What a loaded question. The atheist or agnostic would answer, “He is just a figment of the imagination”. Actually they would typically answer more pejoratively, but let’s not go there.
One of the most valid reasons for that answer lies in the answers they
would typically get from the religious community. Some see Him as vengeful,
intolerant, brutal and possibly, a God of war.
Most of reasonable society would
dismiss that as radical thinking, so let’s not go there either.
Others express it more than they say it, with gaudy, over-sentimentalized,
tasteless sepulchers, monuments, churches, touristy sites, where Jesus may have
walked or an angel may have appeared.
That kind of thing is so irrelevant to the
faith and meaningless to the God who chose a simple travelling supper as a more fitting memorial.
Sadly quite a few see Him as remote, distant, detached and uncaring,
largely because they see Him through the lens of their childhood take on
fathers.
Far too many just see Him as inconvenient.
Of course some also see Him as gentle and tenderhearted. That too has its
place but can be somewhat overplayed and sentimentalized.
Be quiet and let Him reply
Job challenged God and God told Him to be quiet as He explained, starting
with, “Where were you when I made … “, followed by a review of all that He did
make. The book says many things that science subsequently confirmed.
Jacob wrestled with “God”. The parentheses imply that it may have been
an angel, but it was still a proxy for God. When that struggle was done, God asked,
“who are you?”
He didn’t ask Jacob, “What’s your name?” He asked, “Who are you?” Yet
the respondent answered, “I am Jacob”, to which Jacob retorted, “… and what is
your name?” (Genesis 32).
Jacob’s name was given by his father when, by dint of a Shakespearean
nuance, his brother won the race by sticking out his hand to claim firstborn
status, even though Jacob arrived first.
From then on, Jacob struggled for acceptance from his father and had to
work around that roadblock by using grand deceptions. He bought his brother’s
birthright and then stole his blessing.
So, saying “I am Jacob”, carried a world of meaning that all who knew
him, took to mean “usurper, cheat, fraud”. Then God answered the unspoken
question and by His actions revealed who He is. Not in the grand terms
witnessed by Job, but in very personal terms.
In renaming Jacob and changing his status from a “lastborn, afterthought”
to the “firstborn of a nation”, with a new name, “Israel”, God assumed the role
of the father that Jacob never really had, because it was a father’s
prerogative to name and bless his sons.
Moses so wanted to ask God directly, “who are you?” Instead he
approached the matter with a bit of subtlety and tact, saying, “Whom shall I
say sent me?” God got the implication, but answered as obliquely. Tell them “I
am that I am sent you”. (Exodus 3).
Why did God do that? Because, over the preceding 40 years of wilderness
wandering God had adequately filled in every gap in Moses’ understanding of the
God that was initially a mystery to both him and the descendants of Jacob,
Israel.
What is this?
The etymology of the word, “manna”, the bread that fed the Jews for 40
years, was: “What is this?”
Initially the emphasis was on the object as in, “what
is this?”, a cynical questioning of
God as in “Is this it? Is this as good as it gets?”
It went through a few revolutions to become, “What is this?” That focused closer on the subject and ultimately
looked to God for answers, often in earnest, sometimes out of resentment, yet
always met with an implicit reply about the mysterious God of Israel.
Over my own Wilderness years I wavered in my concept of God. At times He
seemed so distant, so unreachable. At other times I felt His nearness. For
decades He remained pretty silent, especially on the burning issues of my life
and how to solve them.
At times I accused Him of many negative things. Yet what really kept me
going was that He remained intriguing, rational, non-judgmental, compassionate,
uplifting and there when I most needed Him.
He is the real deal
On one occasion I sensed His imminence and almost felt Him touch my arm
to say, without a hint of resentment or judgment, “I open doors that none will
shut. I close what no one will open and your life is not in the hands of
another. I will raise you up”.
Then a few days ago as I turned to Him again, but after a lot of
thoughts had distilled into my heart and mind like a noble wine, I found myself
sobbing the words that echo what Moses once got, “You are, who you are. You are
who you are”.
The God who went to astonishing lengths to ensure a new constitution,
founded on irrevocable promises , which give me such a redoubtable legal refuge
(Hebrews 6:18), to the point of
refusing to view the sacrifice of His son subjectively, stood before me - as He
is.
And what I got in that is the key to all prayer, namely that God is
100% the God described in the pages of scripture. He is faithful to countless
generations.
He is who He is ... therein lies our greatest hope
We may waver in our concept of Him. We may wrestle to get it. But He
never changes and when we get that, we will agree with what Moses got, “He is
who He is”.
The other vital key to prayer is in the reciprocal, in understanding God’s
question of us, which is not “what’s your name?” but “who are you?”
Whatever we were, is forgotten. Until we can answer in the context of
the cross, that what we are now is, is forgiven, accepted, empowered, embraced,
restored and approved as sons of the most high - we will stumble in our prayer
life.
I have more to say about that, but get this now: He is not what we
imagined Him to be, but all He promised to be. If He can go to such lengths to
guarantee our salvation, then believe that He is as true and real as the
scriptures describe Him to be.
(c) Peter Missing: bethelstone@gmail.com
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