The God of Our Own Image
“And in the greatness of Your excellence You overthrow those who rise up against You; You send forth Your burning anger, and it consumes them as chaff.” Exodus 15:7 NASB
Burning anger– God is mad! Watch out! That’s what Moses is talking about in this verse. The Hebrew verb is ḥārâ, “to burn (of anger).” The verb is always used to describe the point where anger enflames. The God of Israel feels intense emotion. Unfortunately, the God of Christianity has been neutered.
Philip Fisher wrote a book about passions and emotions. In that book, he makes the point that modern views of emotions are governed by something like Aristotle’s “golden mean.” As moderns we have been taught to believe that emotions are meant to be moderate. We view emotional extremes as dysfunctional, demonstrations of a lack of personal control. Fisher points out that in ancient thought passions are always extreme. They “drive out every other form of attention or state of being.”[1] The ancient view sees a person who is consumed with a passion. The modern view is radically different, postulating the “prudential self, which weighs the near and long-term future, balances the full range of desires and obligations, and integrates the many inclinations into the actions of any one moment.”[2] If we read the Bible according to the modern view of emotions, we will have a difficult time understanding the character of God. The God of the Tanakh is uncontrolled, often angry and seemingly imbalanced. For this reason, He commits mass murder, changes His mind about promises and demands unthinking obedience. Modern readers reject such a God, not because they understand the ancient world of passions but because they have unconsciously adopted Aristotle’s view. They look for a god in their own image, and not finding such a god in the Bible, conclude that the God of the Bible is the product of immature ancient tribal thought. Western theologians, influenced by the Aristotelian model, reconcile biblical language about passions by categorizing these verses as anthropomorphic, that is, they aren’t really about God’s actual character (which is Greek), they are rather human expressions projected onto God in order for us to relate to Him. Of course, the Bible never says this. It is ancient literature. When we convert it into our paradigms, we strip it from the worldview of its authors. Once again, Western Greek philosophy becomes the standard.
Let’s take an example. If you click here you can read an explanation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by the apologists Dave Miller and Kyle Butt. Much of what they write is true, but notice that when it comes to absolving God of His culpability in the action of hardening Pharaoh’s heart, they appeal to typical Thomistic view of God’s attributes, that is, “One Who is infinite in all of His attributes (including justice, fairness, and impartiality).”[3] Because such a God “God cannot be just, while unjustly rejecting some people. God cannot be God, and yet conduct Himself in an ungodly manner”[4] the account in the text must be read in such a way as to eliminate God’s culpability, even though, as the authors admit, God is sovereign over everything. Their solution is that the language is idiomatic and/or metonymy. In other words, it really doesn’t mean what it says. It can’t really mean that God is the active agent in Pharaoh’s refusal because that kind of God doesn’t fit the paradigm. The text must mean something else. Right?
What do we learn from this analysis? First, we discover how much our basic assumptions about emotions influence our readings of the Bible without our conscious awareness. We are the victims of a paradigm, and paradigms are rarely obvious. If we want to read the Bible as it was written, we first need to know ourselves, how we imagine the world according to ourassumptions.
Second, we discover that the God of the Bible is described in categories that are not like ours. We discover that the God of the Bible is far more volatile, far more excitable, far more passionate than the God of our Western world. He is a God of extremes, despite the fact that this might make us uncomfortable. He isn’t the God of Aristotle and Aquinas, a self-contained, transcendent force incapable of disrupting emotion. If we want to know Him and worship Him, we must also become passionate, consumed with His holiness, undisciplined in His love, His character and His outrage. If we serve the truly biblical God, we will appear to be swept away with passion, and probably be rejected by our well-intentioned Greek-minded acquaintances.
Theology embraces the doctrine of impassibility, primarily because it is the logical concomitant of immutability. Both of these ideas describe a God you will never meet in the Bible. The God of the Bible is “out of control.” But then, control was never His objective. Now you and I need to determine if we are serving the God of the Bible or a god of our own making.
(We’ll have a lot more to say about this paradigm shift in the future)
Topical Index: passion, emotion, David Fisher, burning anger, ḥārâ,Exodus 15:7
[1]David Fisher, The Vehement Passions, p. 43.
[3]http://apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=11&article=1205
Skip is out standing in the middle of his field again.
If we were created to be symbionts with God: if the wilderness sanctuary pattern given to Moses was, in fact, not only an entire typology of Christ, but also of what we were originally intended to be: a temple for God to dwell “among us” in, then the question becomes which is the chicken or the egg? Is He passionate because He is like us, or are we so because we are patterned after Him? Do our passionate possibilities give us the capacity to be like God, or do they make us essentially DIFFERENT from Him? This is not a trivial subject! Are the Greeks right in that passions limit us to being ‘merely human’; defective, even, but certainly in the way of becoming like God, or are they the WAY we have been given to become like Him? If so, then aren’t our emotions and passions things that need to be redeemed and transformed and rededicated to the service of our great (passionate) Pattern?
Passions are infective: it is impossible, except perhaps for psychopaths, to be around someone in the throes of passion, whether it be joy or wrath, and not be similarly moved. It takes a very strong emotion, in fact, to override the emotional vibes of someone else. I think of the passion of Christ, and of the intensely evil hatred that that crowd had to have been channeling to overcome their identification with that innocent Victim. Otherwise, surely their “bowels would have been moved with comPASSION” for Him: with identification WITH Him, and they would not have been able to separate themselves enough from Him to kill Him. I think passion is the medium we have to connect – to resonate on the same frequency – with others. Love is a passion, too!
Divine love is like a many faceted diamond and passion is definitely one facet but unlike His passion ours need to be redeemed & transformed. It takes intense heat & pressure to produce a diamond and that consuming fire destroys & purifies at the same time. But did Jesus not say to be perfect as is our Father in heaven and when perfection cometh, the imperfect disappears? I do not know that perfect passion of Christ but I do believe that God gave Julian of Norwich a revelation of this passion because she goes on to say, “For I saw clearly that where our Lord appears, there peace is established so that that wrath has no more place. And I saw no manner of wrath in God…” In her writings on the Revelation of Divine Love after the Lord showed her sin is necessary but all shall be well, she saw they held a marvelous secret hid in God, this hidden dynamism which is at work already and by which all manner of thing shall be well..I pray to have a wise heart centred on this hope like her.
In reflecting on this excellent post by Skip I cannot help but think of how the political process seems to cater to the bland and non-offensive as well. It is very important to keep all sides happy and content, in order to get elected, then to stay in power. Passion is seen as stridency with danger lurking. Meanwhile the “frog” quietly boils as the temperature increases in the pot. One often hears of the need for “pivot” after a primary cycle has been completed. Strong points of view get curtailed in a general election. Maybe this is part of the reason why the Father God of Israel, who sent the Messiah, gets eclipsed by what is sometimes seen as meek and mild Jesus who always turns the other cheek. His love is seen as all inclusive and certainly non-discriminatory by many Christians. It is only when a society is under extreme threat and pressure that “passion” and strong leadership is appreciated and respected. In the evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940 Churchill ordered that the wounded be left behind. They would take up too much space on the ships. Only able-bodied men were to be rescued. Such leadership gets rejected outright during peacetime. The God of Israel has “burning anger”. Incidentally so does the Messiah as revealed in Revelation.
There is a time and a season for everything.
yesterday, in church over the mike, I prayed for children that had lost their mother . Actually I described the situation and became overcome – in my voice – with the feeling of compassion. My wife called it travail, accurately, but it is the closest we come to expressing extreme emotion in the church – and usually only in the prayer closet. Much to our loss, for I feel we also miss the joy and wonderful love of the father. Thanks Skip for putting this in perspective.
One has to wonder, not so much about the reality of these things, but as to the why of these things. If a people display the characteristics of the god they worship, why not present a god that’s manageable. It’s interesting to observe that the distinction presented in contrasting the God of the “old testament” with the God of the “new testament” is in direct alignment with Constantine and his nefarious cohorts. Not that Constantine initiated this idea, but he was certainly the vehicle used to codify it.
Enter in Christianity as a state sponsored religion, the caveat being that the god of this religion is tolerant, loving to all and most of all temperate in his dealings with others. How do you think the people of a neutered god conduct themselves? Good for the state, not so much for those who desire to be free indeed.
I’ve got to admit that I’m impressed with the brilliance of this maneuver. Consider all the false dichotomies it instantly puts in place as well as solving a multitude of societal issues insofar as the state is concerned. But, it has nothing to do with the God of the Hebrew scriptures, or His Son, and that’s the problem.
He burns up His enemies- the enemies of our souls! Unless you have enemies that are not His enemies? That is when God seems neutered. When you continually point to a certain people group as the problem, you are being divisive. You need a paradigm shift if you believe God is burning with anger towards you. The closer you get to Him the more evident His great Love and tender mercy, the kindness of a Father towards His only Son. From the base of Mt Sinai He is scary but on Mt Zion-you get a new attitude.
This is the good news of the kingdom, let’s HOPE and see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the Living!!
The cry goes out from a heart on fire! Shall we just have a jolly good rampage and over turn the tables tomorrow? Oh I must check my diary. Perhaps next month on the 1st Tuesday after the ladies morning tea. Goodness we are going to be radical for our King!.
Perfect freedom to act IS our love perfected. We just don’t love perfectly & fear our Master as He desires. And when our fears’ aren’t His we practice avoiding. So we look toward that ‘other tree’ to lead us, the tree that bends to our desires for comfort & supposed consequential simplicity.
The result is losing a God given immediacy & potency to create His Life in us & through us. We are all well versed in ‘timing out’ the Spirit at work in us. Carefully extracting ourselves from whole-hearted commitment as we turn away to manage our own fears.
To cook this cake a fire is needed & a fire means something needs be to get burned.
Whoever said God has to be rational from our perspective?
Perhaps those without Faith….
Self control is NOT suppression of reality, it is enhancing your ability to respond to reality with reality & sometimes that is not at all ‘appropriate for others satisfactions’ but empowering none the less., …whether it is overturning the tables or silence in the face of accusal or filling the water jars with wine.
Be blessed. FJ
F J I am blessed! You blessed me! Understatement of the year: “We are all well versed in ‘timing out’ the Spirit at work in us.” He will work everywhere He is not hindered. He never shuts Himself out: the door handles are all on the inside, too.
In the Miller/Butt article, the notes list a link to an online article by Kendall Hobbs. Its link was 404 (unavailable). The article can be found at this correct link:
https://infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/hobbs.html
or by searching for his name and the article title: Hobbs, Kendall (2003), “Why I Am No Longer a Christian: Ruminations on a Spiritual Journey out of and into the Material World
Leslee thank you for the link. A very lengthy essay which makes interesting statements that also have alternative views. I liked the analog of Water and the Hebrew principle of faith. Hearing something and doing something means nothing in themselves. But when united for an intent the result is amazing and yes miraculous…
Well my second cycle of 30 000 days is going just fine… God provides we can just use.