Someone recently asked me a question about the church I served as pastor ten years ago. I replied that since my retirement and departure I was a rather out of touch with the state of affairs in that church. That’s a rather common expression isn’t it? Being out of touch! We speak of politicians being out of touch with the concerns of ordinary garden variety citizens. Or maybe you’ve accused your boss of being out of touch with his employees. Being out of touch is a metaphor. To put it bluntly, it’s a metaphor for ignorance.
Being out of touch can be a serious matter. That came home to me when I heard the story of a school teacher who took her students to visit a dairy farm. For the first time these primary-school city-kids saw cows being milked. The response of one ten-year-old lassie was, “Oh, this is so disgusting. I’m never going to drink milk again!” I don’t know where she thought milk came from but she was obviously out of touch with the reality of dairy farming. There are probably many city dwellers who are totally out touch with the agricultural processes that bring food to our table. That’s generally not an issue but there are some cases where being out of touch has huge repercussions. I think of a relative who was taken on a high school excursion to an abattoir and is now, as a result, a vegetarian.
What especially concerns me is people who are out of touch with God. Many in our contemporary society are well and truly out of touch with the Creator of the universe. For some He’s just a figment of someone’s imagination and not to be taken too seriously. For others He’s a distant deity who made this world and like a clockmaker, wound it up and now lets it run by itself according to the laws of nature. Only occasionally does He step in to intervene. For many it’s no big deal to be out of touch with God. And for many folk I would not want to blame them because they’ve never had anyone introduce them to this God.
But think a moment of what the opposite is of being ‘out of touch’. It surely means to be in touch. But you can’t be in touch with a god who is merely a figment of someone’s imagination. Nor can you be in touch with a God who keeps his distance. Well, the wonderful thing is that with the God of the Bible this touching can happen… literally. When it comes to God, being in touch is more than just a metaphor. The apostle John wrote about that in his first letter. He spoke about what the original followers of Jesus experienced. In Jesus, God took on humanity. John talks about what we have heard; what we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands. The followers of Jesus were in touch with God… literally.
Of course, being in touch with God is also true at another level. It’s true spiritually and it’s true for the soul. The Christian faith teaches that there is an intimate bond between God and the believer. Jesus taught us that He lives in us with His Spirit. It’s a wonderful way of being in touch with God. There’s a lovely picture of that already in one of the Psalms. In Psalm 73 a man called Asaph struggles with the difficulties of life. But at the end of it all he confesses that he’s in touch with God… or rather that God is in touch with him. He tells us that God holds on to him by his right hand. That’s a lovely image. Here is a man who is not only in touch with God but who literally walks through life hand in hand with God. I guess that when it comes to God there really is no excuse for being out of touch.
John Westendorp