Some Questions
Romans 11:33-36 (NRSV):
33 O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" 35 "Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?" 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
We don’t believe this, do we? I mean, when it comes down to it, we believe we have God all figured out. You hear it in our Bible classes; you hear it in the way we talk about salvation; you hear it in our talk about various sins like homosexuality; you hear it in the way we talk about Scripture itself. God is not hidden from us, is he?
Have you noticed what we now consider to be “deep” and “intensive” bible studies? I hear people talk about Beth Moore studies (just to name one) and how deep they are. Yet if you read through the studies, Scripture is just a side point. She doesn’t delve into the depths of the nature of God like early church theologians did. Or look at Rick Warren and the innumerable studies on the Purpose-Driven Life. He does nothing different from what people have always done in the history of Churches of Christ. He uses Scriptures as proof texts and nothing more. He just finds a way to prove something else and uses different texts. Does that make a study deep? We need meat and yet we call breast milk steak. How is that? Have we so lost a sense of what meat is that “everything tastes like chicken?”
Or take a different issue. There was a Bible study recently on 1 Peter, which I must say I did not attend but I will try to be fair, that when 1 Peter talks about God’s foreknowledge and predestination focused on our own free will and ability to choose. 1 Peter is not talking about free will at all. How did that come to be the focus of the discussion?
When did we put ourselves above the text instead of under it? In the passage quoted, Paul has just revisited what God was doing with Gentiles and Jews in the section of Romans 9-11. He is addressing the problem of the fact that most Jews did not believe in Jesus as Messiah and so stumbled over the gospel. He reminds Gentiles that they were grafted into the root, but were not natural members so they must remember their place. He finally comes down to chapter 11 and mysteriously explains that “all Israel will be saved” (11:26), quoting Scripture to prove his point. He tells how it was God’s mysterious ways that would use Jewish rebellion to convert Gentiles and Gentile mercy to convert Jews. So he creates a hymn to praise God for his wisdom.
But we don’t really believe this. We know that Peter really believes in free will and does not really mean “foreknowledge” and “predestination.” Even in the passage cited, we know that Paul does not really mean that all Jews will be saved. We know that the Holy Spirit is a gift given after baptism and that people would never receive the Spirit before they were baptized, despite the fact that Acts 10 reports otherwise. We know that when God says in Genesis 22:12, “now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me,” that he really knew all the time what Abraham would do. He didn’t just find out when Abraham took the knife to slay his son, did he? He is just condescending to our level to make us think he didn’t know what Abraham was going to do. He’s using human language, right? We know that Jonah must have had a longer sermon than just to say that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days, right? God knew Nineveh would repent, right? And God isn’t serious when in Jeremiah 18 he says that he works with people like a potter with clay to mold them and can change his plans if things go wrong, is he? God knows what is going to go wrong before it happens, right?
We don’t read things into the text, do we?
I have a dear friend who, when we started talking about Hurricane Katrina, just couldn’t assign blame to God. He had developed a very detailed angelology to account for why bad things happen in the world. Even when we pointed things out to him like God is still responsible for what he sends the angels to do, he would still not ultimately lay responsibility at God’s feet. I love him dearly but use him as an extreme example of what we all do. We come with preconceptions to Scripture and read them into the text. We have God figured out so he must be this way. If there is a Scripture to refute what we think, we have ways of explaining it away. We refuse to submit to the text, but instead submit the text to what we want it to say. What we think is deep is a new idea that we haven’t heard before that does not even come from the text, but is someone else’s new idea that has proof texts to back it up. In short, we don’t believe God’s ways are unsearchable as Paul says. We have God in a box and we like to keep him there.
We need meat not milk. We need to grow up and wrestle with hard texts in Scripture. We need to hear texts like when Jesus says that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25; Matthew 19:23-24; Luke 18:25), put ourselves under that text as the rich person, and wonder why it is so hard for us to enter the kingdom. We need to read through our Bibles with an eye toward what Scripture says about God’s character, who he is, what he’s like, not come with our own notions of what that means and read them into the text. We need to go to texts like Exodus 34:6-7 and try to understand why that is so definitive of who God is. We need to scrap our “God has a detailed, completely-mapped-out-plan-for-my-life” theology and find out what it means to live in relationship with him like his people at all times have done. They did not believe that he guided them moment by moment and that if they deviated from his plan, they were forever lost. They talked about God as father (Hosea 11) and all that such a metaphor implies. They talked about God as husband who has to divorce his wife (Hosea 1-2; Jeremiah 3:8-10) because she has been unfaithful. (See also Ephesians 5 with Jesus as husband and the church as a wife). [I must give credit for this to Dr. John Willis and his recent blog postings.] Yet we read texts like Jeremiah 29:11, “11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope,” and act like they were spoken or written directly to us. Did we not notice that he was talking to the southern kingdom, Judah, and his plan for a PEOPLE not an INDIVIDUAL? How did this come to apply to us as individuals?
Our study must go deeper than this. We must seek to learn about God by learning what he was saying to his people then so we can understand how he deals with people now. We are right in thinking he has not changed in his essence, his nature. Have we bothered with trying to understand why it is that Jesus went to all the poor, hurting people while we would rather not bother with such people today? That is challenging. That is deep. That is wrestling with Scripture and wrestling with God. Reaffirming what we’ve always believed is not deep or challenging, and I would argue, it is not faithful either. God’s people have always wrestled with him (hence the name Israel, which defines God’s people, and means “he who wrestles with God”). They have never quite understood all of his ways and why he does what he does. Most often that has meant that they just could not grasp his mercy. From time to time, though, it has meant that they could not understand why he lets bad things happen to good people (see Job and a third of the Psalms).
When we see things like Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami last December, and yes, even 9/11, can we really continue to believe that we have God all figured out? I say, no. But that is why it is so great when we begin to grow in our relationship with God and love him despite our struggles with why he does not make things turn out as we like all the time. That is what relationship means—we learn more about him and he learns more about us. We grow and we learn more fully what his love means in our lives. Is there anything better?
33 O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" 35 "Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?" 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
We don’t believe this, do we? I mean, when it comes down to it, we believe we have God all figured out. You hear it in our Bible classes; you hear it in the way we talk about salvation; you hear it in our talk about various sins like homosexuality; you hear it in the way we talk about Scripture itself. God is not hidden from us, is he?
Have you noticed what we now consider to be “deep” and “intensive” bible studies? I hear people talk about Beth Moore studies (just to name one) and how deep they are. Yet if you read through the studies, Scripture is just a side point. She doesn’t delve into the depths of the nature of God like early church theologians did. Or look at Rick Warren and the innumerable studies on the Purpose-Driven Life. He does nothing different from what people have always done in the history of Churches of Christ. He uses Scriptures as proof texts and nothing more. He just finds a way to prove something else and uses different texts. Does that make a study deep? We need meat and yet we call breast milk steak. How is that? Have we so lost a sense of what meat is that “everything tastes like chicken?”
Or take a different issue. There was a Bible study recently on 1 Peter, which I must say I did not attend but I will try to be fair, that when 1 Peter talks about God’s foreknowledge and predestination focused on our own free will and ability to choose. 1 Peter is not talking about free will at all. How did that come to be the focus of the discussion?
When did we put ourselves above the text instead of under it? In the passage quoted, Paul has just revisited what God was doing with Gentiles and Jews in the section of Romans 9-11. He is addressing the problem of the fact that most Jews did not believe in Jesus as Messiah and so stumbled over the gospel. He reminds Gentiles that they were grafted into the root, but were not natural members so they must remember their place. He finally comes down to chapter 11 and mysteriously explains that “all Israel will be saved” (11:26), quoting Scripture to prove his point. He tells how it was God’s mysterious ways that would use Jewish rebellion to convert Gentiles and Gentile mercy to convert Jews. So he creates a hymn to praise God for his wisdom.
But we don’t really believe this. We know that Peter really believes in free will and does not really mean “foreknowledge” and “predestination.” Even in the passage cited, we know that Paul does not really mean that all Jews will be saved. We know that the Holy Spirit is a gift given after baptism and that people would never receive the Spirit before they were baptized, despite the fact that Acts 10 reports otherwise. We know that when God says in Genesis 22:12, “now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me,” that he really knew all the time what Abraham would do. He didn’t just find out when Abraham took the knife to slay his son, did he? He is just condescending to our level to make us think he didn’t know what Abraham was going to do. He’s using human language, right? We know that Jonah must have had a longer sermon than just to say that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days, right? God knew Nineveh would repent, right? And God isn’t serious when in Jeremiah 18 he says that he works with people like a potter with clay to mold them and can change his plans if things go wrong, is he? God knows what is going to go wrong before it happens, right?
We don’t read things into the text, do we?
I have a dear friend who, when we started talking about Hurricane Katrina, just couldn’t assign blame to God. He had developed a very detailed angelology to account for why bad things happen in the world. Even when we pointed things out to him like God is still responsible for what he sends the angels to do, he would still not ultimately lay responsibility at God’s feet. I love him dearly but use him as an extreme example of what we all do. We come with preconceptions to Scripture and read them into the text. We have God figured out so he must be this way. If there is a Scripture to refute what we think, we have ways of explaining it away. We refuse to submit to the text, but instead submit the text to what we want it to say. What we think is deep is a new idea that we haven’t heard before that does not even come from the text, but is someone else’s new idea that has proof texts to back it up. In short, we don’t believe God’s ways are unsearchable as Paul says. We have God in a box and we like to keep him there.
We need meat not milk. We need to grow up and wrestle with hard texts in Scripture. We need to hear texts like when Jesus says that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of God (Mark 10:25; Matthew 19:23-24; Luke 18:25), put ourselves under that text as the rich person, and wonder why it is so hard for us to enter the kingdom. We need to read through our Bibles with an eye toward what Scripture says about God’s character, who he is, what he’s like, not come with our own notions of what that means and read them into the text. We need to go to texts like Exodus 34:6-7 and try to understand why that is so definitive of who God is. We need to scrap our “God has a detailed, completely-mapped-out-plan-for-my-life” theology and find out what it means to live in relationship with him like his people at all times have done. They did not believe that he guided them moment by moment and that if they deviated from his plan, they were forever lost. They talked about God as father (Hosea 11) and all that such a metaphor implies. They talked about God as husband who has to divorce his wife (Hosea 1-2; Jeremiah 3:8-10) because she has been unfaithful. (See also Ephesians 5 with Jesus as husband and the church as a wife). [I must give credit for this to Dr. John Willis and his recent blog postings.] Yet we read texts like Jeremiah 29:11, “11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope,” and act like they were spoken or written directly to us. Did we not notice that he was talking to the southern kingdom, Judah, and his plan for a PEOPLE not an INDIVIDUAL? How did this come to apply to us as individuals?
Our study must go deeper than this. We must seek to learn about God by learning what he was saying to his people then so we can understand how he deals with people now. We are right in thinking he has not changed in his essence, his nature. Have we bothered with trying to understand why it is that Jesus went to all the poor, hurting people while we would rather not bother with such people today? That is challenging. That is deep. That is wrestling with Scripture and wrestling with God. Reaffirming what we’ve always believed is not deep or challenging, and I would argue, it is not faithful either. God’s people have always wrestled with him (hence the name Israel, which defines God’s people, and means “he who wrestles with God”). They have never quite understood all of his ways and why he does what he does. Most often that has meant that they just could not grasp his mercy. From time to time, though, it has meant that they could not understand why he lets bad things happen to good people (see Job and a third of the Psalms).
When we see things like Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami last December, and yes, even 9/11, can we really continue to believe that we have God all figured out? I say, no. But that is why it is so great when we begin to grow in our relationship with God and love him despite our struggles with why he does not make things turn out as we like all the time. That is what relationship means—we learn more about him and he learns more about us. We grow and we learn more fully what his love means in our lives. Is there anything better?
posted by Duane | 8:28 PM
3 Comments:
But I feel more comfortable when I don't face these tough issues in scripture.
Is that okay?
Of course it is okay for DeJon to want to be comfortable. (or is it?) Another issue that relates to Duane's post is why do we need to be comfortable? Why do we need to think we are free to choose, but also have God in total control? And, why do we want God, the Scriptures, etc. to be "easy to understand?" I don't recall any, but there may be a few, texts that indicate that walking with God will be easy or comfortable. I wonder how comfortable Job was when confronted by the whirlwind? Or Moses at the burning bush? Or even the passage cited about the Binding of Isaac? I don't think either Abramham or Isaac were comfortable with God at that moment. What do these needs for comfort, freedom, and ease of understanding say about our relationship with God? Or our relationships with each other? If our human relationships are not always easy or comfortable, then why do we expect to have that kind of relationship with God?
Blowing The Lid Off The God-Box by Anne Robertson (Morehouse, 2005) relates to the whole question of confining God to one way of thinking or being or believing. And a God out of the box is certainly not a comfortable thought...who knows what God is up to!
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