The Reset Button (Inspired by Rev. Vern Wright)

I went to my “home” church this morning, Second Congregational Church UCC in Attleboro. My friend and colleague, Rev. Vern Wright, preached on Philemon today and had an excellent message. I hope he posts the manuscript on the church’s website, so I won’t recap what he said. This post is inspired by Vern’s sermon, in which he made the analogy of a computer’s “reset button” as a way to think about how we change our relationships with God.

Once upon a time, I was a PC aficionado. You couldn’t have paid me to buy an Apple product because I had a really bad experience in a computer “science” class in college with an Apple IIc that would never do what I wanted it to do. “Science” is used loosely because that’s how the course was listed in the catalogue, but it was really an end-user course on graphic design and word processing. Anyway, it soured me on Apple for a long time.

I have been a power user of Microsoft products for over 25 years. But that dreaded BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH haunted me until I caved to reason and bought a MacBook in 2009. Wonder of wonders, I started using Windows XP on a virtual machine on my MacBook and POOF, no more BSOD. Ever. (Also, 7.5 years later, still the same hard drive, which considering I went through the original and 2 replacements in 5.5 on my IBM ThinkPad, amazes me!)

Which is not to say that I haven’t had to “press the reset button” on the MacBook. I do, about once a month after continuous use without turning the machine off and after I’ve opened Windows (now 10) about 15 times. The memory just gets clogged up and the spinning rainbow wheel of deep thought goes on longer and longer over a couple of days until I’m just tired of waiting for it. Reset in the form of Restart makes it, as Vern said, like “a new computer.” He’s right, too, when he says that the operating system upgrades really do give a Mac user a “brand new machine.” Apple doesn’t insist that people upgrade hardware (iPhone cravings notwithstanding) to get the newest technology as often as Microsoft does, which makes some sense seeing that Apple makes both the hardware and the software, except it doesn’t because you don’t have to pay for the software upgrades; Apple chooses not to take advantage of an easy money-making opportunity, a tactic Microsoft only just figured out. My experience is that the upfront price of the MacBook plus the battery I’ve replaced, averaged out over the current lifetime of the machine, is less than the total cost of hard drives and software upgrades on the IBM (which was a gift). I know at some point, however, that hitting the reset button will no longer restore the machine to speed and power, and that a short while after that, I’ll be in the market for a new MacBook. Hopefully a MacBook Pro at that point, of course.

All of which makes me wonder: do we as Christians have a lifetime limit on the number of times we can hit the reset button with God?

I have freaked out more than one person with this tenet of the theology of Jesus of Nazareth, which we are called to believe about God, as well: no one is beyond the love of God. In the time of Jesus, that meant God loved the Pharisees, the Samaritans, and the emperors of Rome as much as God loved the widow who gave her last coins in faith, the paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof by his friends so he could be healed, and the women who witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion. In our day, it means God loves Hilary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Vladimir Putin as much as God loves Syrian and Afghani refugees, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States for a chance to provide for their children and grandchildren, and addicts who don’t even realize their problem yet. In both cases, it meant and means everybody in between, regardless of class, status, education, gender, race, ethnicity, life choices, attractions, or anything else that causes us as human beings to judge others. God is all in and never needs a reset button for love.*

That’s why there is no limit to the times we can hit reset on our relationship with God. Grace abounds throughout our lives. No matter how badly we mess up today, we always have tomorrow to do a better job following God’s leading in our lives. It’s because God loves us unconditionally (and nearly irrationally, when you stop to think about it). God NEVER gives up on us, no matter how clogged up we get with the stuff of life and the temptations of what we know is wrong. God isn’t always pleased with the behavior we choose, but that does not change God’s love for us.

So the challenge for us is to remember that we can reset ourselves. We don’t have to drain ourselves of metaphorical memory to the point that we no longer function in relationship with God. We can reset with a deep breath, a prayer, a day of retreat, a change in devotional practices, a return to community, or any other choice that interrupts our circuits long enough to power down and power back up. And we can do it as often as we need to, whether we are the spiritual equivalent of a machine with barely enough memory to run Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Word at the same time or the fastest machine with the most available memory running OS X El Capitan. Not only can we press the reset button, we should press the reset button every once in a while. Sometimes, just like Microsoft and Apple with our computers, God has an update for us that will help us work better as we strive to glorify God in all things. We could go on without the update, but why ignore it when life will be easier and better with it? Go ahead. Press the reset button. Make the change and see what God has planned when you’re up and running. You’ll probably feel like a whole new you!

*This is pretty much why I’m a Christian Universalist [or, as Vern noted on one of my Facebook posts earlier this week, a Trinitarian Universalist] and why I think God cares far less about how we worship and far more about how we live our lives. It’s also why I think we will all wind up in heaven because I have a very hard time understanding how a loving God would ever allow any beloved child to be an outcast for eternity, even if said beloved child never acknowledges or knows God. Some will think that heretical. I’m okay with that…