Stop Domesticating God
I recline on my deck, taking in the view of the yard before me. Down the hill toward the fence eleven ducks sit in the sun, preen their feathers, and slowly graze for grubs in the soil below. Their ancestors took to the skies in order to escape prey and find food, but my flock has been bred for a different purpose. Their heavier bodies supply more meat, provide us with eggs, and confine their fate to the ground. They are not wild animals, but pets.
Nearby our fifty-pound poodle eyes the birds as they sit. While we love his curly, hypo-allergenic coat and playful energy, we can’t break the instincts in his body to chase. Poodles were originally bred in Germany and designed to be hunting dogs who retrieve waterfowl (AKC.org). Now I sit and watch predator and prey—animals domesticated through hundreds of years to be the pets we love and care for today.
Domestication is “the process of adapting wild plants and animals for human use” (NationalGeographic.org). From the first civilizations, mankind has domesticated the natural world. Plants and animals have been harvested and used for products such as food, medicine, clothing, labor, and yes, companions. Surely this is an echo of the creation call that God first spoke to Adam and Eve after he breathed life into their bodies. “Fill the earth and subdue it,” the Lord commanded his image-bearers. He granted them dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth (Gen. 1:28).
One way humans can follow this command is by using the plants in the soil and the beasts on the land. We are meant to domesticate and use the earth. Yet just as Adam and Eve used their position to attempt to take from God’s glory, we can be tempted to do the same. Instead of exercising dominion over the created earth, too often we attempt to domesticate God himself.
A Useful God?
The first time I heard the word domestication used in relation to God, it took me aback. I was reading a book by Stephen Dempster and the word lingered in my mind as I thought about the connotations. Since then I’ve noticed its use by many others, including Matthew Barrett who wrote a book about the “Undomesticated Attributes of God.”
The phrase is partly so jarring because it seems so offensive. We imagine domestication as an action that requires authority and power—because it does. When we adapt animals to work for us, we exercise power over them. We execute control over the beast in order to serve our own needs.
We would never admit we have that kind of ownership over the God of the universe, but offensive as it sounds, we still try to domesticate God. We may not even realize we are doing it. In our minds, and through our actions, we subtly try to adapt God into something fit for our use. We see a perfect example of this in the Israelites in the Old Testament. The Lord rescued his people, set them apart from the other nations, and time after time revealed his faithfulness and provision. Though God displayed his greatness and his desire for a covenant relationship, in 1 Samuel we see the people forgot all this and treated God as a means to their own ends.
Though the prophet Samuel had already foretold pending judgment from the Lord, the people ignored his warnings (1 Sam. 3:11–14). Instead of seeking repentance and restored relationship with God, their army went to battle with the Philistines, and they lost. Still stubborn, the Israelites ignored God further and went back into battle, this time with the ark of the covenant. The ark that was visited by the presence of the Lord in the tabernacle became a lucky rabbit’s foot to the people of Israel. They domesticated the Lord to their own uses. They tried to exercise authority and control and use the God of the Universe.
Of course, the Lord showed them he is no four-leaf clover. The Israelites were slaughtered and the ark captured by the Philistines (1 Sam. 4:1–11). Even behind enemy lines, the Lord displayed his supreme power. The false god Dagon fell at the feet of the true God, and the hand of the Lord afflicted the people of Philistia with tumors (1 Sam. 5:1–6). In panic and dread they sent the ark of God away from their land, revealing again that the undomesticated God can do so much more than what his people or even his enemies can imagine.
Though we are far removed from these battles, this temptation to domesticate God for our own utility exists in our lives as well. We see it on the grand scale as we note the leaders throughout history that used Christian language and biblical references to enact their evil plans. Yet it also shows up subtly in our own lives.
Like the Pharisees of the New Testament, we can shrink God down to nothing more than a way of life. As rich young rulers we ask of the Lord, What must I do for eternal life? What’s the work I need to put in to get out what I want? Ultimately, we are asking the Lord, How may I tame you? How may I use you best for my own purposes?
This attitude also crops up when we begin to treat the Lord as a deity who operates more like our own version of karma than the God he’s revealed himself to be. We studied our Bible this morning, so God will grant us a good day. We prayed about a tough decision, so we expect him to reveal the clear and easy answer. Yet the supremacy of God can’t be reduced to a cause-and-effect relationship. If we were truthful, we wouldn’t even want it to be. Our view of the world is so short-sighted. While we might long for the simple results we anticipate, only the sovereign Lord—the first and the last—the one who can see from eternity to eternity knows what is best for his people (Isa. 44:6–8). And only he is gracious and merciful enough to withhold from us what we truly deserve. His thoughts are not our thoughts—in this we should utterly rejoice (Isa. 55:8).
We can’t adapt the Lord down to our own definition. God has purposefully revealed himself in the Scriptures—all of him, not just the traits and characteristics we pick and choose. We must be careful to examine if our understanding of God is shaped more by what he has revealed or what we have tailored him to be.
Domesticating His Promises
Not only can we domesticate God, but we can also domesticate his promises. Stephen Dempster used this phrase to describe the acts of Abraham (Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty, 80). While God promised an offspring and protection, Abraham doubted. He lied not once, but twice about his relationship with his wife in order to seek protection from enemy kings (Gen. 12; 20). Instead of trusting in the Lord, he took matters into his own hands. Later he bore a child with Hagar, hoping Ishmael would be the promised son. Abraham struggled to accept God’s promise, so attempted to manipulate the outcomes on his own (Gen. 16).
How many times do we do the same to the Lord’s promises? The Lord declares that the Spirit will change us from one degree of glory to another, yet we see those words and we strap on our gumption and try to do it ourselves. God calls us to be holy? We’ll get to work at once with a list! In our eagerness, we’ve once again taken control over what the Lord said he would do for us.
How often do we rush through times of waiting on the Lord just to get to the doing? How often do we act as though our safety, our joy, and our security is bound up in what we do and not in what our Lord has done?
In my own life, I’ve found myself exhausted by my own prayers at times, as I think through all the what-ifs and carefully craft the exact prayer I want God to answer that will secure my family’s complete happiness. In those moments I’m forced to halt my thoughts, repent, and remind myself I can’t domesticate the Lord and his promises. No amount of my manipulation, organization, or carefully crafted supplications will provide me with the peace and joy God promises.
When the Lord promises to work all things for my good, he means he will do just that, without any of my dabbling. He doesn’t need me to tame and train him or his promises. While it feels scary to release control, it is overwhelmingly freeing. Because after all, you and I can never truly domesticate God or his promises. It’s all a smoke screen of control.
Ultimately we don’t want a God bred for our own purposes and utility. We don't need a pet god. We need the great God, the all-powerful God who can order and rule over a million details at once. We need the sovereign God who has revealed himself in the pages of Scripture to be so much more than the one we try to shrink him down to. We need an undomesticated God with undomesticated promises that exacts miracles like changing our hearts of stone.
What promises of the Lord are you trying to adapt? In what ways are you merely utilizing the Lord? Let’s release our control, repent, and rest in the true nature of our all-powerful and loving Father.
Brianna Lambert is a wife and a mom to three, making their home in the cornfields of Indiana. She loves using writing to work out the truths God is teaching her each day. She is a staff writer with GCD and has contributed to various online publications, such as Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. You can find more of her writing paired with her husband’s photography at lookingtotheharvest.com.