘O my God?’” The responses were fast, furious and hilarious.
One notable young man said, “I say ‘O my God!’ every time I take off my shirt…” To which the young woman beside gasped and said, “You actually say that?”
I proceeded with the all-important clarification. “So when you say, ‘O my God,’ is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“No, that’s a good thing!” he retorted with a twitch in his smile. At that, the young woman gasped again. I had the sense that a much deeper question was playing itself out in her mind than just the number of ripples under a young man’s shirt; her shock may have come from the brashness of anyone to verbalize a sense of inherent value and worth.
My response: “So you think what God made of you is pretty good…” He looked at me somewhat bewildered and nodded. I continued passing the question around the group and one after the other told a personal story. I turned back to our huddle and said, “I think this could work.”
So when do people say “O my God?” Here are just a few of the responses from students at the University of Manitoba.
“You hear it everywhere now.”
“You never say it in just ordinary life, it’s always at a point of realization; it’s a word of shock.”
“It shows a lack of respect for God.”
“It doesn’t mean anything because God is not as sacred as He used to be.”
“I used it just two weeks ago when I found out I was pregnant.”
“I don’t know why, but I hear it in porn movies all the time.”
“I said it when I found out I was gay.”
“I only say it in a religious context, like ‘God—You’re so beautiful.’”
In the open forum event we spoke with the student union president and vice-president, a nine-year veteran of Canada’s national cycling team, a snowboarder, an education student and a writer.
Students said they have “O my God” moments all the time, caused by relational stress in student politics, the surreal moment in competition when every variable comes together for a thrilling win, the moment of mortality just before dropping off of a powder-white ridge, the pivotal day at the peak of a sales career when it all seems meaningless or listening to the sensation of a Jewish-reggae rapper in concert.
A biblical mandate
It has not escaped me that “O my God” is generously used in our culture as blasphemous profanity. The third commandment comes to mind. While my prayer is that I begin with other people’s categories rather than my own in the cultural conversation, but I am keenly aware that cultural engagement at the expense of blasphemy is always a perilous venture.
Consider these words from the Psalms. “Deliver me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of evil and cruel men….Be not far from me, O God; come quickly, O my God, to help me….I will praise you with the harp for your faithfulness, O my God; I will sing praise to you with the lyre, O Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 71: 4, 12, 22).
The psalmist deploys the phrase in at least two ways: a desperate cry for help and as an expression of exuberance. What I have found remarkable is the number of people who cite one or the other of the psalmists’ uses as their own.
I asked the national cycling team member what the phrase meant at the moment of thrillingvictory—profane or sacred? Without hesitation, she said, “Sacred…how all the variables come together in a race for you to win at that level of competition is beyond your own capacity.”
Now what?
A few observations. First, I have concluded this phrase offers an invitation to join a conversation. What was striking is the question did not arouse a “stop ramming religion down my throat” response.It is ironic that one of the most profound phrases declaring allegiance to God has become so profaned and entrenched in the secular vernacular that probing its meaning doesn’t provoke sterotypes in the same way as other questions about faith. It’s the world’s phrase, not the Church’s, and that’s what makes it such a wonderful place to start a conversation. There’s no baggage to unpack before you can get on with the journey.
Secondly, I believe the phrase offers up an indication of what people worship. Why is it you hear the phrase so often in relation to the body and sexual experience? When worship of the true God is replaced with the self, then the most exquisite and ecstatic of human experiences become the moments when we use words of deity, allegiance and transcendence.
So when the student wonders why porn stars are saying “O my God” so much, it’s because the sex act is the highest ritual of our culture’s worship of self.
Thirdly, I believe the phrase offers up an opportunity to understand people’s pain. And this is probably its greatest potential for those who want to genuinely join God’s grand project of redeeming and reconciling His Creation.
The desperate cry for help, the moment of greatest horror is often, if not always, punctuated by these words. Over and over again, people told stories of their pain within seconds of hearing the question. We sometimes use rather sophisticated metrics to determine the need in our culture…this is a fairly straightforward question that will let you know right away.
What would it be like?
We could start using the phrase again. The psalmist provides at least two great ways of employing the phrase in our everyday vocabulary. What would be it be like if we began telling our own “O my God” stories as a way of naming those moments when God has been so present to us?
The phrase has “cultural currency” and whenever it is spoken it is always true—whether it be at the moment of greatest trauma, greatest ecstasy or greatest irony, and there God resides and desires to be so very personal.
It is a phrase spoken when we venture into the borderland between the visible and invisible world. As author Philip Yancey says in his book Rumors of Another World, “There is only God’s world, a sacred world, which has been profaned by human rebellion. Our mission is to bring the two together, to reconnect and hallow God’s world, to build settlements of God’s Kingdom in the desecrated habitat of Earth.”
While some may hear only desecration, I hear an invitation to rejoin the conversation.
So, when was your last “O my God” moment?
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