I'm just home from Eucharist. During the evening this thought kept running through my mind.We say, "God is this, therefore God cannot be that".
"God is not that, therefore God must be this". What if:
God is this,
and that,
and this,
and that,
and this,
and that,
and this,
and that.........
God cannot be described. God refuses to be limited. My image of God will never be complete.
Sweet, frightening mystery.
14 comments:
And yet people spend so much time trying to get others to believe they know HIM so well. I am guilty of that if the truth be known...and it seems like every time I try to impress someone with my knowledge and familiarity of God, something happens that reminds me of just how limited my finite brain is in this particular area. No wonder I need HIM so much.
Well said, anon. Another way of looking at this is to see how much we need each other. We need to hear from each other who God is to them. Only if we hear from EVERYONE would we know all of who the God of the universe is.
"God cannot be described. God refuses to be limited. My image of God will never be complete.
Sweet, frightening mystery."
Cathy I LOVE this! Thank you for that. It really does get me thinking. Oh what trouble we would be in if we ever thought we had God all figured out. And when we ask for "more" how exciting is it to realize that there truly is a never ending supply of "more"! WOW!
Hearing from everyone...that is a tough one for me. It may not be so much hearing from them that is difficult, its accepting what they are saying. The wide diversity of what is said about who God is brings the reality that there will be disagreement. Maybe this is an indictment on my narrow minded thinking, but some peoples thinking on God just strikes me as they are whacko. Then again im sure others have listened to me and come to the same conclusion.
Anon, Why does there have to be disagreement? The question is can we use our experience to contribute to our image of God? During renewal there were lots of people who never received that (whatever it was) physical, powerful touch. However, does that mean I don't incorporate what happened to me in my image of part of who/what God is? We must work toward not drawing lines and having "disagreements" to seeing that God is just plain ol' more than any one of us can know. I may need him/her today in a way that you do not. God is so good I get what I need. Ahhh!!! there is no language to describe God.
This makes me think of how offended some people got over The Shack, that they just couldn't agree that God could be like He/She/Them were described. Why? Some doctrinal dogma that they had signed their agreement to when joining some denomination? I don't know. Can't we just see that we don't know it all and be more accepting of each other and journey together?
Kim, A couple of my favorite words right now are conversation and journey. It intimates we are not alone; which we aren't. Not only do we have this dualist view of them and us but we even do that within the worldwide community of faith. We know, they don't. They are wrong, we are right. Oh please, God, have mercy on us.
Maybe disagreements is to harsh of a word. Maybe "differences of opinion" is more aptly used in this context. I agree we need each other, we need others viewpoints, and we need to be great listeners. And maybe whacko might not be an appropriate word either. Just because someone told me God was a blazing comet that was going to hit the earth on the mount of olives and destroy the earth so that He can refine us by fire once and for all doesn't mean hes a whacko..just means we have a difference of opinion. By the way, I loved the shack even more the second time I read it.
Thanks for helping me along the journey.
Hi catd
I dont have my own blog...just 3-4 i hang out at... one being "This Moment". I do thank you though for the interest, and your kind words. It encourages me more than you know, and as I said before Thanks for helping me along on the journey.
"someone told me God was a blazing comet..."
The important thing, and I think this is between the lines in catd's post (correct me if I'm wrong), is that God is like all of these things.
God is like a vinedresser, and like a shepherd, and like a strong tower, a healing balm, a nursing mother, a potter, a warrior, and a rock that gives birth (check it out, Deut. 32.18). God might be like a blazing comet, but isn't actually a comet. We would be careless fools to reduce God to the describable or comprehensible.
Bottom line: God is God.
Walter Bruegemmann claims that Israel's most significant description of Yahweh is the Incomparable One. There is no other like our God.
Bruegemmann writes, "Israel's primary rhetorical responsibility is to try to bring Yahweh to adequate speech..." He argues that Israel's job is to describe, through their word and action, what the incomparable God is like, who Yahweh is. No one compares, so we are left with a collage of images that all together only partially describe the one who is beyond compare.
While we glean much about God from those around us, the reality here is some of what we glean might be "jaded". In our enthusiasm to show others we are God's best friend and most loyal confidante, some may ascribe to God certain characteristics and traits that might be their best thinking, but not necessarily correct. I for one have fallen into the "jaded" category, and the "let me impress you with my knowledge of God" category, which eventually landed me in the "horse's ass" category.
We should be very careful about making God in our own image.
As anonymous wrote, "Some may ascribe to God certain characteristics and traits that might be their best thinking, but not necessarily correct."
We should hold tightly to the descriptions we find in the Scriptures, and loosely to our own interpretations.
If I read that God is a judge, I will be mightily influenced by my own experience of judges. A lot depends on what side of justice I've been on. It also depends on how I define justice and justification.
I agree that God is beyond any description I can know. God is beyond human understanding. But we are provided enough knowledge, through the scriptures, to worship the One True God.
We do need each other to give flesh to our understanding. We are the "face of God" to one anther. But, I would not say that God is anything and everything that anyone believes about God.
In my original blog my point was that any image we have of God is only a partial image; and a very small part at that. Do we really believe the One Above All Else, the Eternal One could completely describe himself within the pages of one book? It is a book to draw us to him; to know that there is love that rules the universe. I understand why not being able to define God frightens us. It makes him beyond our control, beyond our thoughts. Thank God.
One of my favorite contemporary theologians, LeRon Shults, writes:
"Many Christians resist the biblical call to fear God because it seems to contradict the call to love God. How can we love that which we fear? If we define fear as our response to a perceived inability to control an existentially relevant object, then we can begin to see that fear and love are not mutually exclusive. Even in the experience of human love, we find a dialectical relation between fascination and fear. A true lover does not desire to control the beloved, but rejoices in the freedom of the beloved to respond to love.
The beloved is the beloved precisely as a delightfully uncontrollable existentially relevant object. If controlled, the beloved ceases to be the object of love. In this sense, “fear” is an essential element of love. Part of the ecstasy of human intimacy is the trembling that occurs in the presence of the unmanipulable beloved. True love does not eradicate the element of fear, but takes it up into itself, transforming it into delight in the other. Human love of God includes the element of fear, but it is infinitely transformed in the joy of worship" (The Delightful Terror of Reforming Theology, 24 January 2007).
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