Platitudes

"You simply need to have more faith" --a well meaning friend.

I have always been that guy who asked the tough questions in Sunday School.

"Why would God allow people to be born if he knew that he wouldn't choose them for salvation and then punish them for being what they were born to be?"

"Why did God wait 6,000 years to bring a messiah?"

"If God won't remove this sin from my life, then what exactly am I being saved from?"

They are tough questions. And I have wrestled with them for as long as I can remember having rational thoughts about anything. Sometimes the questions have brought me to tears. Sometimes they have led me away from where I wanted to be. Sometimes they have sat on the back burner for years before I even realized they were there. I have held my devotion ransom to get answers. I have yelled and sneered. I have begged and pleaded. But whatever my tactic, I have always asked.

That is why it is so frustrating when a well meaning friend told me yesterday, "You just need to have more faith." We had gotten to the point in the discussion where they couldn't answer me anymore. The truth they were trying to get me to accept was illogical. It made God into a twisted monster.  It didn't allow him to be Love he must also be Just and for some reason those two things are not compatible.  And when I asked them to explain why this wasn't so, they patiently explained to me that it is a "mystery".

Now I'm all for mysteries. I love mysteries. I think the evangelical church could do with a few more Divine Mysteries. But a logical fallacy is not a mystery. Its a problem. And problems need to be solved.

"Oh, but you are seeking after Human wisdom. The Wisdom of God is not something man can understand."

Phooey.

The "Wisdom of God" is Jesus. Jesus is the revelation of God to Man. He is the embodiment of all Divine Wisdom--embodied in human flesh. I don't expect to understand God fully any time in the near future. In fact, I'm looking forward to plumbing the endless depths of His beauty and fullness for the rest of Eternity. But God has gone to great lengths to reveal himself to us. He spent 30 years as one of his own creation demonstrating to us who He is. And this follows 6,000 years of revelations to his people, and precedes the indwelling of his own Spirit within us to teach and guide and transform us. To simply pass off difficult questions as being above our pay grade seems rather ungrateful.

Which brings me back to the original helpful suggestion. "You need to have more faith." Faith in what, exactly? Faith that the endless parade of sermons I've heard have been completely accurate? Faith that my branch of Christianity is the center around which all other branches revolve? Faith that the codifying theological statements made by men just as endowed with the Holy Spirit as I am are flawless? Which men shall I choose?  Which translation should I choose?  Which denomination?  How many more branches does the protestant branch need to have before we realize that maybe we are the problem?

I will tell you what I have faith in. Or rather, Who I have faith in. Whenever I ask these questions, I expect to get an answer. Maybe not now and maybe not one I was expecting. But an answer is inevitable. I believe this with all of my being because I worship a God who reveals himself to us. Who is a Person--the Ultimate Person--not a doctrinal statement. I seek after God Himself and he has promised me that I will find him. I would not be the first to sacrifice something to gain Him. And to that end I will hold nothing dear, not even my own theology.

I have faith in God. And like Job, like Hannah, like Isaiah and like Paul I will beg and plead and question and argue and grapple with my understanding of Him until I know Him.

And that, my friend, is the kind of faith that you should have too.

God Is...

There are three ideas about God and myself that have shaped my relationship with him over the years.  The first one is this:

God...

...is...

...wait for it...

...a person.

Boom.

Mind blown, right?

Its way more profound than it sounds though.  In fact, it sounds at first like something so simple I shouldn't have to say it at all.  But that's what makes it so life-changing.  I actually need to say it.

See, I like to talk about God.  He has been a cosmic problem I have been trying to wrap my mind around since I was a little kid and I thought I could go over my parents' heads and ask him for a cookie (he said "no", just like they did).  I've spent countless hours dissecting, proving and disproving, explaining, and reading about who God is and why he's done the things he's done.  For instance:

• How can God be both Just and Loving?
• How can I harness the power of prayer?
• Why does he do such mean things?

The list goes on.  And a simple statement like "God is a person" certainly doesn't answer them outright.  But remembering that God is a person will most certainly shape the answer.

For whatever reason, it is easy for us humans to relegate others to the world of material objects.  Just listen to people having even a civil conversation about the president and you'll quickly discover that they know virtually nothing about him on personal level.  Persons are much more simple and much more complicated than we ever give them credit for.  Who of us can really explain our own motivations for a decision much less someone else's?  And yet at the same time when we actually take the time to get to know them, we find there are things in their past that make those decisions at least partway explainable.

When we took our foster parent classes, we learned that being a foster parent can be really hard because most foster kids are, well, damaged.  They tend to be rebellious, unloving, emotionally distant and we should be prepared for some really weird and upsetting behaviors.  We all cowered in our seats, wondering why they were telling us this.  Then they told us why.  Because nearly every foster kid is in the system because a lot of bad stuff has happened in their lives.  They come from broken, often abusive homes.  They've been hurt badly and the reason they act the way they do is because that's the only way they know how to deal with all the crap.  Suddenly our perceptions of them turned from something to be feared to something to be loved because we were reminded that they are not just "youths", but they were people.  Like us.

I'm not sure comparing God to a broken child is quite the metaphor I want to use all the time, but I think God is the same way.  I think there is a reason he has always explained himself to us using personal and relational metaphors.  God is the king and we are his subjects.    God is the shepherd and we are his sheep.  God is the father and we are his children.  God is the groom and we are his bride.

So, you could say that God is like the space shuttle and we like an ant, crawling over the heat shield tiles without a clue as to the power beneath us.  But God is much more like a firefighter, rushing into a burning building to save the puppy of a small child, who is us.  It isn't entirely wrong to say that God is a power that can be harnessed through earnest prayer and a healthy dosage of faith.  But it is so much more accurate to say that God is our father who wants us to grow up and have an inner strength like his own one day.

When God becomes a person in our minds, the questions either get easier to answer or don't even apply anymore.

• Can a loving person even be loving without being just?
• Maybe we should talk about prayer the same way we talk about good conversation.  First rule?  Find out about the other person.
• My two year old boy probably wonders why his dad is so mean sometimes.  But I know that if I'm not "mean" now, then the police will be mean later on if he keeps throwing pointy objects at people.  Maybe our father in heaven acts the same way.

God has always hated idols because they reduce him to a mere thing.  They oversimplify, suggesting that he is completely knowable and understood.  Understood things are easily manipulated.  We've always liked idols for the same reasons.

But God is not completely knowable and understood, any more than any of us are (at least by each other).  God is a person, and being in his image, so are we.  To truly understand him, we must look past our logic rules, doctrine statements, and misguided metaphors.  We must get to know him personally.  We must try to understand the universe from his point of view.  We must get to know his history, his motivations for why he acts, his likes and dislikes.  And above all, we must allow him to be mysterious, just as we allow each other to be that way.

If our own relationships are any sign of how great a challenge it is to truly know another person, then we know we can easily spend eternity plumbing the depths of the personality on which all others are based on.  And if that's the case, then for all intents and purposes, I've only just shaken his hand and learned his name.  This is a conversation that is going to make for a very long, pleasant evening.

•