Creedal Mistakes

Therefore the Lord heard and was full of wrath; and a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also mounted against Israel, because they did not believe in God and did not trust in His salvation.   Psalm 78:21-22  NASB

Did not believe in God – I believe in God.  But that’s a mistake.  Why?  Because when I say, “I believe in God,” I use language that actually denies what believing really means in the Hebrew Bible.  I say the words (as most people do) as a cognitive affirmation of their truth.  It’s like answering a True or False question:  Does God Exist?  T or F.  The Apostle’s Creed put me on the wrong path centuries ago.  When I say it, I affirm that the statements are true (the T or F test).  That doesn’t mean I do anything about it.  It’s like saying, “I believe in Paris.”  Yes, there is a place in Texas called Paris, but that’s nothing more than a geographical fact.  I’m not moving there tomorrow.

In Hebrew, this phrase is כִּי לֹא הֶאֱמִינוּ, בֵּאלֹהִים (“because not they caused themselves to believe bĕ ʾĕlōhîm”).  Nothing about this phrase is ultimately cognitive.  Let me explain.  First, the verb.  אָמַן (ʾāman).  The Hiph’il tense is causative, that is, it brings something into being.  In this clause, the people fail to cause themselves to believe.  This is not a matter of lack of proof.  They had plenty of proof.  God manifested Himself on their behalf in dozens of ways, before leaving Egypt and during their time in the wilderness.  The problem was not the facts.  The problem was their emotional attachment to the past.  You can take the people out of Egypt but you can’t take Egypt out of the people.  To translate this as “believe” is unfortunate because in our world “believe” is a mental act.  But Israel didn’t fail because they refused to acknowledge what God had done.  They all “believed” He rescued them.  They all “believed” He provided manna and quail and water.  What they didn’t do is trust Him.  That’s the basic idea of ʾāman.  It’s not about the facts.  It’s about the emotional commitment to another.  It’s the decision to place my well-being into the exemplified character of another without really knowing how the facts will turn out.  Trust is not a function of facts.  Oh, there are undoubtedly facts preceding the decision to trust, but trust entails deciding a future action without future confirmation.  Trust is, “I’m going forward.  Let’s see what happens.”

Now let’s notice who they failed to trust.  ʾĕlōhîm.  Yes, we all know that this is the title for YHVH, but I think it’s important to note that the psalmist does not use God’s personal name.  The people failed to trust “GOD,” that is, the being who singularly occupies the highest position of the divine realm.  This is like saying, “I don’t trust the office of the President.”  It doesn’t matter who is in that office.  I’m saying that I don’t trust the structure of the government.  To not trust God is to reject the divine order of the universe.  It’s much more than simply rejecting YHVH, the God of Israel.  It’s saying that the whole creation is untrustworthy because its author can’t be trusted.  Amazingly, every fact of their past experience shouts out that the divine order can be trusted because it is under the sovereign control of a trustworthy God.  But these people still hang on to the Egyptian cosmology, a cosmology that is ultimately based on chaos.  That’s why they do not cause themselves to trust in ʾĕlōhîm.  They still fear the Egyptian chaos.  They think of themselves floating on the primal sea of chaos, and that world is ultimately untrustworthy.  You can take the people out of Egypt but you can’t take Egypt out of the people.

So what do we learn?  Ah, we don’t believe in Egyptian cosmology, do we?  We’re sophisticated, modern, informed.  We believe in Special Relativity and the Big Bang.  We have the facts.  Really?

Don’t we do precisely what the children of Israel did?  Don’t we fail to cause ourselves to trust in the divine order and the divine order-giver?  We run around in a panic about some virus.  We fret over the economy.  We are afraid to engage in community, the very thing that makes us human.  We still worship the god of chaos, doing our best to placate him so that we can survive.  Everywhere we look, we see human beings attempting to rescue themselves.  Salvation (the Hebrew word is yĕšûʿâ) isn’t “His” anymore.  It’s ours—and the failure will be enormous.

Topical Index:  ʾāman, trust, believe in, chaos, Egypt, failure, Psalm 78:21-22