Greetings,
reader! I wanted to let you know that we
are beginning a new series. This series
is designed to walk us through passages in the Old Testament on a quest to know
God. While we have already journeyed
through Matthew to know who is Jesus is and through Acts to know of the Holy
Spirit, we are now going to attempt to complete the circle to understand the
Trinity. While the term “trinity” does
not show up in the Biblical text, as Christians we do believe in One God who
reveals himself in three persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a difficult
idea, but an idea that is represented throughout the Bible as a whole. That’s why we are wrestling with this
mysterious concept through the reading and study of God’s Word. So, we begin.
Who
is God? The Creator
Do
you believe in God? Is he a benevolent
or wrathful God? Is he involved in the
world or distant and uncaring? How do we
know what God thinks? Can we know? Can we really discern and understand the
path for our life? Can we know the will of God for ourselves, for our church,
for our world? Is our life just left up
to fate? Do things just happen to us without any of our own will or way being
involved? Is God just a universe-sized puppet-master pulling his strings this
way and that?
When
we look at and try to comprehend disasters of biblical proportions, as we have
seen on the in tsunamis and the phenomenal amount of human life lost on the coastlines
or the massive earthquakes, fires and storms, what does that tell us about the
character of God? If God is a loving God, why does he permit these kinds of
disasters and things like the Black Plague, HIV/AIDS, Hitler's regime, slavery,
etc? Who tells us what to believe about
God? Is what we believe accurate, true or whole? How do we tell other people
about God, if we ourselves do not know either him or know anything about him?
Have
we had enough questions yet? We are plumbing the depths of the human psyche.
When things like personal loss, grave illness and human suffering stare us in
the face, these kinds of questions distract our driving, wake us in the middle
of the night, sometimes making us angry, depressed or cause us to live with
feelings of hopelessness.
I
would like to invite you along on a journey. It's a journey to try to discover
some of the answers to the questions we have raised. I would like to point our inquiry to a
specific direction before we start this journey.
As
a Christian I believe we can know and experience the person of one, true, living
God. I believe we can walk in a confident faith in the God of Creation. We can
have profound faith not only in God, but also in his will and his character.
I
believe this because I believe God has revealed his character and his will in
at least four distinct places: 1) nature, 2) experience/reason/intellect, 3)
tradition, and 4) revelation. As Christians we can believe that when all four
of these elements are found to be in agreement we can discern and know God himself.
Let's
look at these aspects of theology to get us ready for our journey.
Nature
is made up of many elements: things that we can see and feel and experience, as
well as things we cannot. Gravity, for instance, is the physical reality that
we experience moment by moment as it sticks us like glue to the surface of this
earthy ball. We cannot see it, nor can we touch it, but it works. Trees grow
without our assistance all over the world. Volcanoes erupt, earthquakes happen
in the ocean, mountains tower, grass tosses a beautiful blanket over dust to
keep it in place. All of these are wonderful and terrifying realities that can
help us understand that a Being exists who created everything.
Some
scientist have posited a theory that the world was created from a "big
bang"—celestial bodies colliding in the blank universe and out of that
fusion came one cell of life from which all creation sprang. While I wish to
respect their research and theories, I am a simple person and come to a simple
question. How did a life-giving cell arrive in the midst of the fusion? No good
answer has yet arisen.
In
another way of trying to comprehend the stuff of life, mythologies have been
developed. Every culture has their myths of creation. We can read of the warring and capricious gods
in the Roman and Greek traditions. We
can read the Enuma Elish which relates
stories from the ancient Middle East where gods cast magic spells and create
heaven and earth from the split cadavers of their enemies. Victor Hamilton has
related this: "The study of mythology helps the believer to see how
ancient man tried to answer ultimate questions about life and reality when the
light of revelation had not dawned upon him. Interestingly, the answers
provided to those questions by ancient man are not all that different from the
answers provided by modern but unredeemed man."[1]
Hamilton makes the very fine point of contrast with the Judeo-Christian view of
creation and God as completely counter to many mythical accounts. The Christian
understanding of God is that he did not create out of violence or jealousy, but
he created out of the goodness and greatness of his nature.
Read
Genesis 1- 2:3
That,
my friends, is the way we begin to understand not only our world and its beauty
and power, but also God and his goodness.
Read
Genesis 2:4-25
In
chapter 2 of Genesis we read a second version of the same creation story. And
what we learn from both of these is that God is a creative God, seeking to make
good things from nothing. This is the general will of God which we can accept
by faith. The ancient and modern man who lives without God will tell you
plainly that if God exists at all, his character and will are destructive not
creative. If not, why then would a good God make bad things happen?
On
our journey we want to keep our compass rightly oriented toward knowing and
experiencing the personal, Judeo-Christian God. As distressing as this may seem
to those of us who are really humanistic—human-centered—the personal and
universal God does not always have our personal and physical comfort as his
priority. There are matters at stake that weigh far more than our daily comfort
levels.
In
Genesis chapter 3 we read how Adam and Eve went against the known will of God.
They had been instructed very specifically not to eat from one tree—just one—in
the Garden of Eden. That tree was to
keep them from knowing good and evil. And guess what? They did it anyway. From that point forward all of humanity
entered into a realm of suffering and hardship that God did not intend for his
creation. God has always been straightforward about who we are—creatures not
creators, workers not lazy bums, community not individuals—and his design was
set up to work well. All of which can be learned from Genesis 1 and 2.
But
when we sin there are consequences for our sins. A tactile example might be found in
nature. If you run your hand against the
grain on a plank of unfinished wood, you are likely to get a splinter. That principle
can be translated into how we do life. If a chemical company operates out of
greed and selfishness and does not care what happens to the river they dump
their toxic waste into, then thousands of people may develop cancers and
illnesses formerly unknown to mankind.
Just like Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. These are the kinds of things that are
consequences for behavior against the order and will of God.
That
does not nor should not make God out to be the bad guy. We not only have the
privilege and responsibility to work in concert with God's nature, but in
concert with his commands as well. To bemoan the fact that you cannot afford
rent when you have spent your income on alcohol does not make it God's fault.
To wail about how unfair God is when you haven't tried to live for him does not
make a miserable life God's fault. To scream about how mean God is when you
will not follow his directions doesn't make bad things God's fault.
God
has made it very clear through his good creation and consequences of our own
sinful behavior that his goodness is available to each one of us as long as we
do it his way. The wonder of nature, the joy of birth, the death and
restoration of nature as we see each spring, summer, winter and fall, is all
evidence of God's character. He is the good God full of grace and truth.
We
can experience him through these avenues and learn to follow the laws of nature
by applying our intellect and reason to what we can discern. Caring for the
earth and the animals properly and making sure our fellow human beings are
cared for is all a part of God's will. All of this even most pagan
non-believers catch on to. All of this can be learned by experience, can be
acquired through the proper use of the good gift of brains and intellect.
One
more thing we can learn from experience and applying our intellect is that even
in the darkest of human tragedies people can survive. If they cannot survive
physically as the giant waves roar over them, they can survive spiritually as
they cry out to the one true God of Creation. His Word promises that when we
cry out to God he will hear us. Read what the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 116:1-2. I love
the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned
his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. In those desperate
moments, if we are earnestly seeking him, he will gather us to himself and keep
us for eternity. And those of us who are left, will always find a way to
survive and recover. It's happened for centuries that the human will, which is
a tiny reflection of God's will, seeks to restore the broken, rebuild the
rubble and renew the burned out.
Tradition
teaches us these things as well. Tradition keeps the reality of truth alive
from one generation to the next. As a old carpenter teaches his apprentice that
one does not run his hand against the grain of the wood, as a chemical engineer
reminds her young staff that the consequences of our human creations are
far-reaching, as a grandmother tells her grandchild that attending religious
services is a good thing because you can learn about God, tradition is part of
how we know God. Traditions—through ritual, repetition, story-telling, preaching,
teaching and reading—convey the reality that God's will is to help us and to
guide us. It is his character to be truthful and corrective with us and to show
us who he is.
And
in each one of these elements—nature, experience, intellect and tradition there
is the plain fact that God wants us to know him. So, he gives us nature to see his handy work,
he permits us to experience and to learn from our mistakes and discover that
his way really is the best, and he helps us establish traditions that bring us
to the greater knowledge of his will and character.
God
has not left us to just feel around by experience, but he has also revealed his
will and character through the written Word, passed down for centuries as the
revelation of himself to us. We have used and explored his Word already to know
more about him. In the pages ahead we
will be exploring all of this together, using the compass of his written word,
to help us to understand who God is.
Are
you ready to come on this journey with me? I'm going to ask you to write down
some of the deep questions you have about God and his will. Then I want you to
pray that as we take on the stories of God with people that we may learn from
their experience, our tradition, nature and yes, indeed from God's revelation
in Scripture how we can know God himself.
Amen
Copyright
M.R. Hyde 2012
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