Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote that most helpful book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, was once asked, "Where is God?"

He answered, as is the Jewish tradition, with another question.

"The question should not be where is God but when is God."

Such a response captures for me the crucial issue behind the Christian faith.

If we are still captivated by archaic images of a God up there and out there watching this world of ours like a bored housewife watches the soaps on TV, then we will never understand the rabbi’s profound question.

It is long past time that we shed ourselves of an image of God that belongs to the Dark Ages. I continually wonder why in a world that daily takes our breath away with technological advances, we in the church remain stuck to religious imagery that hasn’t changed much since illiterate and superstitious nomads built golden calves to worship.

If God is only out there and up there, then we have no hope of experiencing what is divine. So why bother?

If God is only out there and up there, we must devise seemingly ludicrous rationales for encountering God. Sometimes even going so far as to conjur up images of blood sacrifice and ritual killings.

If God is only out there and up there, then much of the insipid nonsense that some people prattle regarding the will of God is true and we are nothing more than miserable puppets who are subject to the whims of some kind of demented celestial puppeteer.

But the question is not "Where is God?"

The question is "When is God?"

And that is precisely the question that Jesus came to answer.