The idea of God meeting us where we are in our own individual stories, is something we see throughout the Bible when people encounter him. God meets people where they are, so that they may grow in their understanding and knowledge of him. We’ve already seen this when we looked at the story of Abraham and Isaac. God shows Abraham a different way of seeing sacrifice, and walks him through how it works. God doesn’t just tell Abraham that he should approach sacrifice differently, God is with him in his existing understanding and demonstrates to him that there is another way. If we consider God working in this way, then it also makes sense of some of the difficult things we find in the Bible. For example, a lot of people struggle with God’s actions in some of the stories of the Old Testament.
Renowned atheist, Richard Dawkins describes the God of the
Old Testament as “a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser”, because God
apparently endorses the slaughter of entire nations. Looking from a 21st
century perspective, these kinds of commands are problematic, but if we were to
place ourselves in that specific moment in time, then we would see that this is
how the world worked. Nations constantly fought one another because culture at
that time was extremely tribal in the way it thought. Those societies didn’t
have the capacity within them to understand the senselessness of war or the
futility of violence, because that wasn’t how their world worked and it wasn’t
how things got done. If God had commanded the Israelites to take the promised
land by peace, then it wouldn’t have worked because the surrounding nations
would have just stepped in and massacred them. It wouldn’t have made sense to
them, and I expect they would have just ignored the command, as they did with
so many of God’s laws that they couldn’t wrap their minds around. Instead, God
met the people where they were at and allowed them to do what was necessary at
that moment in time, according to the way the world was, and who they were as a
people. The God of the Old Testament is often accused of being wrathful and
violent, because of the things that were committed in his name, but if you read
the whole of the Old Testament there is a trajectory leading towards peace, and
by the end of the Old Testament story, after hundreds of years of lived experience
that proved that society didn’t really achieve anything through violence and
war, God began to reveal a plan for a kingdom where all the nations would be
united in peace.
When Jesus stepped on the scene, he came with the intention
of bringing this kingdom into the world. He entered the world at a time when
the Jews, who after hundreds of years without autonomy and power, were now
under the occupation of another ruling authority, the Roman Empire. By this
time some people were beginning to see the futility of this now escalating
tribal fighting, and so when Jesus entered into the ongoing story, explaining
to people and showing them that violence didn’t really accomplish anything long
term, and that true peace wasn’t achieved by conquering other nations by force,
and that only love and forgiveness would bring peace to the world, some people
were in a place where they were able to understand this and they were prepared
to listen.
God’s kingdom wasn’t finalised through Jesus, but it was
the beginning of a movement which was led by people who believed in God, who
had arrived at a place where they could see this truth, and who were able to
live it out. There were still faithful believers of God who ignored Jesus and
who turned to violence as the answer, because they were stuck in that mindset.
Following on from that point in history, there are many people who have
continued to remain in that way of thinking, even many Christians who have
continued to hold onto violence as an answer, because their experiences of the
world have kept them from fully embracing Jesus’s message. This is still
evidence of God meeting his people where they are at, and allowing them to
follow the path of their own understanding. God doesn’t interject and blast
people for their wrong thinking or understanding, and though it may be hard to
see it this way, especially when it creates division and confusion, I think this
is an act of a loving God, a God who patiently allows his people to work out
things for themselves. God knows that we are not all in the same place of
belief and understanding but allows us to be in the places we need to be, as we
work within our understanding of him. God doesn’t drag us to the point where he
wants us to be, but leads us slowly over time at a pace that we can deal with.
God speaks to people where they are at and to the mindset they inhabit, in the
place where they are growing, and slowly leads us to new revelations. This can
be slow work and sometimes our own self certainty, complacency, or even our
fear, can keep us in one place, but I think God permits all those things and
knows that humanity is doing the best that it can.
If you’ll excuse the slightly cheesy metaphor, the pursuit
of God is like a train travelling to an infinite destination. When we first
find faith, we step onto the train at a certain point of the journey, but we
eventually have to disembark further down the line, (when we die), and watch
the train continue down the track and into the distance without us. Even if we
pursue God our whole lives, we are only on the train for a finite amount of
time and we never get to appreciate the full journey.
Our journey of faith is unique to us because we are all
individual people with our own experiences, understandings and capacities for
knowledge. Often in our journeys we hear or see things which will affect how we
see God, or that cause us to ask questions. In those moments we discern truth
for ourselves and whilst there may be growth for some people, others just won’t
make the connection. This isn’t a fault, but it’s just where people are on
their own journeys. We can’t force each other to abandon particular
understandings of theology, because the things we believe are the best ways for
us to understand God, and those beliefs are what give our faith meaning. They
are true for us even though they may appear to be theologically wrong to
others. The bigger truth is, that most of what we believe about God is flawed
and incomplete. But God is bigger than us and blesses the understandings we
have of him, so that we can grow. This is the case for all of us, until we get
to see God fully.
Just to complete this metaphor, when we get off the train,
we are picked up by a bus replacement service which then takes us to the final
train destination, Heaven, where we presumable have all our questions answered.
Some people may always remain in the same understanding
they have of God. This isn’t necessarily bad, because that may be where they
need to be for them to know God, and many of their beliefs might be true. Most
people will question things though, and they should be allowed to wrestle with
the complexities of faith, and find meaning for themselves. This is a natural
part of the human experience, and I think people should be encouraged to
discover their faith for themselves, which is perhaps the main reason I’m
frustrated with the church. Too many churches restrict people in their growth
or continually reinforce single minded theologies which prevent people from
developing.
We have a cockapoo who we love to bits, but who drives me
crazy, especially when we go for walks. He sniffs constantly at all the
different smells he finds, or tries to go off path in search of squirrels. The
most annoying thing he does is in the summer and the grass has been cut in the
park near our house. When we walk there, we can’t go more than ten metres at a
time without him throwing himself in the grass cuttings and rolling around, covering
himself in all kinds of nature, which we then have to brush out of him.
Whenever he gets distracted in this way, I get so frustrated that he won’t walk
to heel, but I usually give in and have to accept that he’s just the dog we
have. I don’t believe that God guides humanity like a strict dog owner, forcing
us to heel and pulling us in one direction on a short lead. God allows us to
explore our faith within our human experience. He allows us time to sniff, lets
us run off the path in search of squirrels, and patiently waits for us as we
roll in grass cuttings.
I’m speaking metaphorically nut if you’re the kind of
person who enjoys chasing squirrels and rolling in grass, then good for you!
This is the way that faith has been for thousands of years,
people endlessly engaging with mystery. This is how God intended it. God may
have been explicit in his commands or spoken definitively on certain things,
but for the most part he has allowed people to figure out what faith has meant.
Even Jesus encouraged people to wrestle with meaning in their faith by speaking
in parables that were deliberately confusing, or by answering people’s
questions with more questions or intentionally vague or baffling answers.
All of this can sometimes bring us to a place where we
simply try and hold the mystery of God, which I think is an important and worthy
thing to do, although it’s not as easy as it sounds. I have been stuck for a
while in the mystery of God, trying to hold all the different views of God in
tension. There is something to be said for it, it can be a helpful place to
stand, and I often try and return to the mystery of God. However, I don’t know
if it can be sustained for a long period of time. Some people can remain in
that place and hold the tension, but I think that it is a place that people
need to grow into, and often we do need to settle at a point where we can have
an understanding of who God is, in order for us to grow, but also that we might
know God. Whether we come to alter our views and expand our understanding of
God, or not, I believe that God is with us at every stage of our development.
This is where I think my understanding of binding and loosing is important,
because it speaks of God’s faithfulness, that God is who he is, for you, in
that moment, because that is what you need in order to grow, or in order to
have peace.
Finally, you may think that given everything that we have
looked at, that it doesn’t matter what we think about theology, or our
interpretation of the Bible. We will never completely agree with each other,
and we will never have a perfect knowledge of who God is, so it’s pointless
worrying about what you believe. I don’t think it’s as easy as that. I think it
does, and it doesn’t matter.
I think it does matter how we interpret the Bible because
it informs how we think about God, and that determines how we feel about
ourselves, and how we relate to others. We need to have an understanding of God
that resonates with us, that excites us, and that we can grow with, and if we
carry an understanding of God that is counter to that, then it can have a
negative impact on how we live our lives. The beliefs that I used to carry
would fill me with anxiety and fear, and those things spilled over into who I
was as a person. I didn’t believe that I was truly loved by God, and so I
couldn’t believe that I was worthy of love when it came to how others saw me,
and how I saw other people. Having come through that, it is incredibly
important for me now, to have an understanding of God as being ultimate love,
above everything else, and it is by God’s grace, that I believe I was shown
those fresh understandings.
Those revelations and epiphanies gave my faith meaning and
they felt true to me, and weren’t just a series of things that someone was
saying which I felt forced to believe. Through my own questioning and wrestling
with the Bible, and through listening to people and through reading different
things about God, I now feel I am in a place where I have a healthier and truer
view of God. That doesn’t mean that the road ahead is easy, or that I have
everything right, but I continue to wrestle with things and I broaden my
understanding of the Bible and of God, but I hold those things lightly and
remain open to new revelations of God.
I also think that it doesn’t matter what our theology is
and how we interpret the Bible. We Christians will never be in full agreement
in our interpretations of the Bible, we will always have different views and
theories, because that is just how it is, and whilst study of theology and
biblical interpretation is important, it can also become a distraction from the
core heart of God. If we accept that we are all at different places and that
our understandings of who God is, are based on our experiences, life conditions
and capacity for knowledge, then we will never completely agree on the exact
nature of God. God will only ever be a mystery to us in this life, and to
engage in endless debates and discussions about theology and biblical
interpretation, where neither side yields, is pointless, and detracts from the
gospel and the teachings of Jesus.
Text taken from “Unanswerable:
Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth”, which is
available from Amazon, and from all good book shops. An audiobook is also
available at https://mindmole.bandcamp.com/music
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