I guess he has puzzled me for a while.
Maybe that’s an understatement. As I mentioned previously I have started again reading thru the Bible and thankfully Leviticus is over… but now I’m into the book of Numbers.
If I have noticed one thing repeatedly this time thru it is the harsh way God seems to deal with his people. I understand the ‘holiness of God’ (or maybe I don’t…) but he does seem to punish disproportionate to the offense on several occasions.
Today I was reading about Moses hitting the rock to bring out water rather than just talking to it. For that offense he and Aaron were denied entry to the promised land. I guess if I were offering God some advice I’d be saying ‘Chill out a bit mate. Give him a wedgie or something, but this bloke has consistently done the right thing in the face of some pretty tough opposition at times and because he stuffs up here you are going take away what he has been working towards for so long?!’
It makes me reflect on why I believe in this God and live as he calls me to. And as I do that I realise my faith goes well beyond reason. I used to think I was a Christian because it made sense – the ‘numbers added up’ – but increasingly I can see that the numbers add up in some ways but not others.
Pure reason (as if there is such a thing) is not sufficient to either accept or reject faith.
These incidents do not lead me to a place of dumping faith – there has been too much experience of God to consider that – but they do perplex me and disturb me.
In my younger years I would have found a reason to explain why God did some of these bizarre things. There was always a reason if you read the right books. Increasingly I find those answers dissatisfying – often simplistic and offensive – and I think I would rather just live with the fact that there is much about God that I just don’t get. Maybe I will never get. Oddly enough as I get older I am also more comfortable with this also.
Just some morning thoughts from Numbers 20 as I ponder again ‘what was that all about?’
So how do others deal with God’s at times bizarre personality?
Is it simply that I really don’t ‘get’ holiness or is he more odd than we choose to admit sometimes?
And if he is why do you still follow?…
do we do it because we want to reach the end goal? we know that by accepting Jesus we can have eternal life so we deal with the oddness of God cause we want to be happy in the end…
not saying thats the write reaction to it – but i wonder if it is a realistic take on why.
Good post Hamo – I’d have to say that in my case perplexed and disturbed took me all the way through faith to disbelief. I tend to be very unhappy when I hear people attempt to convince me it must be so because God says so in the most simplistic way.
I much prefer the deeper discourse that inters into the ‘what if’ territory.
or enters even.
excellent…..
I think young christian males are an idealistic bunch…..
Hammo,
As an aside… isn’t it ironic that it is called Numbers specifically because they took a census which God didn’t want them to do! Perhaps the same can be said today of churches that boast of their numbers… they shouldn’t!
As David Fitch says, “Going from ten to ten thousand in five years is a sign of a sick church”. (The Great Giveaway, p27.)
Andrew
Mark, I think idealism can be a good thing. I often hear you oldies(jokes) talking about idealism like its a bad thing….I wonder if we would see Jesus as some young idealist if he was in our churches?
“Come on now young Jesus my boy, it’s idealistic to think people don’t need to worry about food or a roof over their heads.” Says the middle aged pastor, rolling his eyes knowingly to the church business manager.
Is that what prophets are? Just idealists in our midst who simply need a dose of reality?
Hmm…I think one of my nerves were struck….sorry…
For me, I like the depth of conversation that comes from saying “I dunno. Wada-you-rekon?”
I have to agree with Roo – we need idealists!
Although I’m not sure where your comment came from in the first place Mark…
Grendel – interesting we share many commonalities but have settled in different places
Like you Hamo as I’ve got older I’ve become more and more comfortable with saying, there’s a lot of stuff that’s hard to understand, but I’m not getting my knickers in a knot trying to work it out. Jesus has become real to me and has given me the confidence to believe that God knows what he is doing and that I can trust him, even if I don’t understand why. I think I’ve got more questions now than ever before, but greater confidence in a God. Having said that I was talking with someone today who was sexually abused by a priest in childhood and threw away his faith because he felt God let him down and wasn’t there when he needed him.
By the way, I’m not breaching confidentiality by mentioning the conversation in the previous comment. The person concerned has published his experiences. It is not just the Old Testament things that make us wonder, but also modern day experiences such as this that cause us to ask many questions.
Hamo
Its great to hear you let go of the need to understand. Our egos are so small and so petty. And the need to understand, at least as a dominant cultural paradigm is so western.
God is, I am, that’s all there is. The rest is invention to satisfy an ego that craves for control.
The dictum: “knowledge is power” ought to sound alarm bells for the people of God but strangely it doesn’t. The cross is the opposite of power.
When I was a young man I wanted to acquire all knowledge. When I got older I realized that the more I knew the less I knew. Now I realize that knowledge has nothing to do with it.
So what are the scriptures for? There an an icon, through which we read God as God reads us. What does that mean? Start reading the scripture with an open heart and you will understand.
Russel Montgomery
Roo, I agree and I love the idealism of youth. If ever I say “dont bother trying that because we tried it that way and it did not work” then you have persmission to shove a North Melbourne sock in my mouth.
My comment on idealistic young males is borne out of my own life. I resonate with what Hamo has written because my early idealistic belief was that God had black and white answers for everything.
As I get older I realise I know less and less about God and how He operates than I ever did, but strangely this is comforting to me.
Hey Hamo,
Great post. At the moment I’m tending see scripture less like the word of God, in the traditional fundamentalist sense, and more like the writings of people who have experienced God. If you don’t believe that God dictated the Bible it means that things are going be coloured sometimes quite heavily by the writers own beliefs and ideas. For me the ultimate revelation of God is not scripture but Jesus. So everything I read I try to interpret it through the lens of Jesus. So looking at my numbers I might say yer they’ve got the whole holiness thing right and the ease at which we can break our relationship with God but perhaps not the whole vindictive strike you down if you sneeze in the wrong direction kind of thing.
Chris
I wrestle with similar questions reading the Old Testament. I feel like there’s an increasing number of evangelicals and ex- or post- evangelicals prepared to say how troubled they are by some things in the Old Testament, and no longer just prepared to accept the standard defences we find in the NIV Study Bible or where-ever.
I hope this questioning leads us into an answer (perhaps it will be like the answer suggested by Chris above; whatever the case, it has to involve Christ) – and I hope I like the answer.
(Or that I’ll have the grace and faith to come to like it.)
Russell – I tend to think you are right – there are things we only realise as we get older – the problem is that we don’t know what they are until we get there!
Chris – i hear you – but of course the interesting challenge with the position you mention is that we know Jesus primarily thru the lens of scripture… I guess it all means we need to think thru what we mean by inspiration & authority when it comes to the Bible.
As much as I enjoy thinking and exploring theologically I am also very aware of my own strong evangelical heritage which shapes me and at times prevents me from seeing the world / Bible etc from a different POV
Its both a blessing and curse!
“Is it simply that I really don’t ‘get’ holiness or is he more odd than we choose to admit sometimes?” – Maybe both – except I’d want to say ‘mysterious’ instead of odd.
“you have persmission to shove a North Melbourne sock in my mouth” – preferably used. Sorry, Mark couldn’t resist
“Things are going be coloured sometimes quite heavily by the writers own beliefs and ideas” – I think it’s healthy to remember ‘two natures’ of the Bible (divinely inspired human authors)! But my problem is if we throw the baby out with the bathwater we place ourselves in authority over the Bible instead of letting it have authority over us. I know it’s a fine line, but an important one.
Hi Folks,
I found this really helpful in thinking about the scriptures. Hope its interesting to some of you:
Form of Life for Community of Interpretation
from Walter Bruggemann’s “Theology of the Old Testament”
Concrete practice as a “form of life” may be guided and informed by what I have marked as the “form of life” this testimony necessarily has taken in the practice of ancient Israel. Thus an ecclesial community of interpretation may:
1. Dwell in the tradition of Torah, accepting the narratives and commands of purity and of debt cancellation as the principal sources of funding for obedient imagination.
2. Engage, after the manner of royal agency, in the practice of power for well-being, a practice of power that is always a temptation and always under criticism.
3. Host the disruptive prophetic voices, which concern the costs and pains of the historical process, and the possibilities that well up in the midst of the costs and pains.
4. Practice, after the manner of the Priestly traditions, the presence of Yahweh, which embraces the sacramental freightedness of all life.
5. In an embrace of the tradition of wisdom, know the dailiness of life in all its contested, buoyant density.
Such a community, which it proceeds with intentionality, draws the text and its testimony close to its own life. But it also moves its own life under the assurances and demands of a text that continues in its odd, inscrutable, nonnegotiable otherness.