Moses said to the LORD, "You have been telling me, 'Lead these people,' but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, 'I know you by name and you have found favor with me.' 13 If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people."
The LORD replied, "My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."
Then Moses said to him, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. 16 How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?"
And the LORD said to Moses, "I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name."
Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory."
And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."
Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen."
................Exodus 33:12-23 (NIV)
When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel... but his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice.
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have."
But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him:
"Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do."
Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day."
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No!" they said. "We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."
When Samuel heard all that the people said, he repeated it before the LORD. The LORD answered, "Listen to them and give them a king."
................1 Samuel 8:1-21 (NIV)
And the word of the LORD came to him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
He replied, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too."
The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
................1 Kings 19:9-13 (NIV)
[Jesus] went on to tell the people this parable: "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
"Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.'
"But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ’This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
"What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others."
When the people heard this, they said, "May this never be!"
Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written:
.........The stone the builders rejected
...........has become the capstone?
Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."
The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.
................Luke 20:9-19 (NIV)
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The long and short of it.... |
As I've been writing this it has become clearer and clearer to me that I don't know who God is as well as I should. How do I write about God, the Ultimate Other, when I am so blind as to who He is? How can anyone? How can such tiny, temporary mortals understand the Supreme Being, creator of heaven and Earth, the Cosmos, everything? How can these two extremes resolve? I guess that's the point—resolving this extreme is the ultimate meaning of life—it's the ultimate meaning of every human life. One way or the other, whether I believe and become a committed seeker and follower, or whether I reject God and seek something else, either way a decision is made. Faith ever operates regardless of the god.
Some things illustrated by the passages above:
1. God is who He is.
2. God can only be found, or seen, on His terms
3. We tend to reject Him for who He is in favor of what we want
4. Even so, He has a plan to bring resolution.
Unlike other, which is another side of self, Ultimate Other is completely different from self. God is completely different, completely separate from us. Whereas the relationship of self to other is symbiotic (self plays both roles simultaneously, as does other), the roles of self and Ultimate Other never cross. I am self to myself and other to my wife simultaneously (as she is to me), but I am never both self and Ultimate Other to God.
To understand how I resolve to the Ultimate Other I need to understand Ultimate Other (as much as He will let me and I am able). This is not a simplistic thing, for just as I only allow certain others to see me, to know me, God also chooses to whom He will reveal Himself, and how. What I know about God, He is letting me know. God can only be found, or seen, on His terms, not mine.
God in a box
In philosophical circles there is debated something called the “first cause”, that very first thing that caused all other things. It's a riddle—what caused the first cause? Who created the creator?
Consider the reality of a snow globe. Inside the globe you have a landscape, and swirling all around it are fake flecks of snow. If you believe that “the creator” is just another fleck swirling around in a myriad of competing similar flecks within the snow globe, then the riddle becomes a “chicken or the egg” question and the answer is, we created God. But if God created this snow globe, is he not outside of it? Is He not separate from its reality, outside of the laws that govern it? Is then God sitting in His own snow globe and someone bigger is looking down on Him? Now the riddle becomes one of infinite snow globes within snow globes within snow globes. The laws within any given snow globe don’t necessarily translate up or down—each globe has its own self-contained reality. The logic of the riddle is circular—each globe exists within some other globe ad infinitum.
Since the logic is circular, I reject the laws that relate to it.
Law and logic are two different things. A law is a definition or requirement for an action—an apple falls because it is subject to the law of gravity that defines and requires how the apple behaves related to another body, the Earth. The logic is why the law works. The law states that the apple must fall. The logic states why the apple must fall. Law is about who, what, when, where, how and how long; logic is about why.
For a computer program the underlying logic can be mathematics and the business requirements of the application being designed. The computer programmer can't just arbitrarily change the logic of mathematics to accomplish some law defined by the program. The novelist writes books based on the logic of human love and sacrifice, but a novelist can't arbitrarily change the logic of love or motherhood to make a story more interesting. The underlying logic can't tolerate this.
The creator is not subject to the laws of the created (since the creator made the laws and can presumably unmake them as easily at the necessity of the creating), but the creator is faithful to the logic of law within the context of the creating (I apply the law to all aspects of the universe). If the Creator is powerful enough to bend or break the law (say, by suspending the law of gravity by walking on water), still He will not undo the logic of the underlying universe (when I walk on water, the water turns into gold) as that will contradict His own why. The programmer can’t undo the logic of math; the Creator won’t undo the logic of himself.
What proof do I have? Mathematics and Love. These things exist beyond my desire for them not to. The laws of mathematics and love function based on immutable logic that I cannot change. God exists beyond my desire for Him to be whatever I want Him to be. It is immaterial to me if I live somewhere within an infinite set of embedded snow globes. What I do know is that there are laws and there is logic.
First Impressions…
One important way God allows us to see Him is by His reflection in the faces of those who see Him. In a sense then one of the first impressions I can get of God is from what I see of His followers. This is true of all “gods”. I see Allah through the actions of Muslims. I see Ganesh through the actions of Hindus. I see God through the actions of Christians.
Would I have done it this way? Probably not. My ideas of a “supreme being” are much like the ancient Jews—I would want a visible king over me who could lead me into battle. I would want what the other nations have—a palpable, visible, all-powerful supreme-being.
Here’s the problem: “Supreme beings” in the human context are invariably evil. Supremely powerful kings invariably become supremely powerful tyrants. If you give a human being supreme power he or she will get caught up in exercising it at first, with losing it later, and with living forever (being God).
Tyrants get hooked on murder like junkies get hooked on heroine. It is a terrifying seduction—first enticed by the power of life and death, then seduced by the thrill of exercising the power, followed by the unending need to exercise the power and utter dependence on continuing the use of power. Once seduced, the tyrant realizes a new terror—this power is only temporary, this power is the power of death, not life, this power cannot defeat death. Some tyrants realize the illusion, the dreadful trick, but not many. Open any history book written by any culture about any country anywhere and any time in the world and you will find the same thing—human supreme beings do little good and much harm.
To a human supreme being, other must be valueless in order to perpetuate the illusory godhood of self. This is why tyrants and demi-gods stack stones and crush bones—it leaves behind nice monuments.
Every one of the man-made wonders of the ancient world (in every hemisphere) was built by murder. How many people died to build the Pyramids? The Great Wall of China? The Taj Mahal? Only the names of the Pharaohs are recalled for each of the pyramids, and not the tens of thousands of names of the slaves who died while building them. The first emperor of China is remembered for getting the Great Wall of China started, but what of the names of the millions of people who died building it? Are the Pharaohs remembered as mass murderers? Is the first emperor of China remembered for genocide or for the proud symbol of China's independence? And lacing it all is the general valuelessness of humanity. All these centuries later I stand looking at models in museums of the pyramids being built using countless slave laborers to move the teeny massive blocks, and I don't see the cruelty, I don't see the murder, I see little machines doing the bidding of Pharaoh, god incarnate. When I watch documentaries on the building of the Great Wall it amazes me that the commentator expresses awe at the power one man wields to kill an estimated 2,000,000 peasants and slaves to build it--"Wow," the voice seems to say, "what power!”
Is it any wonder that so many concepts of God the Supreme-being portray an omnipotent, aloof deity; cruel or indifferent—human “gods” incarnate are cruel and indifferent.
When presented with a “god” I ask a simple question—is this “god” anything like a man? If the answer is yes, then I know this god is not God. We are like God, but God is nothing like us. It's the same with nature. God created nature, so it is like Him, but that doesn't mean He is like it.
God the Supreme Being
But what if a human supreme being had the power and opted not to use it with cruelty and indifference? What if a person claimed supreme beingness and only chose to use the power to do good, to teach, to heal, to feed. Even more impressive, what if he opted not to use it? How would history remember such a supreme being as this? History remembers Him as Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ claimed to have supreme power, used it to perform miracles and to even raise people from the dead and to rise from the dead Himself, but His primary use of His supreme power was to give it up for our benefit. John 3:16 is famous, but John 3:17 really makes you stop and think--”God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” Jesus Christ came into the world with all power and authority, but he gave it up for other, he laid it down for us. This makes Him a unique Supreme Being in history.
Jesus Christ was a carpenter, and the monuments He built with His hands were tables, door frames, perhaps simple wooden tools to be sold by His family. Nothing remains—the wood returned to dust. He never stacked one stone on another, and He certainly never murdered anyone to do it for Him. And yet there still exists a monument to His work, something larger and stronger than any wall or geometric shape, more lasting than any statue or image—His body still exists today in the form of His church—the communion of believers. The blocks that the Supreme Being works with are we mere humans, aligned and leveled with love and tolerance, cemented together with sacrifice for each other patterned after the One who taught us by example what true sacrifice looks like. True power is not the ability to take life, but to create life, to give life where there is nothing available but death. True power increases in a sealed system designed to decrease and burn out. And what fuels this power? True love that gives up itself for the benefit of other.
How to find God…
So where then is God? God is found among those who love Him—“for where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them" (Matthew 18:20). God will not appear like a servant when called, but rather calls us to come together under Him. We were created for communion with Him, and communion with each other, so we fulfill our purpose, we find ultimate meaning, when we draw together in love.
To me, God is the architect, the lawgiver, the dreamer, the visionary, the artist. Whereas a human artist must work with the materials around him, God created the materials first, and then went to work shaping them with purpose and forethought. The laws of nature, of chemistry and physics and biology, the rules that govern our planet, our solar system, our reality are the same laws that govern the farthest corners of space, and these laws, this logic, are the fingerprint of God stamped in the clay of His creation. In an instant the blueprint for our reality came to be.
We look at the staggeringly complex question of the origins of life and try to attribute life to random chance, but what of the underlying logic of the snow globe in which random chance exists? Are the laws of physics the result of Random Chance as well? Are the laws of the physical universe subject to the same eternal bingo game that brought us into existence? Isn't there a unique fingerprint of intelligence in the very laws of matter themselves?
The wonderful, economical, elegant and versatile logic of matter is not a creation of chance. At some point the sheer weight of evidence collected by science will tilt the scales away from probability and towards design, but likely we will need to wait until all the old school materialists die off.
We matter…
Step outside and look up at the sky, day or night, and allow yourself to be awed. It's OK to think there is something or someone out there bigger than you, in charge and aware of you standing there looking up at Him and His work. Admire it. Admire Him. Seek Him. Seek others. The chances you are here, now, in this universe, looking up at the sky, against all odds makes you special. Whether it is the graceful ark of logic holding together the elements of the universe, or the graceful Ark of the Covenant holding together a people surrounded by enemies in the desert, this reality we are in is fantastically complex, beautiful and intended.
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