Warning Label
In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Isaiah 6:1 NASB
Saw the Lord – The Bible should come with a warning label: “Reading this may be hazardous to your current state of self-image.” Of course, if it did I suppose that we would soon hear of class action suits filed against monotheist organizations blaming the teaching of the Bible for radical acts of service, giving and sacrifice. What happened to good ol’ self-interest? There is no doubt that the Bible is responsible for corrupting those “looking out for number one” values that the culture prizes so highly. That’s its purpose: to put self on the shelf. However, it seems to me that there is a good deal more to the idea of a dangerous God than we might want to allow.
Maybe we haven’t come to grips with just how dangerous God is. If we take His word seriously, if we stop toning it down to meet our cultural expectations, we discover something startling: God expects us to live an adventure that deliberately keeps us out of control. From the beginning to the end, the Bible is a high adventure story about God’s plans and purposes, not about our efforts. And throughout this story, God is a wild, unpredictable, dangerous hunter, constantly catching His creation off-guard, changing tactics and battle plans, turning the rules of engagement upside-down. God does the unexpected quite regularly. Just when we think we have Him figured out, He sidesteps our boxes and strikes out in a different direction. God often seems to bring us to the brink of disaster in order to reveal another aspect of His glory. He shows much less concern with the things that occupy first place in our thinking. He ignores our best efforts and our clearest insights. His ways are not our ways. And just in case we forget about the unbridgeable gap between the infinite Creator and the finite creation, He steps back once in awhile to let us have a peak at His true Being – and it scares us to death.
God is not like us. Intuitively, we know this. After all, we are mere creations. But we tend to operate under the sway of our Greek ancestors, subtly bending the logic so that God takes on the appearance and behavior of a super-human rather than the “wholly/holy other.” And that little mistake has huge implications. We slowly shift the radical nature of contact with God from a terrifying mystery to a gentle grandfather. We lose God’s transcendence. The loss of transcendence means that the adventure of a lifetime is reduced to about as much terror as a trip to Six Flags. It’s great for a moment, but it just isn’t the “real world.”
We are much better served to anchor God’s unthinkable mysteriousness as the foundation of our interaction with Him. With regard to transcendence, God isn’t like us at all. Not in the way He thinks, behaves, feels, plans, acts, remembers, observes, decides, determines or loves. He isn’t limited to our wildest imaginations. He is not captive to our greatest dreams. He is independent of any human control or the influence of any other entity. The only really accurate description that we can intelligently conclude about God is this: God is. And even that is pretty inaccurate since our frame of reference for “Being” is the puny expression of a limited language.
But before we throw up our hands in mystical despair and say, “God is the unknowable ineffable,” we are rescued by the Book. While we can never think our way to God, God has graciously chosen to reveal Himself to us—in ways that we can understand. And as long as we are careful not to strip that revelation of its power, we can discover something about this amazing God who chooses to express Himself. The dangerous God loves His creation and doesn’t want to be alone. God forgives dangerously. He forgives without respect to the sin. He doesn’t care where you’ve been after you arrive in His kingdom. But He is dangerous to be around. His ideas about reality cut right across our self-constructed world. For example, the most hated word in the world is obedience, but this is God’s word for “freedom.” Until you make yourself a slave to Him, you haven’t got a clue about the meaning of freedom.
So, there you have it. What we know about the nature of God has to come from Him. When we look at what He says about Himself, we find that the usual ways we think about things are always just a bit inadequate. God is always just outside our grasp. But He is always inviting us to come along for the ride. And what a ride it is!
Topical Index: God, ineffable, wholly other, Isaiah 6:1
……….. and when I have done so, I have made the transition from thinking wholly like a Greek to thinking holy like a Hebrew!
I am finally “getting it” Skip. Thank you so much for being patient and persistent with this Greek. TW is the most meaningful work and word I have ever read and will ever read, every day,………… except for one other.
TW is just one man’s journey out of darkness. Occasionally some light shines through. I am glad this one helped you. It helped me too.
Wow ‘ditto’ George Kraemer. TW is one of your best Skip! It just says it all about how HE is above and beyond anything we can think or know – HE is other! We just read Psalm 27 ( we read a Psalm every day of the year – been doing it for years. Each time it’s new!) My husband and I were struck by the last two verses as we begin a new season in our lives.
13 ‘I (we) would have fainted unless I (we) had believed to see the goodness of YHWH in the land of the living.
14 Hope in YHWH; be strong and He will make strong your (our) heart, yea hope in YHWH’
How awesome is our Elohim. Skip keep writing HE truly inspires you through your open and honest journey.
P.S. Am up to page 80 in ‘Crossing …’
Really powerful and interesting insight of just how our lives are so often like the Patriarchs – how ‘human’ they were – making decisions that often caused havoc! Yet HE used every decision for HIS purposes. Seeing my life in this story. It reminded of the saying about the beautiful Tapestry on the wall – how stunning and complete it is but, take it down and look at the back and you will see a crisis cross of threads and colors that does not look anything like the ‘right’ side……This is our (all of us) journey!
The Forgotten Factor
One more thing.. (not that is important or anything, but..)
~ And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.'”… (John 1.14)
When I Saw Him
~ Jesus said to him, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” (John 14.6,7)
Well, Carl, I don’t think we understood Him very well when we did see Him, and didn’t get along with Him very well, either…
How true, Laurita.. -as Isaiah rightly prophesied.. — like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted..
And yet, there is a remnant. Those who now “see HIm” as He is, and who would with great joy proclaim, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”
Love this TW. Made me think of another writer I used to like to read:
From “The Pure in Heart” By W.E. Sangster:
:Primitive man felt himself to be alone in a world in which he stood over against a threefold otherness: 1)Things, 2) other men, 3) Something or Someone high and eerie. It is with his awareness of this Something or Someone that we have to do, an our aim is to isolate, in particular, one element that we shall find there- the ‘germ’ of the Holy….in common use today Holiness means “absolutely good”, but that is use is derived. If the word originally included the seed idea of moral perfection (and that would be debated) it was not the only element and it was not the chief. Another was more primitive and prominent. Otto felt the need of a new name ‘numen’….and if a man has no sense of the ‘numinous’ there is nothing much he can do about it. Only God can open the eyes of the blind.
It is in this dim awareness in the primitive mind of man we who understand the origins of the holy must work. Even for the ‘Christian’, to begin with the Bible is to begin to late. Passing tremendum first, through his prism, Otto distinguished three elements of it: The elements of awefulness, of overpoweringness and of energy. There is common agreement that primitive man knew an unearthly dread. It was no ordinary dread. It was not fear of other men; not even hosts of other men; nor of wild beast. It was different in kind. It was shuddering and eerie and awe-ful…” Quoting Tersteengen, “A god comprehended is no god.”
Reading this I am wondering if you read any of John Eldgredge books? I have read most of them. His most sold is “Wild at Heart”. I especially like “the Sacred Romance”.
See you April 1 and 2 !
Oh yes what a ride it is, we are the freedom riders!
Yes, this TW definitely resonates with me. A very timely reminder for us all, and especially for those who feel “responsible” for what is happening around us. Obedience moves me toward a peaceful heart.
Thank you, Skip.
“Uncertainty is reality, embrace it.”