"Humungus" is our God

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – Jesus in John.

Were these just hollow words? Sometimes I feel like they are.

Melissa and I were looking at an email from one of her young friends: “Do you think, and I know this seems crazy, that the Aztec calendar is right and the world is going to end in Dec. 21, 2012? I mean, I know that I’m safe and will go to be with Jesus if I believe in him. The trouble is I’m not sure I believe in him. My mom says I shouldn’t worry, that God grants belief on his timing and not mine. I’m just not sure that I believe in heaven and will go to hell. I like believe in George Washington as someone in history, but when it comes to Jesus it’s so hard for me to believe. Anyways, let me know what I should do…”

Her theology sounded all too familiar as I read. (Other than the Aztec stuff, which has never really bothered me. Maybe it should, it means we’ll miss Christmas next year!) While humorous, I’ve wrestled with the exact same fear. And still do.
But the truth is my fear has begun to pale as I’ve focused on some key questions that unearth my faulty understanding about all this faith stuff. First, what is belief anyways? And second, how big is God?

When I look at these questions in light of scripture (at least I think it’s in light of scripture) some things begin to go click in my brain. Is belief something I produce or is it something that God produces? The more I read my bible the more I “believe” that belief and faith are things that God grants. And my salvation is not something that rests on the strength of my faith, it rests in the strength of God. Period.

I think the big reason we all focus on our faith, or lack of faith, is that we have no idea how sinful we really are. We have no idea the rescue mission that Christ willingly took on in his life and cross. We have no idea how faithless we really are. If we knew that we were utterly faithless, we would be more surprised by any response in our hearts drawing us towards God. I believe that faith as God produced (or created) longing is a gift, not a response of our autonomous (big word alert) wills. And I believe that the girl above is expressing belief even in her questions.

Second, how big is God really? Is he big enough to understand our lack of belief? Is he big enough to atone for even that? Do we go this far in our belief and he meets us here? Or is this the wrong formula altogether?

I think it’s the wrong formula. God is HUGE! God’s work is thorough and complete. It goes all the way to the bottom of our depravity and fills us all the way to the top with His perfect right standing. Our faith is a magnetic response, longing and hope in Him which he produces. We can’t imagine the depth of our faithlessness but if we did we’d be slack-jawed at the work of God, saving us rebels, and perhaps we’d then have more faith.

And isn’t that just it? We don’t “believe” that we are that bad off. We “believe” that we can “respond” to God. We don’t “believe” that we were enslaved to our lusts. We don’t “believe” that God’s grace could cover or take care of our lack of belief.

But somewhere deep down we all know don’t we? We all know how faithless we really are. But we cover this up because it’s just too painful. We cover it up because we see it as unspiritual and even untrusting.

NO! Jesus said “I am the light of the world.” If we are to believe we need to begin to suspect our beliefs about God and ourselves. Maybe then we wouldn’t worry so much about the role we play and just stand back in amazement at what God has done. Jaws should hit the floor!

Believe in a big God who paid the biggest cost, to gain the biggest victory. Forget your lack of belief and just look at this God. And if you can’t see it by looking at the cross, just pinch yourself and look at the world around you.
You are breathing. Are you breathing because you believe enough? Trees are growing. Are they growing because you believe enough? The world is revolving and rotating around the sun billions of light-years from other galaxies.

Bigness. “Humungus” is our God.

And we think that part of our faith should rest on our shoulders. Call me a Calvinist, but something in that just seems really, really backwards.

God the Baffling

"The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation." - God describing himself to Moses.

God doesn't seem to cohere sometimes. He's a little baffling and frustrating.

On the one side he's compassionate and forgiving and on the other he has storehouses of wrath towards sin. I simply have no idea when it comes to writing about God. Yet like the fool I am, I write on...

But God does cohere. His character is perfect and the picture Moses got when God said the words above was one of consistency.

The Gospel as "Good News" compels us to seek after God, not only because of his compassion but also because of his wrath. We need a God who HATES sin. We need a God who judges. We need a God "who will by no means clear the guilty."

It would and is so much easier to embrace God as a warm and fuzzy Santa Claus in the sky: A God who loves all, welcomes all and overlooks sin. A God who comes to us in many shapes, in many forms and in diverse religions and understandings. A God who doesn't descriminate. A God who doesn't care too much about creed and theology (God-study) and just wants everyone to get along.

We all are familiar with this God. And if I'm honest with myself, for some strange reason, I sometimes wish this was God. He'd be a lot easier to box up and put under my bed at night. He'd be a lot easier to explain to friends. He'd be a lot more fun at parties...

But in scripture God is both merciful and wrathful. He is a God who loves mankind and who thoroughly hates sin. I see this most clearly with Christ on the cross, God bearing on himself his wrath towards the guilty. A God driven by both mercy and wrath - two sides of his glory. A consistent God.

As I've written about before, a pluralistic God doesn't offer us much. Really all he offers at bottom are warm fuzzies and delusion. Our God, the LORD, who describes himself to Moses, is a God who deals in Reality.

This God both forgives and judges. That is the reason he can rescue. Without judgement of sin, I would still be enslaved. And without his forgiveness, I'd have been vaporized.

So I guess I'm writing all this down to see it in black and white. To try and better understand not "my God" but the LORD. For the longest time he's baffled me. And if he quits baffling me, I'll probably not be seeking the LORD. But writing helps me untangle me so I can better see God, I think...

Even as I express what I've heard described as "the kiss," God's mercy and judgement meeting at the Cross, I have to be careful. For I have no idea about mercy, and I have no idea about wrath. In honesty, I only have the faintest understanding of what went down on the Cross.

And if I'm really honest ("Just pull the splinter out Philip!"), I feel pretty smug about my profound insights in this post. But just hit me with "dashing babies against rocks" and see how smug I am.

My guess is God is confusing because we are confused. God seems inconsistent because we are inconsistent. The reason for such great issues as "the problem of evil" lies not with God's inconsistency but with ours.

Once again I can hear the words echoing in my head - the Jewish "Shema" or "Hear" prayer: "Hear Oh Israel, the LORD, the LORD our God is one." It follows that I am not.

"Gravity"

"Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it." - Jacob after his famous dream.

How often do I stop and recognize God? In the rich sounding potato-chip crunch of a leaf underfoot or the vibrant green hues of spring awakenings, do I truly marvel at God's creation?

I was reminded of these questions while reading Voskamp this morning. And wow, how something does stir in my passions to recognize God in his creation!

She went on to describe how the root word for God's glory is "Kavod," which stems from the same word that means weight. God's weight is in all of his natural world. "The whole world is full of his glory." The whole world is weighted down by God.

Just as Jacob awoke to a recognition of his own cluelessness to God's presence, perhaps I too am clueless to God's weight in the world. The clean smell of air after a spring rain, the rich combination of warm breezes and misting rain. He's here. He's in this place. And this place is weighted down by God.

One of my favorite things to do is what I've termed "Gravity." Maybe it is some deep psychological need I have to feel permanent, but I'll often ask Melissa to lay down on top of me, dispersing her weight over my entire body. I don't know why but the weight soothes my anxieties and fears, its pressure on my lungs forces me to slow down, and I feel secure, anchored. Strange I know, but there's something about being pressed upon by goodness, or in my case gently flattened by one I love (Melissa's way too light for really good Gravity), that speaks of glory. Surely God is in Gravity.

Life doesn't require that we slow down. But God-life does. We are such a furious hurry-riddled, helter-skelter and gruesome-pictures-of-decapitated-chickenes-running-into-stuff-because-someone-thought-this-would-make-a-good-analogy kind of people aren't we. Even those of us who, when faced with the onslaught of evil that is our day, groan, roll over and hug our pillow in shivering terror, are in the grip of something else: weightlessness.

Of course, as with anything ever written of any substance, greedy old CS Lewis got to it first in "The Weight of Glory." And also as with anything ever written of any profound substance, I have stored it somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, the part that's always taking recesses. So go ahead and read "The Weight of Glory" and insert your own profound thoughts here.

But as I contemplate my day, with the stupid hurly-burly-want-to-bang-my-head-against-stuff (I-really-like-dashes-today) kind of things I have to do, I'm hoping that I'll recognize along with Voskamp, that the world is saturated with God and weighed down by his presence.

"Don't pull that weed, Melissa, that might be one of God's chin hairs!"

Big and Good

"Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you."

-Jesus in John

As a Christian my life should be characterized by rejoicing and joy. I'm not to go brow beating myself and others. Plus I don't even know what that means. I'm pretty sure it has something you do with your eyebrows.

I've been rescued from the world of cause and effect. My sinful cause is met with Christ's sacrifice. I have been given the word of life, I am clean and Jesus abides in me. I have no better promise, no greater reality. God has breathed into me and I can breath deeply and be satisfied. It's good to breathe.

I have much to be happy and optimistic about, but I also have something that is deeper, richer and more profound than a lifted spirit. I have complete and concrete moral cleanness. I have right standing before the God of the universe. Surprisingly I don't even blow up or vaporize in his presence. Many mad scientists would be dissappointed.

I often forget the bigness of the Gospel. The fact that I am completely washed of all sin and completely accepted and loved by God is, umm, kind of a big deal. And in blogging about it, I write words of which I barely know the meaning. But Jesus, the word, knew the meaning and the cost. His death was worth it because he saw the Gospel bigness.

It's not about me. It's about Christ renewing the whole world. Creation's groans being met with his Christ's salve of rightness. (I just used "salve" in a sentance. I think salve means "to save with lotion.")

And it's primarily about God. He loves. He's just. He's merciful. He is good. He will be glorified. Bank on it. Better yet, invest in it, gamble on it, mortgage the house!

Out of his character flows the story of our salvation, the fountain in which we can wash and find what we've always been searching for. Personally, when I found the fountain, I dove right in and bonked my head. Which is a good thing - my pride in my self-righteousness needed to get knocked out of my silly head. Plus I'm done with giving myself self-righteous sponge baths with those horrible sea sponges forever. (And since I don't like to bathe, this is good news.)

I search everyday for salvation, whether I know it or not. Every idol I craft is an attempt at filling and finding acceptance or rightness. Jesus Christ alone is my rightness. He is my abiding place. It remind me of the saying, "I like to inbibe abiding whilst riding lightning..." (In case you're wondering, I just made that up. "Phil, you creative genius you.")

I was praying yesterday that God would do this and that (as well as make me really really ridiculously wealthy and good looking) and then it hit me: this is a BIG God I am speaking to. My tiny pea brain can't even conceptualize him. I can't even rightly think of him. But I am heard by him. Amazing.

God will always be more. He will always be bigger. His salvation is always larger than I think. And as I find more and more sin in my life, I do begin to suspect something. I suspect that the Gospel is Big. It is. Someday we will all feast on it. We'll stuff our faces till we pass out. And, to the satisfaction of the mad scientists, our hearts may explode. For Jesus himself has "called us friends."

I blog news I barely understand. That's why it's called good. Sometimes it even makes me smile.

The Weaver

"For the LORD has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his dwelling place: 'This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it. I will abundantly bless her provisions; I will satisfy her poor with bread. Her priests I will clothe with salvation. There I will make a horn to sprout for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame, but on him his crown will shine.'"

- by David, to be sung by pilgrims on the ascent to Jerusalem.

Zion doesn't deserve God. We don't. People make up cities and Zion rejected God. I am just like Zion.

A thick veil lays over my heart this morning. It always seems this way. Even yesterday as my pastor and I gaped at the span of the Gospel, my heart was lifted to praise but for a moment, and then the reality of my veil descended.

This is not the way I was made to live. And it is why I am seeking to meditate on God's word. Reality is what I am veiled from. Reality is what I forget every morning. Reality is so much more than I take it to be. And Reality is so much full of the other, the utter glorious Otherness of God.

I have no idea how blessed I am to be a part of this eternal city, the place where God is. I have no idea what a privilege it is, and how undeserved. In fact when struck with it fully, when I leave this body, when I'm "deader than a door-nail," I know the question will be "Why me?" It's the only legitimate question in light of God's election.

The trivialities of stuff, things to do, movies to watch and kids to get in their darn beds preoccupy my daily thoughts. There's little room left for God. Yet God is all there is. He breathes life into all of these things. And he gives me a heart for others, which frankly, I find pretty impossible.

Today I feel so privileged and blessed to exchange the "garments of shame" that I fully deserve and to be clothed with salvation. And for someone who is so-not-style-concsious, and who can best be described as living in a "style-coma," these garments are a pretty good thing.

And I can't wait to see my Lord's crown shine. May it shine in my heart today, burning the truth of his love, power, justice and grace for all of mankind deep into the torn fabric of my being. May the great weaver of history show me his loom woven for the nations, even as he weaves me back together.

Moses, God, and Lord Xenu

"Who has made man's mouth?" - I AM to Moses.

When I began my devotions about five minutes ago, I opened to this passage. My blog entries almost always occur this way: I open my Bible to read a little and am struck by something really profound. When I'm looking for stuff to write about, the Bible serves as a book of endless possibilities - it's so full of truth, adventure and insights into interplay of human and divine. It's simply the reason I blog. And the process of blogging enables me to better understand, digest and remember what I'm reading, so I recommend it to anyone who wants to know God better.

But it didn't take me long to find something really profound today. Here I am reading the exchange between Moses and God in chapter 4 of Exodus, and Moses is expressing that he's not really a good choice to speak to the people, using the excuse that he's not eloquent. To put it in it's modern context he's saying something like, "But God" (nasally whine) "I'm not a 'dynamic' speaker." (For an entire entry on why I hate the modern usage of "dynamic" in Christian circles check out the entry "Dynamic" - original eh?)

God's not having it. He does a serious "No duh!" with Moses as he points out, "Moses who has made man's mouth?" I love this. In God's divine humor, he highlights the ridiculous world Moses is living in in his mind. Moses has just seen the burning bush, heard God's voice, had his staff turn into a snake which he fled from (ha!), had his hand turn leprous (fun) and then been healed. You'd think that the last thing Moses would be concerned about would be the fact that he's not "eloquent." But no, Moses is to prideful in his insecurity.

Moses is so much like me. I am so quick to forget all that God has done in my life when faced with any sort of challenge, obstacle or parking ticket. For me public speaking is always a truly terrifying experience to anticipate, but I can honestly say I have not died yet. "I'm not dead yet (Monty Python)."

But I question pretty much anything that God asks me to do that goes outside of my little controlled universe of my imagining. No wonder God got a little miffed with Moses, and he probably gets a little exasperated with me. That's why I love God's humorous response, "Umm Moses, did you know that I made your mouth?" The very vehicle that Moses was afraid to use was God's invention.

I don't want to miss the irony here. It's really potent. Moses was afraid to speak, and every word he spoke was going to come from God. God goes on to harp on this ironic theme by stating that he will be with Moses' mouth. Come on Moses! Aren't you getting it? You're nothing in this equation of Man + God.

And that's exactly the difficulty I cause all the time. I question God's part of the equation, forgetting that my side isn't so hefty after all:

Me - "God I don't want to get up and go to work."

God - "Um, how, pray (God likes sounding religious!), are you going to get up?"

Me - "Duh, I'm going to sit up and get out of bed."

God - "That's what I thought, need I say anymore."

Me - "Yeah!"

God - "How do you think you're going to sit up?"

Me - "With my stomach muscles, Jeez!"

God - "Did you almost say "Jesus" in an exasperated fashion? You know I smite people for less than that! Just kidding. No, who do you think made your 'chiseled' abdomen that enables you to sit up?"

Me - "Um, you. And did you really give me a sweet six-pack this morning?"

God - "No. But I did make all those muscles under your cellulite addition."

Me - Thanks for the sarcasm as always God.

God - No problem.

That's what I love about being in a relationship with the God of the entire universe and beyond. He's bigger than Lord Xenu, the alien that conquered all the other aliens in the universe, dumped their bodies on earth, caught their souls as they rose from earth in special soul-sucking ships, indoctrinated their disembodied souls with a made up history (known to us as "human history") and then let them loose on earth where they found some monkeys and brainwashed them into being intelligent. For this insightful anecdote I thank L Ron Hubbard, outlining some of the key principles of Scientology.

Not only is God bigger than Lord Xenu, he loves to take me back to the basics when I'm scared, fearful and anxious. He reminds me that my world really isn't all that real, and that his world is. It's really comforting. And isn't that what the Gospel is all about anyway: opening our eyes to reality.

So I hope if your worried about something today, that you'll remember who invented your brain that you're using to worry with. I'm sure I'll forget. But God is patient. More patient than Lord Xenu anyway.