The God I Don’t Understand, Part 1

This has been one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. It seems that Chris Wright continues to weave together thoughts that various thinkers have written down in various ways, but in a concise, easy to digest way. I just want to give a teaser of some of the ideas that this book approaches:

1. “Knowing and trusting does not necessarily add up to understanding… In everyday life we often have to trust people without ever quite understanding how they operate.” He uses the example of the Revenue Service – none of us needs to have exhaustive knowledge of how that operates in order to send them our tax return. This also obviously applies to the most personal, intimate relationships we have. I may know my wife better than anyone else, but that does not mean that I understand her. He carries this idea further (similar to how I’ve tried to describe faith as “transrational”): “Faith seeks understanding and faith builds on understanding where it is granted, but faith does not finally depend on understanding. This is not to say, of course, that faith is intrinsically irrational, but that faith takes us into realms where explanation fails us – for the present.” What excites me about this perspective is that Chris Wright is a highly respected theologian – an “expert” of the Bible. If he still has questions and misunderstandings, maybe we all have some hope…
2. “Whereas we often ask ‘Why?’ people in the Bible more often asked ‘How long?’ Their tendency was not to demand that God give an explanation for the origin of evil but rather to plead with God to do something to bring about an end to evil.” This is a very different perspective from the culture that we live in. In the past, people were more concerned about how to respond to evil rather than philosophizing about its existence. Today, we are offended by people who even think that evil exists – or, maybe it does, in institutions, or even other people, but not in me! We want explanations for evil; we want it to make sense. Wright says, “The final truth is that evil does not make sense. Sense is part of our rationality that in itself is part of God’s good creation and God’s image in us. So evil can have no sense, since sense itself is a good thing.”
3. “The whole Bible, indeed, can be read as the epic account of God’s plan and purpose to defeat evil and rid his whole creation of it forever.” This has been part of my own journey for a few years now, to get a better grasp on “the big picture” of God’s actions in history, rather than simply picking the Bible’s storyline apart into pieces based on whatever our culture decides is popular.
4. Commenting on Deuteronomy 7:7-8, Wright says, “God loved you because God loved you. Period.” This has been a huge part of my own acceptance of Reformed theology, that God loves people simply because God is love, not because we deserve to be loved. This, of course, does not negate the truth that every human being still bears God’s image (however distorted). But, what all of humanity deserves, for running in the opposite direction of God’s love, is the absence of God’s love – His wrath, separation from His love.
5. “To say that Jesus bore my sin on the cross must mean not only that he bore the worst that my sin could inflict on him, but also that he bore the consequences of what my sin would otherwise incur for me.” This is the simplest way that I have tried to explain the gospel to my boys. Of course, I hope to spend the rest of my life helping them to understand more than that, but this seems to be the essence – Jesus died for our sin so we don’t have to. He expands on these two typically juxtaposed ideas a lot more, but I will leave that for another post.
6. “The last days were launched by Jesus himself, and we have been living in them ever since.” It’s still such a confusing thing for me to hear people talking about “the end times” who have fallen into the deception of the Left Behind nonsense. Another unbiblical idea he attacks is the “rapture” (a word that is not in the Bible). The idea of Christ’s return or appearing is one we cannot avoid, but the idea of a secret rapture of souls floating up to heaven is completely absent from the Bible.
7. The last thing I will mention here is how the Bible itself speaks of heaven as a “holding place” for God’s people until the consummation, the return of Jesus. Heaven is not our “final destination.” Wright explains that “heaven is mentioned only as the place from which the Lord comes. It is not referred to at all as the place to which we go.” The language of the Bible about our eternal destination is, possibly surprisingly to many, the “new heaven and new earth” – this present earth redeemed. If we subscribe to an idea that God is going to sometime in the future destroy everything that he has made, then I truly believe we are saying that Satan and evil have the last word – they have won. “When God raised Jesus from the dead, he was also saying Yes to creation.” Creation is very good, and what we await is a new, redeemed creation.

Judges and Justice

Chris Wright, in his commentary on Deuteronomy, explains that the duty of Israel’s judges was to “administer the law of God” (16:18-17:13). He references Job (ch.29) as an “elder-judge” in his defense, to which some interesting things must be pointed out:

• Job was respected by the old and young (v.7-11);
• He “saved” the poor and the fatherless (v.12);
• He blessed the perishing, and delighted the widow (v.13);
• He “wore” righteousness and justice (v.14);
• He was eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, father to the needy (v.15-16); and
• He stopped injustice (v.17).

The judges were, in a sense, the “secular” authority established in Israel to ensure justice was done. But, what I think is interesting are the self-descriptions of Job, implying the kind of character that even a secular judge was expected to live out.

However, like all fair descriptions of the story of Israel, Wright concludes his commentary on this section: “Sadly, the history of the nation tells us that many prophetic words of condemnation were brought against the judges themselves, for their contempt of the Torah of God and their corruption of justice.”

Reflections on Ezekiel 3:4-7

And he said to me, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. For you are not sent to a people of foreign speech and a hard language, but to the house of Israel— not to many peoples of foreign speech and a hard language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to such, they would listen to you. But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart.”

This section of this chapter stands out to me in relation to the concept of “foreign missions.” I still vacillate in my thoughts of what the church’s global responsibility actually looks like (the fact of our responsibility is not in question, but rather the actual practice of it). But, what specifically resonates with me is the idea that Ezekiel was sent by God to God’s own people to speak His words to them. Ezekiel was himself a member of the covenant people of God, so his mission was not to a foreign land. As Chris Wright points out, “it would have been easier for Ezekiel to be a cross-cultural missionary than a prophet to his own people.”  Wright goes on, “It is still tragically true that in some parts of the world the challenge of God’s Word receives a better hearing among those who have never heard it before than among established churches who have grown hard and deaf in their resistance to the movements of God’s Spirit.” I think that today, especially in the Bible belt, what Matt Chandler says so often is true, that for the most part people have been inoculated to the gospel. They have heard so much about Jesus but do not really know Him at all.

This reality means that if we’re going to stay where we’ve been sent, then we’re responsible to deconstruct a lot of the myths about Jesus that don’t come from the Scriptures. If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone who doesn’t claim to follow Jesus about Him you’ve most likely been in this situation – where you’re asking the person what they think you mean by a certain word or idea, and what they think is actually not true, but rather some distortion of the truth. It’s definitely easier to just try to ignore the lies and go on with our comfortable Christian lives. Honestly, if we don’t know the difference between the truth and a lie anyway, and can’t articulate that difference, then why should we try? This, I believe, is a huge problem today.

I really think this is actually the fuel that drives a lot of people to want to leave our country and go to another to preach the gospel. What I’ve seen, more often than not, are those who have a deep passion for this, but while here they don’t believe they have a mission at all. In many ways, it’s a lot easier to love a person who you don’t really understand and don’t feel required to develop a long-term relationship with. Incarnating into a specific place takes a lot of hard work. But, I think it’s highly ironic that other countries are now sending missionaries over here – despite the predominant conservative myth that we live in a “Christian nation.” If this is the height of what a government run by Christian principles is supposed to look like, then I’m the last person who wants to be part of anything called a Christian nation.

I’ll conclude with another thought from Chris Wright: “The warning of Jesus still confronts our complacency and our privileged theology with the disturbing thought that there will be some who have never heard the gospel of the works of Jesus at all, but who will fare better in the final judgment than some who have heard but have refused to respond with faith and obedience.” God’s judgment always begins with those who claim to be His people.

With great privilege comes great responsibility.

Reflections on Ezekiel 1:26-28

Ezekiel is one of those books that just doesn’t sound too exciting. You don’t generally hear preachers quoting it, and you won’t find many t-shirts with memory verses from it. It was written in a very different culture and time than our own, so even approaching a book like this seems like a daunting and useless task. Who is this crazy guy? What does it mean? I’ve just begun my trek into this book, and I’m already seeing a lot that I think I’ve been missing out on by my own refusal to tread into mostly unknown territory.

What stands out most from chapter 1 is God’s glory. Ezekiel’s sees a vision of “the likeness of the glory of the Lord” (1:28). As Chris Wright explains, “The word essentially has to do with weight or substance. It portrays the sense of God’s majestic reality, the overwhelming power of his presence, the weight of His eternal Being.” What makes this vision so interesting is that it uses the language of “image” or “likeness” similar to that used in God’s creation of humanity in His image – to be His representatives on earth. This vision, therefore, is an anticipation of the incarnation of Yahweh. There is a lot of the same language used in Revelation 4, so obviously John was drawing upon this vision for His own vision of the throne.

A main question we must ask, then, is what is Ezekiel’s response to this glimpse of the glory of God? As in other places, Ezekiel says he fell on his face. This is not the god that most of us have created as a means to some futile end. This is not the god that is our buddy or our therapist. This is the infinite, sovereign, holy, transcendent God that is not to be trifled with. When we are in His presence, the only proper response is humility.

But, we also see that the God who is transcendent is also the God who is imminent. At this point in Israel’s history, God’s people had been exiled from their land and were now under the oppression of a pagan empire. It seemed that God was distant, silent, apathetic. This is the same picture of God we get from Qohelet in the book of Ecclesiastes. God doesn’t care, and He’s not fulfilling His promises. But, in a great reversal of their frustration and bitterness, God appears in the midst of their exile. God cannot be constrained by a temple or a plot of land (Acts 17:24). God is here.

I think most often our own experience of God is similar. We either don’t “feel” like He is present, or we live as if He doesn’t exist – we’re practical atheists. But, I think we can get some comfort from this preliminary vision. God doesn’t fit into the boxes we create for Him, and He doesn’t work in our schedule. God is holy, and God is here. If God were simply whatever we made Him out to be, He wouldn’t be a trustworthy God at all. He would simply be a reflection of our own sinful selves. If God’s actions were completely dependent upon our wishes, then He would simply be an actor rather than the divine playwright. That’s no God that I want to be in control of the universe.

Though, as we will soon see, God’s appearance to Israel through Ezekiel is not primarily to comfort or console, but rather to judge.