I have been asked to write down my thoughts on the subject of God after a conversation I had with my daughter. We talked for over 2 hours and I seriously doubt I can replicate the whole conversation, but I will try to cover some of the points that were interesting to her.
We were speaking of relationship to God, judgement within the Church, loosely quoted scripture and the Big Picture. We also touched on the difference between men and women in relationships in general and how that carries over into our relationship with God and how our very own expectations can get in the way of that relationship.
The first thing that comes to mind is that between the Old and New Testament God was silent. I believe that that was a total of 400 years. The Jews, chosen by God, had been in constant communication with God through the prophets, priests and kings. The last word they had was that the Messiah was coming.............then the silence began. I would call that a "killer" move on God's part. I have done all these things for you, called you out, chosen you, preserved you, protected you and shown you how much I love you................in other words, I have waited for you. Now you wait for me.
This to me is an example of the Big Picture. As a Jew you could either expect God to do what he always did in the past and when he didn't you could question Him or you could study what he was doing in the past, where he was going with all this and you could trust that because he always did what he said he was going to do, that he would continue operating in that vein. Even if it took 400 years.
I believe that this is what makes a believer a believer. They believe. They don't need signs and wonders..............they know God. They have spent time investigating, maybe even testing the character of God and seen that He is true. He never changes, He is always the same. Job demonstrates this. That is why God allowed Him to be tested, because to Job it wasn't about what God does, it was about Who God is. Job knew God, he knew that God was good, he knew that he was a part of the Big Picture and he never questioned what was going on even when it was as painful as it was. His only question was, what is the Big Picture here? He never cursed God because his perspective didn't allow for that! To curse God Job would have had to put aside all his convictions and all his knowledge of the character of God, he would have in essence had to lie to himself. It was impossible for him to do this and that is why God allowed Satan to test him.
As individuals and individual believers we pass through a myriad of experiences in a lifetime. We are formed by our upbringing, genetics and outside influences. We see life through this lense and make decisions and judgements accordingly. This is not wrong, this is life and God knows it! He made us this way and he put us here. Thus in my mind therein lies the reason. God is interested in a relationship, He wants you to want Him, just as we all long for this sense of belonging. He wants to meet you on common ground and that common ground is Love! Ask yourself what love is. Is it a fuzzy feeling? Is it uncontrollable urges? In my opinion love is commitment, putting someone else's needs before your own. That is what God wants for you and ultimately what you want for Him.
To recap: Relationship! God loves you, He wants you for Himself, He is committed to you, He knows you, He accepts you and He does not Judge you! Remember He put you in your skin, your family, and your community. He is not unaware of who you are.
The only responsibility we have, in my opinion, as Christians is know Who God is. It is in knowing Him that we can love Him. It is in knowing Him that we can rest securely in our faith. Write a research paper on God. Pick up the Old Testament and find out what kind of Person He is, how does he handle stuff, how does he feel about humanity, what was He like in the beginning and how does that compare to the end. Is He a liar, is He fair, how does He demonstrate His love. Try to be as objective as possible. We all have some Christian influences in our lives...........try to forget everything we learned, everything we heard, good and bad, try to see this as if for the very first time.
As far as judgement within the Church, well I don't really want to spend much time on that. I don't think that it is a "Christian" anomaly. Humans tend to practice this behavior whenever they form groups. A group of neo-Nazis judge non-whites, a group of environmentalists will judge industrialists, a group of Republicans judge Democrats, a group of farmers judge city dwellers and so on. This is inherent in our nature. Whenever a group of people get together they begin to seek out a leader and then move in flock formation. Uniformity creeps in and 'Voila" you have a Club! No big surprise there. The Church is not immune because it is made up of people. In other words don't be surprised when you are judged within the Church, you would be judged elsewhere too. Unfortunately this reflects back on God because many people have made Him the Villain.
As far as dealing with loosely quoted Scripture, I believe that the only way you'll be prepared for that coming at you is to know it yourself. Scripture is often quoted out of context and for all intents and purposes to make the one quoting it feel more important than the one being quoted to! This is not what scripture is for, it is designed to reveal the character of God to the believer so that we can boldly stand before Him. It is to help us with life's questions, to give us instruction so that we can attain wisdom.(not knowledge) And it is inspired which causes me to regard it highly. The Holy Spirit, according to Scripture itself, breathed the words which we read and we need to be careful with how we dole it out to others. This reminds me of how Jesus said, Don't worry about the inconsistencies of your neighbor until you have taken care of you own!
Relationship with God is personal. It is between you and Him. It is not something that you can make another person experience and it is not experienced in the same way as another person's relationship with God. We as finite creations have a tendency to anticipate what something will be like. We anticipate the movie to be great after hearing so much about it, our expectations rise and after having seen it we are often disappointed. Why would that be any different that what we hear about other people's relationship with God. We can only be disappointed if we have expectations. Without expectations we can live in complete freedom.
Jesus stated the His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, part of the Trinity, God Himself. God we know, from scripture, is truth, love, and unchanging. If these things are true about God and Jesus is telling us the truth, why are we having such a hard time? Why does it feel difficult? Why are we not experiencing freedom?
I would say that our expectations are keeping us from enjoying a real relationship with God. We need to take ourselves a few steps back...........as far as it takes to have an unadulterated look at God. We need a clean slate, need to imagine meeting Him as a person for the first time, we need to spend time getting to know Him, we need to put out of our minds all the things we may have learned as Christians and read scripture with a thirsty mind. And then we need to make a decision. Is Jesus Christ the Son of God? Did he sacrifice his life for my sin? Does he live? Is he coming back? And if the answer is yes then we need to know that we now walk in truth. That is all that matters.
God is not complicated. He has shown us all facets of His nature. He has been transparent telling us what happened in the beginning, where we are now and what will happen in the end. It doesn't get much simpler than that. He is not out to trick us, own us, abuse us, use us, abandon us or anything else like that. These are things we do to each other. God is not us He is divine and has saved us from ourselves.
I guess what I am trying to say is that being a Christian is not a "spiritual" affair. It is an acknowledgement of what is true. C.S. Lewis wrote of his conversion to Christianity and titled it "Surprised by Joy", and that was the sum of his expectations. He continued living his life although with a renewed sense of who he was in Christ and everything else was a bonus.
God is good isn't that enough?
