How easy is it to be friends with God?

How easy is it to be friends with God? Well, it is not as easy as we thought. Haggai 2:15–17 make it worse. I have called the theme of these verses Outward religion cannot make us clean. Now, this may seem obvious, but the book of Haggai is criticized by some scholars. They point to the great prophets before the exile. They point to men such as Isaiah and to Amos, and they admire the way that those great prophets before the exile spoke about justice: how they berated people for taking bribes or abusing the poor or cheating. And then they look at little old Haggai, who only seems interested in building the temple. Where are the high ethical ideals, they ask? One writer says of Haggai, There is no longer a really spiritual message.  The prophet, it seems to him, included stone and timber among the essentials of his spiritual ideal; this is an outward, an empty, formal religion. Here is a verse from Amos 4:9, and as I read this out, and as you read this, ask yourselves whether it reminds you of anything in our passage: - I smote you with blight and mildew; I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards. Your fig trees and your olive trees, the locusts devoured, yet you did not return to me, says the Lord Does that remind you of anything? See Haggai 2:17 of our passage: I smote you, and all the products of your toil—there’s the gardens, the vineyards, the fig trees and the olive trees summarized—with blight and mildew and hail, yet you did not return to me, says the Lord It is not a direct quotation, of course, but it is a partial quotation, and it is a very clear allusion. Both in Amos there and in Haggai, the phrase return to me is classic Old Testament language for what we call repentance; a turning of the heart. It has nothing to do with formal, outward, cold religion. This is heart religion for Haggai, just as it was for Amos.

If any of the Jews had misunderstood the message of chapter 1 of Haggai, this makes it clear - God did not want them just to rebuild the temple for the sake of rebuilding the temple; he wanted them to return to him. And it follows so logically, doesn’t it, after the message of - Haggai 2:10–14, that if our depravity is so deep, then clearly no temple-building per se, is going to put me in touch with God. No outward religious act can make a dirty human heart clean. It never has, and it never will. The devil’s first line of defense is to persuade us that our sin is not serious, to deny that first provocative point. But if, by the Spirit of God, it dawns on us just how serious and deep our sin is, then the devil’s second line of defense is to persuade us that the remedy for sin is outward religion. So, I realize that I need to turn over a new leaf and I had better start going to church more regularly. Or, I better go every week to Holy Communion or to Mass. Or, I better start reading my Bible each day like my Christian friends do. Or, I will make a regular commitment of time or money to the church that will perhaps make God smile on me. It does not much matter what you do in outward religion, so long as it does not spring from the heart. And God says to us what he said to them in Haggai 2:17: you did not return to me—not to religion, to me. The point about outward religion is that it is religion I can control. I am in charge. I can see it and I can determine the nature and the limits of my involvement; through my religious acts I can make friends with God. ButI can't;you and I are not in control of making friends with God. If we were, he would be an idol. He determines how we relate to him.¹

Christopher Ash