The Other- God
At one time in my life God (I’m tempted to drop the capital “G”) appeared to be rather straight forward. To make God happy all you needed to do was be a good person. That’s somewhat vague but in my context “good” generally meant you weren’t drinking beer (that was the biggie), not using swear words (unless it was football season), stopping at 3rd base, and going to church. If you were halfway decent at following the rules, you could join the club.
There’s something nice about this transactional view of god (sorry I had to drop the “G”) by which we can measure ourselves, check our progress, and find gratification knowing that at least I’m not like “them.” I get it. I really do. I played the game for a long time. I got an A+ in systematic theology (what an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one). Something about this approach always seemed a bit off to me though. Life started to happen and as I dug into Scripture the messier my faith became. Like Truman in the Truman Show I started to nose around in the pages of God’s Story and as I did things got a lot more complicated than the well-manicured, white picket fence yards of my youth. The more I observed people genuinely wrestling with God, the more I started wrestling with God. Good, bad, or ugly it was time to open the hood on this thing.
Jesus says in John 14:9, “if we’ve seen Him we’ve seen the Father.” I figured Jesus would be the best place to start. My mother sometimes reads these, so I’ll tread gingerly but I’m not sure my mother would have totally approved if Jesus and I were friends and I brought him home for dinner. He didn’t play by the rules and that makes us a little uncomfortable. It makes us very uncomfortable if we’re the ones who set up the rules. We want to put our god in a box. I naturally drift that way as well but it’s a futile game. Our God is so Other.
The longer I follow Christ there are fewer and fewer hills worth dying on but oh those hills that remain! If we put 10 Christians in a room we’d probably get 12 opinions about “The Wall” for example and at the end of the day that’s o.k. (we’d have to get creative with Deuteronomy 10:9 though). But what we cannot forgo, the very essence of the Jesus brand, is love and grace. We continue to pursue God with all we have but we’re incapable of even scratching the surface of all there is to know. Jesus didn’t come to release the tension in comprehending God and in some ways just increased it. But what He did do was die on a cross for our sins whether that sin is an abortion or casting judgement on the person who had the abortion. Both are equally sinful in the eye of God and yet God joyfully pours out His love on both.
As we taste of Your grace God, bend our hearts closer to Yours and let us inspire others to do the same! How Other are You God!
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and untraceable His way! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor? Or who has ever first given to Him, and has to be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things To Him be the glory forever. Amen. – Romans 11:33-36