Don’t Have All the Answers, Week 6 Day 1, Numbers 10-11

Don’t Have All the Answers, Week 6 Day 1, Numbers 10-11

Not sure how inspirational or instructional or whatever today’s blog will be.  I know that I’ve written about Moses being friends with God.  I know I’ve written about a God that takes a man who was wanted for homicide and couldn’t speak well and turned him into the leader of a nation.  But there’s side to this God in the Old Testament. 

That God is the angry God that you don’t want to make angry.  That God is a God that will take the first born of Egypt.  That God I don’t understand so well.  That God isn’t the kind of God that I could see as being my friend.  And so I’m torn.

Yeah, the people of Israel had a short memory.  I seriously doubt that they ate fish in Egypt at no cost – also cucumbers, melons, leek, onions and garlic.  They were slaves in Egypt.  And their masters either gave them food of questionable quality and quantity, or they had to scrape and scrounge for their food.   But God seems vindictive to me when He says they will eat meat until it comes out of their nostrils, until they are sick of it.

I can reconcile a lot of things about God, but not all of it.  Sometimes God just seems too hard, too angry, too vengeful.  And I don’t have an answer for that.

There is this tension that exists in my faith, a tension between the God that I know and love, and the God who I have trouble understanding.

So the question is, “Why believe?  Why put your trust in a God that if He really does exist at all, then He’s really not a nice guy?  I’ve got a couple of reasons.  These won’t answer all of anyone’s questions, especially mine.  But they give some solid ground in which my faith can remain rooted.

First, I think most of us don’t realize how much we live by faith, Christian or not.  I get in my car and I assume that it’s going to work.  Most of the time my faith in my car works out pretty well.  Occasionally, that faith lets me down.  It did twice last month with unexpected car repairs.  We trust that the people that give us your news on which we form our opinions are impartial.  But sometimes, if we can step back, that bias is shockingly apparent.  And that’s true regardless of where your get your news and what your political views might be.  We think science is unbiased.  But again, most scientists have some preconceived beliefs and assumptions.  And they all get paid by someone.  And that someone normally has a view point that they want validated.  And that’s true of all scientists out there.  The really good ones are aware of their bias and do their best to take it into account.  But it’s still there.

My point is that we all live by faith.  The question isn’t if we have faith.  The question is, where do you place your faith?  In what do you put your faith? 

Second, because I view God as my friend I sometimes forget that He isn’t some guy I happen to know.  He is God.  I AM WHO I AM.  It’s like some girl or the guy on the street as a lunch time friend with Bill Gates, only orders of magnitude more.  This analogy is incredibly poor.  Because Bill Gates for all his success, all his wealth, all the people he knows, is still just a guy.  But God ain’t just some guy.  God is God. 

God doesn’t have to match the picture that I have in my mind about how I think He should be.  But I don’t get to create the God that I want.  He created me, not the other way around.  When I start trying to recreate Him in the image that I want Him to be, that’s creating a false God.  And worshiping a false god is one of the things that God really doesn’t want us to do.  “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2-3)  That’s true whether it’s the world’s false God or one that I’ve created myself in my heart and mind.  Those other gods would include the false image that I created of Him in my own mind.  And the real God won’t always meet the image of Him that I’ve built in my heart and mind.

If God and I are friends, that is strictly His doing.  And if I can come into His presence His grace is the only thing that allows me to approach. And if I can love Him, that is because He first loved me.  But the reality is that I can never completely understand Him.   Because He is God and I am not.  Think I have a small sense of how Job might have felt at the end of the Book that bears his name.  “I am God and you are not.”  “I AM WHO I AM.”

Some times that doesn’t seem like much of an answer.  I’m sorry about that.  But when I look at these kinds of questions this is the best that I can do.  And even though my faith is based on God, His Word and His working in my life, sometimes faith is isn’t about knowing.  Sometimes it is about trusting.  It’s trust based on history.  It’s trust based on experience.  But it’s still trust none the less.

God, I struggle with understanding You.  Most of the time I can see Your compassion, Your mercy, Your love.  But sometimes You seem like a very hard God.  I want you to be the God that I envision.  I want You to be the God that I have created in my own mind and my own heart.  And I think that You’ve failed when You don’t live up to that image I’ve created.  But that’s not who You are.  You are a God of great love.  You’re also a God of great anger.  You are a God of great forgiveness.  But You’re also a God of judgment. Without judgment first there can’t be any forgiveness.  And while You’re love and grace towards me shields me from that anger, that judgment, it’s still a part of who You are.  Help me to accept that.  Help me to accept You, especially when You’re not always the God that I really want You to be.  Amen

Leonard