GOD
After Billy had made the decision to leave the church, which was a bit of a thing and much more than turning a page in his life’s story, it was time to seriously reflect. What was the problem and which players are to blame? The number of players Billy could think of (for the time being) was four. Maybe there would be some more later, but Billy didn't want to lose himself in a potential labyrinth of subsections and sub-subsections. He decided to start with the main departments of blame and how they relate to the Church:
God, the Bible, the Church, and - he had to acknowledge it for better or worse - Billy himself.
Billy had been on his faith journey long enough to learn that God cannot be mapped out.
All the described attributes and characteristics of God that we find in the Bible can only be depicted, or portrayed in ideas and words that we have at our disposal. The Bible, therefore, assigns to God human attributes. We call this anthropomorphisms: an abstract idea we put a label on or describe with words and feelings of something we are familiar with. The relativity and inadequacy of these words and images are underlined and emphasized in the infamous commandment not to whip up idols for ourselves: “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods” (Ex. 20:4-5).
Whatever picture of God we build-up, any of His traits depicted in any way, the imminent danger is that it’s cast in bronze and pronounced “My God.” This short-changes God as He transcends all available bronze and imaginable pictures.
Billy was afraid to say it, but briefly allowed the thought: "Could it be that Christians who marvel at a single aspect of God or persistently ride their hobbyhorse are guilty of idolatry?"
Nevertheless, we have nothing but the images and the words in our personal, linguistic and cultural databanks at our disposal. But God cannot be reduced to any single image or word. What about two words?
When Moses is appointed by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery, he wanted to know what to say when the Israelites asked him on whose authority he was acting. God’s answer speaks volumes, and ample volumes are written about it through history: “I am who I am. Say this to the people of Israel: I am has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).
Reflecting on this, Billy realized that his beef, built up over the years, wasn’t so much with God as a being but with the firmness with which believers and groups of believers claim to understand Him and by doing so created a caricature of God. And that’s what had bogged Billy down; the inability, or maybe even the unwillingness of many, to accept that irreconcilable contradictions are part of God's being. The God who throws punches out of Love and forgives out of that same Love as opposed to the same God who is Jealous and does not tolerate competition (two name but two characteristics). And, to be honest we’d rather hear a message on a loving God than a message on a jealous God. The church seems to favour leaning towards big words on love. Attempts to trace this mysterious God back to a person who can be understood and thus explained will rather sooner than later result in sectarianism, exclusive claims, and a measurable faith in which the individual can tick the boxes of deserved affection and approval of God. And that of course, feels great; measuring is knowing...
The only slightly recognizable, tangible image of God is given to us in Christ: "..the visible image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15). And in John 1:18 we read that "…he has revealed God to us." The centrality of Christ in the all-encompassing story of God is also the crux of that story. Only when Christ made his appearance something of that great story of God began to truly materialise: God out of the grey!
Moses and the Israelites had to make do with two words. Those two words take on shape and content as the story unfolds. But that's a different story for the next time.
Next time: Billy’s Bible
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