Month: April 2009

“What comes into our mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” A.W. Tozer

I came across the above quotation several years ago in Tozer’s book The Knowledge of the Holy. It has had a significant impact on my thinking and consequently the path that my journey has followed. It was fairly easy to accept the validity of Tozer’s statement. How we think of God shapes everything about us. It matters not whether we are Christian or Buddist or whatever other faith, or agnostic or atheist, the statement is true of all of us.

Having accepted Tozer’s premise, it became clearer that the central purpose of my existence should be to understand and know God so that what comes into my mind when I think about Him is true.  It is apparent to me that all contrast and conflicts in our beliefs or unbelief can be ultimately traced back to what we believe about God. The dilemma is how do we come to truly know God? This question opens Pandora’s box and generates hundreds of questions and answers.

I am currently reading reJesus by Frost and Hearst. In a discussion on the subject of thinking correctly about God, they cited this quote from Albert Nolan. I believe Nolan’s insights are critical to moving us along the pathway to thinking correctly about God.

I have chosen this [the Christ-like God] approach because it enables us to avoid the perennial mistake of superimposing upon the life and personality of Jesus our preconceived ideas of what God is supposed to be like.

By his words and praxis, Jesus himself changed the content of the word “God”. If we do not allow him to change our image of God, we will not be able to say that he is our Lord and our God. To choose him as our God is to make him the source of our information about divinity and to refuse to superimpose upon him our own ideas of divinity.

This is the meaning of the traditional assertion that Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus reveals God to us, God does not reveal Jesus to us. God is not the Word of Jesus, that is to say, our ideas about God cannot throw any light upon the life of Jesus. To argue from God to Jesus instead of arguing from Jesus to God is to put the cart before the horse. This, of course, is what many Christians have tried to do. It has generally led them into a series of meaningless speculations which only cloud the issue and which prevent Jesus from revealing God to us.

We cannot deduce anything about Jesus from what we think we know about God: we must deduce everything about God from what we do know about Jesus.

Thus, when we say that Jesus is divine, we do not wish to add anything to what we have been able to discover about him so far, nor do we wish to change anything that we have said about him. To say now suddenly that Jesus is divine does not change our understanding of Jesus: it changes our understanding of divinity. We are not only turning away from the gods of money, power, prestige or self: we are turning away from all the old images of a personal God in order to find our God in Jesus and what he stood for.

This is not to say that we must abolish the Old Testament and reject the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It means that if we accept Jesus as divine, we muat reinterpret the Old Testament from Jesus’ point of view and try to understand the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the way in which Jesus did. We have seen what Jesus was like. If we now wish to treat him as our God, we would have to conclude that our God does not want to be served by us, but waits on us. If this is a true picture of God, then God is more truly human, more thoroughly humane than any human. God is what Schillebeeckx has called a Deus humanissimus, a supremely human God.

I continue to struggle with posting my thoughts and experiences . I wonder sometimes if I have made blogging a requirement rather than an opportunity to communicate and share. It is not that I don’t have any subjects or experiences to write about. This whole blogging thing is quite interesting. There are a lot of different reasons people choose to blog. My orginal intent when I began blogging was to use it as a vehicle by which I could communicate with familly and friends, especially my children, about day to day experiences and thoughts. I am going to attempt to restore that purpose on a more consistent basis.

Most recently, I celebrated Easter Sunday in a fashion that was mostly new to me. Since we are attending First Alliance Church, the experience was significantly different than my past Easters. The day began with a sunrise gathering. we lighted candles and were led by the women to a symbolic tomb where we sang songs and read scriptures and writings declaring the resurrection of Christ our Savior.

Following breakfast together, we assembled with the rest of the congregation for worship. The atmosphere was electric. The music and singing was energetic and celebratory. A men’s chorus and the women’s choir sang beautifully. The younger children sang also. I was so pleased that Ann was able to participate in the women’s choir. She was a beautiful addition to the group. Pastor Steve shared a challenging and appropriate message to conclude the service.

In the afternoon, we had a great meal together with the Gabeharts and Crocketts. And there was a traditional Easter egg hunt (riot). Some (no kids of course) found the egg hunt particularly difficult since it require abandoning the Master’s golf tournament for a while. But it all worked out.