Who is God?
This is conflict I have been wrestling with since the start of the ‘Race.
Before my acceptance to the WorldRace, I had recently finished an online Historical Contextual Supernatural Bible School. I was solid in my foundation.
I knew who God was. I knew what Jesus accomplished, and I could see how the Bible tells the story of God’s covenant journey with mankind.
Before the ‘Race, I identified more as a pantheist then straight theist. God was in everything, working through everything. God was in fact that substance that held the universe together, moving in and around us, leading us forward with Him through his creation.
(Also to be noted, I was very much alone in my ‘christian’ community in this thinking. My ‘christian’ community was not very large, and the ‘churches’ I did attend had labeled me the post-modern of the group).
So here I am. Over the last 9 months God has decided to flip everything upside down on me.
A true Through the Looking Glass Experience.
…
Through this experience (called the WorldRace) I decided that reading the Bible (cover to cover) would be an excellent idea. I have only done this once before, (after my ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’) ergo this would be the perfect time for round two.
So maybe this blog should be titled How Being in Christian Community & Reading the Bible Caused Me to Doubt God.
…
I would like externally process with y’all right now, so bear with me here.
…
Christianity. A 2000 year old religion. An evolved faith tradition that dates back to the Ancient Near East
The hebraic tradition passes down the story of Abram, a man whom God called out of his tradition and his belief system to unknown territory with a promise that God will make Abram’s name great.
God meets Abram, juxtapose to the wooden house idols that Abram’s Family worshipped in the Fertile Crescent during the dawn of civilization.
Elohim.
God meets Abram in dreams, visions, and as 3 persons. God encompasses so much more then wooden idols representing the sky, earth, water, war, love, and so on and so forth.
The concept of God, YWHW, continues to evolve with Moses.
I am who I am.
Moses asks the burning bush for the name of the God to which he is communing with. Moses is asking for the name of God, so God may come to perform whenever Moses needs him, a genie in a bottle. A God who works for Moses.
I will be who I will be.
Moses is attempting to box God in, to ask for supernatural support to help him accomplish his goals.
However, God refuses to be named. He remains independent from us (humans), yet also involved and invested in the well being of the human race.
I will be who you need me to be.
God is not who we want Him to be, but who we need Him to be.
God names himself YWHW (which is the sound of the exhale and inhale of a human being, and in ancient cultures Breath is synonymous with Spirit, ergo God is Spirit that gives life)
As Hebrew culture evolves the people of ‘God’ have an incredible amount of reverence for the name of God. The name of God is now replaced with a symbolic placeholder, LORD. God is LORD of all.
The evolution continues with David, Solomon, and the Temple. God now has a home, a resting place, a physical place located in Time & Space. Not that God ever wanted to be confined to a physical place, but if this helps His people relate to Him then He will do whatever He needs to do to achieve this goal. Thus becoming closer to Humans.
As the Nation of Israel rises to its pinnacle, the people move away from God. The nation of Israel forgets about taking care of/seeing/respecting the orphan, the widow, the immigrant, the refugee, and the social cast away. The people forget the importance of stewardship of the ground and the earth. The moral code, given to them for their health, lost meaning and substance.
Therefore, God, gives His people over to alternative earthly governments and powers. God wants to demonstrate that He can work His will without our help. He doesn’t need us, and in fact, we (as humans) no longer have an accurate representation of who God is.
God announces His plans, through His prophets, to rectify and reconcile this apparent dissonance.
…
Reading through this part of the Bible, was amazing, and difficult for me. It was fantastic to understand and see the lens of which the ancient world viewed the Almighty LORD.
The anthropomorphizing of God really hurts my perception for who God is. The way Elijah, David, Solomon talk about God reminded me more of a Zeus like God, then a God like the Hebraic tradition tries to show us.
I understand the time, context, and history to which these scriptures were written. That during this time the gods of the age where sculpted in the image of men, and lived on mountains. Just as God sits on a throne and lives on Mount Zion.
This was to help humans understand, empathize, and characterize who they understand God to be.
…
However the use, and over use of this language, as preachers and pastors regurgitate “holy scripture” to their crowds and congregations I feel defeats the purpose of these teachings and writings.
Being around this language, is educational and helpful for me, yet living and breathing the text within the confounds of a completely christian context and environment has made me doubt who I know/experienced God to be.
I find myself praying to a deity who more resembles Zeus then YWHW. My imagination creates context of understanding more akin to Iron Age Theology.
Now why? Why is this happening to me?
God is up ‘there’ in heaven, and we call out to Him, with the hope our prayers have the power and strength and faith to reach up into the magnificent heavens above. ‘God’ sits on his Throne above us, and we are mere mortals who beg for God not to smite us, because we are evil and sinful.
Why? Why is this mental block hitting my perception?
…
I doubt if I have ever been around this many Christians since my preteen years.
I was a smart kid, who grew up in a very christian home. I was read Bible stories every year of my life. I was well versed in the narrative of the Bible, from Adam & Eve all the way to the Beast in Revelation.
Yet as I have grown and done my own soul searching, my concept of God has continued to expand bigger and bigger then the boxes I try to contain Him in.
During this journey we have went from church to church, and country to country.
(Fact: this is the most number of Baptists I have ever been around. EVER.)
Christians are beautiful creatures, complete with their own language, ecosystem, hierarchy, liturgy, symbols and songs. Every place we go, it is different, yet relatively the same.
With the systematic repetition of symbols, ideology, and scripture my mind begins to doubt who God really is?
Yes, this all the stuff I was taught. Yet somehow, it doesn’t seem to fit with the yearning in my soul.
…
Then we bring in the character of Jesus.
Dear Jesus.
Being in a church culture, Jesus is the main dude. Jesus is God. Jesus died for our sins (through this journey I have observed a very penal substitution, reformed theology way of thinking ), yet we are all still sinners who need Jesus’s grace.
When we pray, we pray to Jesus. Jesus said he will be their to commune/to be our advocate with the Father.
(I also find Jesus interesting because he also completely redefines our modern concept of God. God is now described as a Father and Bridegroom to cares for the orphans and the widows, something the Israelite Nation failed to do, thus not being an accurate representation of God on Earth)
I finished the Old Testament in Malawi, and as I entered Ukraine (and the last continent of the ‘race) it was time to encounter Jesus (the Human Being) in scripture
(Messianic prophecies and types-and-shadows liter the Old Testament, but we hear Jesus talk for the first time in the New Testament)
I start to read Matthew in Ukraine. By the time I got to Chapter 5, it was too much overload and I shut down. Jesus was too much. Who is Jesus? Who is this guy?
(Especially with Easter happening during Malawi, and my unknowing of what Jesus’s death really meant…sent me into an existential twister. I could easily regurgitate the age old (at least the last 50 years of theology and ideology of American Christianity) message of sin and death, and that Jesus died because of how evil you are. Or there is something else, something else what says something else about God and Jesus.
…
Shout out to the Liturgist Podcast for helping me sort through this mental dissonance. As I was going for a run through the park in Rivne, Ukraine, Science Mike guided my headspace through a lectio divina reading of scripture (Palm Sunday). This stopped me in my tracks. I had to stop everything and focus on the frequencies entering my ears.
(Matt 21: 10-11, 10 When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” 11 The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”)
Jesus is a prophet, with the ability to reshape our definition and understanding of who God is.
Jesus constantly refers to God as his FATHER, or that of a BRIDEGROOM.
I believe this plays into the idea, I will be who you need me to be, and the Israelites forgetting to take care of the orphans and widows.
God is being who his people need Him to be, a Father to the fatherless, and a Husband to those tossed aside and widowed by the calamity of life.
…
This month in Romania, I have decided to binge the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke. To not take a narrow view of Jesus’s words, but an overarching meditation of what the author of each book is trying to say about Jesus.
As I read the Old Testament in chronological order, to understand the story better, I decided against that for the story of Jesus. I did not want the what-happened-when account, but the broad breadth of who the author is saying Jesus is.
Oddly enough, I got the weirdest impression from Jesus. The guy was angry. Granted he was constantly harassed by the religious piety of the era, yet he very much is a doom-and-gloom prophet. Heck, right outta the gate his first message is “Repent, because the kingdom from heaven is near!”
Jesus then goes to tell how everything will be destroyed (sounding much like old testament prophets, and regularly quotes them).
Jesus goes on to explain the Kingdom of God as backwards and upside down. The beggars, prostitute, drunks, tax collectors, and sinners will be invited to the wedding, because those who were entrusted with God’s promise/vision kept killing all of God’s messengers.
…
Jesus does an amazing job of creating more mystery then actually solving any of God’s mysteries.
In fact Jesus is routinely throwing monkey wrenches in my ideas of who God is.
…
To be honest, I don’t know where this goes. The journey is still on going. Who is God? I don’t know. I know Spirit moves and shapes, coordinates and brings new life through every bad situation. I know Spirit wants me to partner with His movements.
I dislike using the male pronoun for God. Heck even the word GOD, LORD, and FATHER throw me for a whirl. The whole anthropomorphization of God doesn’t seem to do God justice. Yet I don’t know how else to relate.
It becomes so easy in Christian Culture to enter the amoeba of beliefs. To blend in, use language synonymous with the culture without every understanding what it could mean to you. Also with so many eclectic perspectives on scripture and the trinity, it becomes hard to derive where the truth lies.
…
But that is beauty. Jesus says I am the truth.
…
Even if I don’t understand. Even if I have deconstructed the symbolism of certain words we take for granted in Christian Culture. Even if everyone around me is worshipping symbols like idols. Even if I am drowning in the the mystery.
Even if everything falls apart.
That is part of the journey. I know God is not too small that my questions are too hard for Him.
I know that God just wants to be close to me. That God is bigger then my understanding, my knowledge, and all revelation.
God is still bigger.
…
This conflict has characterized my ‘Race experience. (At least the mental experience I have embarked on…but to be honest…I did not choose this…Spirit has placed me on this path…and I am just walking it out)
I have to come to terms with the fact that I do not have all the answers. Nor will I ever, and that is part of the journey.
I will continue to wrestle.
…
Thank you for externally processing with me.
Your friend,
Caleb.
…
Genesis 32:22-32
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.
