God Is My “Next of Kin”
Christians often say they have a personal relationship with God--and that is essential--but the good news is that the obverse is true: God has a personal relationship with us.
God is my next-of-kin, my nearest relative. He is my Father, my Creator and Sustainer. No one, not even my wife, relates to me as well as God does. All his dealings with me are fitted to my unique personality and my immediate need at any given time; they are relative to me. In this sense of the word, at least, God is relative. His interaction with you is unique; it is relative to you.
Everything God says is relative: all commandments, warnings, perhaps even all promises. The Ten Commandments are not universal in their import. They were given to his covenant community, Israel, as part of their very formation and identity. They were not addressed to the Apache, the Yoruba, the Finn, nor the Indonesian. They were relative to God’s purpose of establishing a people through whom salvation would come to the Apache, Yoruba, Finn, Indonesian, and even the Anglo-Saxon–indeed, to his entire fallen human creation.
On the other hand, the Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to God’s entire covenant people, the Jews. It was specifically addressed to his disciples: “Seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them.”
He told neither Zachaeus nor the “rich young ruler” that they must be born again; only Nicodemus heard these words from Jesus. Zack and the sorrowful young man were addressed relative to their personal situation. Even the Great Commission, with its accompanying promise, is given to the Apostles, relative to the imminent departure of their Lord.
Jesus is our relative, if we have chosen to relate positively to him; he is our brother:
For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. . . .
. . . .
Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, ...
--Hebrews 2:11 & 17
Everything he did and said is relative. Each healing, each parable, each question/answer is relative to the particular situation and person. If there is an ethic involved in the Jesus Way, it is a situational ethic (whether it can be identified with Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, is another matter).
The book that tells his story is relative. Each of its parts relates to a particular actual occasion in the history of God’s covenant relation to the descendants of Abraham–both the biological and the spiritual descendants. The Bible is relative, its sixty-six component books are relative, and it is about a relative God–our nearest relative.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Some of us might think that being God might just be good work, if we could get the job, or so it would seem. We could be in control of everything, have all power at our disposal, know everything, and thus make the world and everything in it exactly as we like, or think we would like.
But it doesn’t seem to work out that way for God, at least not for the God of the Bible. Being God doesn’t sound easy, as the Bible tells his story, in fact sometimes it is quite frustrating. Too often things don’t go as he planned: Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, just for starters. He doesn’t always get his way, and sometimes no matter what he does, he winds up disappointed. Again, just one case in point: He must send his hope-of-the-world people into a brutal exile because no matter what he has done for and to them, they insist on "doing it their way” rather than God’s.
God doesn’t always know exactly what is going to happen–“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” These people–like us–easily, lightly, and often abuse their God-given freedom of choice to frustrate the divine intention. God promises to hear and forgive and heal, but it is a maybe so promise: “If” they turn from and seek. But whether they will turn in time, or turn at all, he has to wait and see. God’s continuing problem is these humans he has created—in his own image, no less. It is not easy being God, certainly not an easy emotional life.
But back to the human, me and you. Our individual lives are bad enough, but when we begin to interact with each other we can form a well-dug-in line of defense against God, or mount a powerful offensive against God. To his own displeasure he has to deal with a creation that refuses to stay on the track created for their freedom and peace.
It has not been easy for me to say that being God is not easy. But, there is “the rest of the story.”
Being God is a good life. God is love, eternally God is love, and love is satisfying, thrilling exciting, and enjoyable. In fact, it so good being God that the God nature must be shared. This is why God created humans “in his own image”: looking enough like him, being enough like him that God can common-icate with them and share the thrill, let them in on the satisfaction, excitement and joy of a love that must be expressed and made open and available to his supreme, god-like creature.
So, all in all, it is easy to announce the good news: God is relative–re-lative, relational, akin, positively connected and interactive. Genuine relationship is the source of life’s greatest pain, the root from which springs all peace and joy.
But it doesn’t seem to work out that way for God, at least not for the God of the Bible. Being God doesn’t sound easy, as the Bible tells his story, in fact sometimes it is quite frustrating. Too often things don’t go as he planned: Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, just for starters. He doesn’t always get his way, and sometimes no matter what he does, he winds up disappointed. Again, just one case in point: He must send his hope-of-the-world people into a brutal exile because no matter what he has done for and to them, they insist on "doing it their way” rather than God’s.
God doesn’t always know exactly what is going to happen–“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” These people–like us–easily, lightly, and often abuse their God-given freedom of choice to frustrate the divine intention. God promises to hear and forgive and heal, but it is a maybe so promise: “If” they turn from and seek. But whether they will turn in time, or turn at all, he has to wait and see. God’s continuing problem is these humans he has created—in his own image, no less. It is not easy being God, certainly not an easy emotional life.
But back to the human, me and you. Our individual lives are bad enough, but when we begin to interact with each other we can form a well-dug-in line of defense against God, or mount a powerful offensive against God. To his own displeasure he has to deal with a creation that refuses to stay on the track created for their freedom and peace.
It has not been easy for me to say that being God is not easy. But, there is “the rest of the story.”
Being God is a good life. God is love, eternally God is love, and love is satisfying, thrilling exciting, and enjoyable. In fact, it so good being God that the God nature must be shared. This is why God created humans “in his own image”: looking enough like him, being enough like him that God can common-icate with them and share the thrill, let them in on the satisfaction, excitement and joy of a love that must be expressed and made open and available to his supreme, god-like creature.
So, all in all, it is easy to announce the good news: God is relative–re-lative, relational, akin, positively connected and interactive. Genuine relationship is the source of life’s greatest pain, the root from which springs all peace and joy.
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