(This is the third part in a series. Click the links to read the rest of the series: One – Going Back to the Beginning, Two – Stuck Between Two Horses, Four – Stepping Stones and a Crossroads, Five – Of Simmering, Resting, and Labels, Six – He Is Not a Tame Lion, and Seven – Letters to the Wounded from the Wounded)
This week, a friend encouraged me to ask myself some questions. What exactly it is that bothers me about the faith that I’ve practiced for the first thirty years of my life? What are the questions or the issues that keep me from having full confidence in it?
We talked a little about it then, and I have thought a lot about it since.
I think, so far, that it boils down to three things: I don’t want to be wrong about this (or anything, but that’s a different issue), I have questions about the Bible itself, and I don’t trust the God I think that the Bible describes.
But if I were to sum all three of those up into one sentence, it would be “What if I have believed in the wrong God?”
Now I don’t mean that I believed in Allah when I should have believed in Yeshua. I mean that my concept of who God is is wrong.
Or might be.
I hope it is, actually. Because, right now, when I think of God, I don’t think of a Being that is good or wise, just one who is powerful. And that translates into cruelty — a mad scientist experimenting with people’s lives just to see what happens. (That’s kind of how the story of Job reads to me, for example.) I can’t trust that kind of God.
But I know people who believe in a good, wise, and powerful God. One who isn’t just experimenting. One who isn’t cruel and without feeling. One who loves the people He made enough to give them the freedom to make real choices, and loves them enough to rescue them from their bad, selfish choices. And that sounds like a Divine Being I could trust.
That’s the God I want to find. But I don’t want to make that God up just because I like this Divine Being better. I want that God to truly, really, for sure be God. I want to believe in the right God.
So I’m trying to read the Bible, a book that claims to be the word of God, with fresh eyes. I think I’ve gone wrong somewhere, and I need to get it right. To see what’s really there, who God really is in that book.
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Joy,
I know what you mean. I've always wondered how King David could be called a man after God's own heart, but could do such terrible things. What does that potentially say about God's heart? How do we reconcile the God of the new covenant who gave his son so all might know him with the God who seemed so cruel at times years before…I think I need to find those fresh eyes myself…
My journey into Christianity was such a sideways, winding one that it's not unusual for me to misinterpret, misunderstand, or be confounded by the perception of those who have been otherwise shaped by some variation of the modern American Christian culture. That's sort of my disclaimer.
However, it seems to me that a lot of the time Christians don't actually allow themselves to believe that Jesus reveals to us the fullness of God — that when we want to understand God we do so only by looking at Jesus.
If you're reading the Bible trying to see God, I would suggest reading the Gospels (and maybe Ephesians and Colossians) over and over trying to simply encounter them as they are. From the Christian perspective, that's God. No caveats. No fine print. Jesus is the fullness of the revelation of God.
I've seen people try to do that and I recognize that, for some reason, it can be hard for a lot of people. I think that's because they have been drilled with some conception of a sort of God and then try to view Jesus through the lens of that preconception, but that's just a guess.
Personally, after I was pulled in far enough by people and events who acted from love and not the way I expected Christians to act, I was first captivated by John. I still am after all these years, though I still feel like I barely understand it sometimes.
Some people see Jesus and don't want a God like that. He does make for a pretty outrageous God. He doesn't speak or act as though the world really worked the way we all think it ought. But accept or reject him, try to see that he embodies all that God is. He is the logos, the act of God. God has nothing more to say.
If you find that you can believe that we see all that God is in Jesus, I think you might find that the rest of the Holy Scriptures read differently. I won't claim to understand them all. I don't. But a failure to interpret everything about God through the lens of Jesus does seem to be the root behind a lot of variant readings and, as a result, a lot of variant Gods.
In the end, I got nuthin' better to offer. Hope it helps, at least a little.
You may have not gone wrong somewhere. You may be doing exactly what God intends you to do. Good post.
this is beautiful and I think that God loves to hear us tell Him these things. I would just ask Him to show you that part of Him and help you find a whole new level of your relationship with Him! :0)
Hi Joy,
Thanks for adding this post to the Faith Barista Jam.
I have asked myself the same question and I'm happy to that the God I found in the Bible did turn out to be the God I've always wanted and needed.
I'm confident you will, too.
Because you're asking all the right questions and won't take anything else but the truth… for yourself.
I'll be tweeting this post next week, since it's already the end of the week now.
Happy Easter!
Good post. Praying for you, Joy.
I realized there's a better and simpler way to state than I did.
Don't start with the formulation, "Jesus is God." That presupposes that you have some idea who and what God is and you then interpret Jesus according to you idea about God.
Start with: God is Jesus.
And then stay there until you believe it.
Wonderful refreshing honesty! Keep asking those questions and keep seeking Him – He will reveal Himself, and not the one we make up for feel good purposes!!
Joyfully -
Stef
Just popping in to say, "Happy Easter!" .. great to have your voice earlier this week…
1. The bible is not a level playing field, where everything has the same weight. It is a progressive narrative, made up of a variety of different genres, which describes to us how man's understanding of and relationship with God has changed over time.
So what we see in folks like Jacob, or David, is very different than Jesus, or Peter, or Paul.
2. The people in the bible are still just that…people. Aside from Jesus, they weren't perfect, and many of them had heavy biases… Peter to the day he died had issues with gentiles and gave preference to Jews, and John held a lot of grudges and had a very dualistic way of looking at life that may have given him some difficulty.
3. Thank goodness that David was a man after God's heart. It means that maybe I can be one too.
4. Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning.
The book of John is really good place to start.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him! Isaiah 30:18
I love those verses! Can you not feel the longing he has for relationship with us?
Blessings as you seek the heart of God.
Morgon77 (Todd), that's an entirely different way of looking at the Bible, and at least for me it takes practice.
The different genres and the different culture the Bible was written in, it seems to me, need to be taken into account. And that may mean NOT reading the Bible LITERALLY, or at least not ONLY reading it literally. But when? How? What does it mean for me today? And how do so many people disagree over what it means and how to apply it?
I've been taught that it's so simple, but I don't see the simplicity.
Tammy, I've been soaking in the book of John for a few weeks now! Great minds…
"I've been taught that it's so simple, but I don't see the simplicity."
Hmmm. Since I had read many sacred writings from the Tao Te Ching to Vedic literature to the Bhagavad Gita and on and on before I seriously took another look at Christianity, I guess I never had any expectation that the Holy Scriptures would be "simple." In fact, had I found them to be overly simplistic in their perspective on reality, I probably would have dismissed them. Instead I found writings with enormous depth telling a story markedly unlike other stories. I still wouldn't claim to truly "understand" Scripture (whatever that means), but I never tire of them.
http://turquoisegates.blogspot.com/2010/03/transformations.html
pictures of myself at different stages of motherhood – what it reveals about my walk with *od.
http://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/unspoken-sermons/2/
Genevieve Thul @ Turquoise Gates recently posted..A word for 2011
joy, i’m sorry i haven’t read all of this series. i’ll get back to it another day but tonite this is all i have time for. the gospels do spell out in more detail the events and teachings of Jesus. the epistles are helpful for more doctrinal detail and i hve found them to be very encouraging as well. However, I must say that the pentateuch is invaluable in giving texture to who God is as Creator, Redeemer and One who protected a People that He had set apart for himself with whom He would dwell. Books apart from the Bible (which is invaluable) that I have found to be helpful re who God is have been: KNOWING GOD by J.I. Packer- spends a chapter on each attribute of God and is very provocative. it is not a book you will speed read. you’ll want to read a chapter and chew on it.
CRY OF THE SOUL by Dan Allender & Tremper Longman- Dan is both a seminary grad and a psychologist who does a better than average job of integrating the two! great writer-his illustrations are vivid and he is very vulnerable in his writing. Tremper is a close friend of Dan’s and is a seminary prof. books they have written together i have found to be excellent! This talks about emotions as found in the Psalms but also relates to God’s attributes. also very thought provoking. gives me a lot to munch on as well. A book about Jesus that I really enjoyed is by Paul Miller. It is called LOVE WALKED AMONG US. he removed all the churchy terms and used normal words that everyone understands to write this book so it could be handed to an unbeliever and they could read it and understand it. content in this one is very good…very helpful. He has also written a book on prayer called THE PRAYING LIFE that is great! comes at prayer with a different perspective than i had often heard. touches lightly on many aspects of God’s character in the process. sometimes, reading and thinking about some of what is in one of these books opens my eyes to see more clearly what is in Scripture. I found these to be very helpful. when it comes to knowing God, we in the US tend to overemphasize some characteristics and ignore or de-emphasize others. that causes us to see a caricature of God. Packer was especially helpful in seeing more of a balance to God’s nature…and what comes from that. Blessings on you dear sister. your grief is pushing you closer to Christ and that is always a good thing. another comforting thing is that He is big enough for your questions. your questions won’t stump Him.
i’m sorry i wrote so much.
don’t realize how long it is getting until i see it printed out.