Billy Currington's hit country and western song describes a fictional encounter between a "good old boy" and an aging millionaire at a honkytonk bar. They are strangers to each other but fall into an intoxicated friendship. After reviewing their lives, all the ups and downs, loves and losses, the wise old man says to the young one, "God is great, beer is good, people are crazy". The cynicism and irony of such wisdom may be funny but it speaks volumes about our times; maybe one reason this song is still popular.
For example:
20% of the American population controls 84% of all its assets (Federal Reserve).
The top-earning 20 percent of Americans receive 49.4 percent of all income generated in the US. (Census)
Yet 52% of Americans think it is wrong to suggest that the United States is divided by class, by economic differences between "the haves" and the "have nots"; if they had to choose 48% would identify themselves as "the haves", 34% as "the have nots" (Pew Research Center, San Jose Mercury News, 09.30.11, p.A-3).
Or:
64% of Americans support the death penalty in cases of murder; 70% in California. A majority of Americans agree that innocent people have been put to death by capital punishment. A majority also say that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder. People know the facts about the death penalty and they support it anyway. Religion makes little difference when it comes to capital punishment; as an example, the poll cites statistics showing death penalty support among the majority of Roman Catholics in spite of a long held tradition by its hierarchy against it (Gallup Poll, NPR,"Its All About Politics", 09.23.11).
Or:
At a recent Republican Presidential debate, FOX News arranged for an openly gay Army officer to ask the panel of candidates what they thought about the end of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that discharged openly homosexual members of the military services. When members of the audience booed the service man, stationed in Iraq, not one of the candidates objected...until it was brought to their attention the next day by the media. (09.23.11)
Currington's song suggests that in the end all that one can really count on in life is God and "beer"=the personal experience of pleasure. People can't be counted on; in fact all you can count on is their irrationality.
I wouldn’t question his conclusion about beer or necessarily the irrationality of human beings but what does such a conclusion say about the nature of God? What does it mean to "count on God" when it would appear that God is irrelevant or ignored by the majority of God’s people?
Where is God in the lives of a consumer nation, the most blessed among all on earth, which is so seduced by materialism that we don't even recognize our own marginalization?
Where is God in a nation which affirms revenge and retribution as social policy, ignoring our own religious traditions?
Where is God when those seeking elected office, all quick to assert their religious convictions, refuse to stand up for military volunteers when it isn't politically popular to do so? Or are they asserting their religion by condoning such ridicule?
This God is either so passive as not to interfere with human history, content to watch it spin on its own (Aristotle) or so impotent as not to be able to affect the behavior of its followers.
How can one count on a God like that, let alone affirm "God is great"?!
It’s unfair of course to make too much of this song's theological assumptions but you have to wonder if they are not accurate. Are we as a nation comfortable embracing God as long as the Divinity doesn't interfere with our preconceptions….as long as we keep God on our terms?
The God that Jesus of Nazareth calls “father” promises a future when the fortunes of the “haves and have-nots” will be reversed and everyone will have enough (Isaiah 11:4, Luke 1:52-53, 4:16-21), when justice will be tempered with forgiveness (Luke 22:42-43) and when the social outcast will be welcomed as an equal (John 4).
That’s a God that is great, One that can be counted on.
*(Bobby Braddock, Troy Jones 2008)