Friday, March 29, 2013

Have you gotten it together yet? HOPEFULLY NOT.


I haven't posted in a few days, because I've been struggling with the god of the Old Testament.  For years, I didn't really worry that I didn't understand the god of the OT--I simply had "faith."  Now, like Bono, as I try to understand the god of the OT, Jesus is beautiful, but the god of the OT is frightening and incomprehensible.  That is --until today.  What if the authors of the OT(or at least most of them) misunderstood God?  What if God didn't send Jesus only to set the universe right, but also to reflect His true character?  What if God sent Jesus to set straight any misunderstanding that some of the OT authors had about God?

As a preface to what I'm about to say, there are many compelling views of God in the OT as a god of "grace."  The Book of Genesis contains account, after account, of God's grace towards man.  Yet, the OT also contains accounts that seem incompatible with a God of "grace."  (By the way, God's grace is only truly revealed when we understand that His standard is perfection.  God is perfect, so in order to come into His presence, we must be perfect.  That is where Christ's work on the Cross comes in.)  What about God telling Abraham to kill Isaac?  Or telling the Jews to take the Promised Land by genocide?

If we believe that we have to "get it together" to come to God, then we might believe that God would ask us to sacrifice our son.  Then, when we believe that we have gotten it together, we think that God will kill our enemies just as the Jews believed.  When we have it together, then we are better than others--we are "chosen" in the wrong sense of election.  In the past, I believed both of these things.  I believed that I needed to make sacrifices (to get it together) to come to God.  Because of this belief, I abandoned God for many years.  Then, when I had gotten married and had a good job, I thought I had gotten it together.

Yet, in having it together, I thought that God wanted me to bring my wife and family in line with my view on almost everything--just as the Jews wanted their enemies to join up with them or be killed.  [Some Christians even think that God wanted the Jews to eradicate their enemies, so there would be no intermarriage.  If you really believe in original sin (that we are all fallen), this seems unlikely.  However, maybe it was God's divine judgment.  I just don't think this would be consistent with Jesus' teachings.]  Trying to "have it together" and/or thinking that I "had it together" was simply profoundly incorrect thinking.  This thinking stemmed from a profoundly incorrect view of God.  Then, I learned the true character of Jesus.

Jesus was a friend of sinners.  He was a friend to those who did not "have it together."  As I began to understand this, it became okay for me not to have it together.  As I became less conscious of "taking care of business" (as Elvis would say), I was able to focus more on what Jesus had done for me, than what I was doing for Jesus.  Now, I think it is patently absurd to think that God would tell Abraham to kill Isaac or to tell the Jews to kill their enemies.  The Abraham/Isaac story is, however, an amazing reflection of God if read to show that God, unlike the gods of neighboring tribes, did not desire sacrifice, particularly human sacrifice.  God was showing His true character to Abraham.  Insofar as genocide, the Jews thought it was okay to kill others to achieve their goals.  This is why so much of what America is doing in the Middle East is wrong.  To the extent that we are murdering people to preserve our access to oil, we are placing our interests above those of other people.
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At the end of the day, take comfort in the fact that we don't have to "get it together."  PZ tells the story of a pastor friend--Keith Miller--who, after preaching that we are saved solely by grace, was approached by a woman who said the following:  "Pastor, what you say about Jesus is compelling.  However, I am having an affair with a married man.  I meet him each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, and I can't give it up."  Keith then asked himself whether he truly believed what he had preached.  Then, he said: "That's okay.  Let's not deal with that today.  Just come to Jesus.  Everything else will take care of itself."  What a Savior!  Praise God!