Posted by Helen on: 03.15.2007 /
This is my latest response in the newspaper dialog I’ve been having with Rev Lueking.
Dean, in your most recent response to me, you asked about sharing with me what you have learned from people who live in other countries. I would be happy to read about what they’ve taught you.
You also asked: “Would you or anybody else make up a God who comes to us in the form of a suffering servant, an itinerant rabbi who was nailed to a Roman cross for the sins of the world? Would you invent a risen Christ who turned traitorous disciples into trustworthy witnesses with Good News to spread, down through the centuries, even to us in our time?”
I think you were implying the answer is “No.” However, I can’t categorically say that no one would make up a God like that. People are creative, and the stories they make up are sometimes strange, unusual, moving and beautiful.
My own feelings about this story are deep and very mixed. I see beauty in the sacrificial love and humility in it. On the other hand, it’s very hard for me to accept that the only way God could rescue humanity would be to require the bloodshed and brutality of the cross. That part drives me to wonder: Is this really the best story that ever could be told, or is it only the best story anyone could tell 2,000 years ago? Which would mean it’s long overdue for an update, since people have learned many things in the last 2,000 years. I apologize if that sounds very irreverent. I don’t know how to stop asking these questions without giving up a part of what it means to me to be human.
You continued: “The gods we invent have a way of always favoring our side, looking like us, dumbed down to our well-pampered illusions, and then finally walking out on us when the chips are down. Against these gods, the Holy One of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a stumbling block, an affront to all human pride and the death of our astonishing capacity for airy unbelief and gross ingratitude.”
I don’t know how to respond except to say when we read the Old Testament, we must come away with two rather different impressions of the God portrayed there. When I read it, I do see a God who favors the side of the authors. Weren’t the Jews God’s chosen people, whom he aided in battle against other nations (except when he was so upset with them he refused to help as a punishment to them)? When God sees the golden calf and tells Moses he’s going to destroy all the Jews because of it, doesn’t God look rather like us–at least those of us who lose our temper?
Sometime in the last few years I decided that if I read a Bible passage and God sounds mean, or proud, or vindictive, I’m not going to try to explain that away any more. Maybe that was a bad, or evil, or foolish decision–but for me it seemed the only way to keep myself anchored in reality. If I habitually practice explaining things in the Bible away, what’s to stop me doing that with the rest of life? I don’t want to go there. And if Jesus is indeed the truth, surely it’s not possible he would want me to go there either.
Comment by: Karen
1Helen, your question brings up an interesting interview I heard on Fresh Air yesterday, with bible scholars Elaine Pagels and Karen King.
They discussed the newly discovered gospel of Judas. The entire thrust of that document is apparently an argument against the idea that god would require blood sacrifices and martyrdom. The author of the gospel was likely representative of a dissident early Christian movement that did not believe the central tenant of today’s evangelical doctrine about how: “Jesus died for your sins.”
It was really interesting to get a perspective on how that question was argued so early in church history.
Comment by: Helen
2Thanks Karen - I had heard of the gospel of Judas but had no idea of the content of it. How fascinating that it brings up that question so early in church history, as you say.
Comment by: April Terry
3When we ask questions about faith or deep issues, often one of the inherent assumptions is that there will be an answer and that the answer will be clear, but I find that questions of faith can’t always be answered and are seldom clear. It is at that point that I step forward in faith. There is an unexplainable part inside me that for me must claim acceptance of that which I can’t totally understand. It is that part of me that keeps me from rejecting God completely and allows me the latitude to be able to say that I don’t know everything that there is to know and that there are limits to my understanding of God.
Within me, I have tried to elevate God from my human understanding of who He is to a level where He is greater than I and where His wisdom and understanding goes beyond my own. Therefore, it is God’s right to be sovereign and to be jealous, judicious, merciful, whether I agree with it or not.
Are we guilty (all of us) at times of shaping our ideas of God to fit within our own context? Sure.
Honestly, the God of the Old and the new Testaments don’t always fit within my context, but I realize that I don’t understand what it means to be Him. So, I try to metabolize Him as much as possible knowing that I am still filtering Him through my own lens and I leave the rest to Him to figure out because I have to admit that not all questions have answers.
Comment by: Helen
4Thanks for your comment, April.