God is relative, but in what sense? In dictionary sense, in etymological sense, but not in the common sense that understands it to mean: “relative to an individual’s personal preference or taste,” nor any other of the connotations commonly associated with the word.

The Christian God is relative in the sense of: “not absolute, connected, in relation to, dependent upon,” and other such. God is relative to each individual person or thing in his creation; he is connected, in relation to all his creation and as such, all has some kind of connection with God. Whether it is a good relationship or not is another matter.

And as I have said repeatedly in these blogs, God is internally and eternally related, connected, in relation to, and in some sense dependent because the one God is trinitarian. Father is dependent on Son and Spirit, would not be Father without Son, Son would not be Son without Father, and I am sure there is much more that lies beyond me.

So much for this effort at clarification.
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When I write that God changes, what can I mean by that? A few years ago a student took several classes with me, but missed the course in Christian Doctrines where I explain what I mean. He did not take that class, but heard by the student grapevine that I believed God changes. I learned later that he took this to mean that God wasn’t necessarily what Christians believe and teach, and, therefore, perhaps could not be trusted.

In other blogs I’ve explained what I do mean by divine mutability, let me clarify what I do not mean.

A well-known Christian Hymn states it quite well:

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not;
As Thou has been Thou forever wilt be.

God’s character does not change. His faithfulness changes not, nor his compassions, love, holiness, sovereignty, grace, mercy, loving kindness, righteousness/justice. This is who God is. As God has been, in these senses, he forever will be. God can be trusted to be faithful to his revealed character.

For the senses in which God does change, read the previous posts on this blog.

I am wrong; God is not relative–unless . . . in the biblical story, God deals with every situation in the same way. But He doesn’t.

Examples:

Genesis, chapter 4.
When Adam and Eva disobeyed and ate forbidden fruit, God drove them out of Eden where they were condemned to sweat and toil for their livelihood. Then when their son, Cain, violently took his anger out on his brother, Abel, God condemned him to be a wandering fugitive, but “put a mark” on him, a mark that would protect him from the violence of others.

Genesis, chapter 6.
When, in the days of Noah, “the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,” God responded with “behold, I will bring a flood of waters on the earth . . . [and] everything that is on the earth shall die.” (Except, that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord”).

We could continue in Genesis with the cases of Lot’s wife (a pillar of salt), and Jacob (limping with a wounded thigh). Skipping to Numbers, we could consider Miriam (leprosy), and Moses (forbidden entrance to the Promised Land).

On and on through the Bible we could go, but this has been enough to make the point. When God punished human sin, the punishment was different each time. They were not all driven from their home, drowned, turned to salt, stricken with leprosy, nor forbidden to taste the fruit of their life’s labor. On each occasion, God related differently, his response relative to the situation.

Turning to the New Testament, we observe only a few of the actions of Jesus. Simon’s mother-in-law was healed when Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her up. A paralytic was merely told, “Take up your bed and walk,” and immediately was healed. Apparently, a Syrophoenician woman’s demon-possessed daughter was healed only after she argued about it with Jesus. None of Jesus’ healings followed a fixed pattern. Moreover, it seems certain, at least to me, that his differing treatments were not chosen arbitrarily. Each was relative to the occasion.

None but Nicodemus were told they needed to be “born again.” Only to the Samaritan woman was offered “living water.” Only the “rich young ruler” was told to “sell all that you have and distribute to the poor.” Only the thief on the cross was told, “today you will be with me in Paradise.” We find no specific “plan of salvation.”

In Paul’s writings, some are “saved,” others “cleansed,” “redeemed,” “regenerated,” “reconciled,” “justified,” “received the Spirit,” “set free,” “made alive,” “delivered and transferred”–the language is always relative.
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In the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments were not given as universal requirements; they were directed only to Israel, relative to God’s special purpose for this, his covenant nation. In the New Testament, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to the entirety of the human race, but only to his disciples, relative to God’s purpose for them. Both groups, the recipients of Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount, have meaning only relative to larger God’s concern for his entire broken creation.
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No, God does not operate by any predetermined, set method. One last example is found in the way God deals with Israel’s enemy nations. In the Old Testament, God almost always uses violent and militaristic means to save his people, Israel. God is a warrior. In the New Testament, with Israel–and then with his New Israel–under Roman oppression and persecution, God the Warrior does not come to the rescue. Rather, his chosen method of response–revealed, exemplified, and taught by Jesus–seems to be suffering, sacrificial, and loving service. This appears to be some kind of major shift in God’s modus operandi.

We may conclude that for us today, God deals with each of us according to our own need, personality, situation, and openness to his help. Accordingly, we should avoid limiting our presentation of God, our way of working with God to any set formula or pattern.

Everything considered and all action taken is always relative to God and to the unique occasion.

More to come.

Prove that God is not relative. A couple of days ago I suggested several ways to do this. Today, I address the first three:

• God is not relative unless the Bible clearly reveals a trinitarian God.
• God is not relative unless the Bible clearly affirms that God is love.
• God is not relative unless the Bible asserts that all God wants of us is love.

Few readers would deny that the Bible clearly reveals a trinitarian God, clearly affirms that God is love, and asserts that all God wants of us is love. Some, however, would question how this demonstrates divine relativity. Therefore we will review each of these core Christian beliefs.

Love is a personal relationship. Love is the ideal way one person relates to another. Love relates persons. Love is relate-I’ve. Some have suggested that it would be better to say that love is relation-al. To say that love is relational is certainly true, but the word, relational,
breaks down to relate-ion-al. The relational is relative. (I hope you can relate to this.) Since God is love, God is relate-ive/relative in nature.

Christianity is not an ordinary monotheism. It, rather, is a trinitarian monotheism: one God, who is Father, Son, and Spirit, in eternal relation, eternally relating to each other in love. The heart of God is relate-ive/relative.

All of God’s laws, all God’s commandments, all of his requirements are subsumed under the greatest commandment: to love God and to love each other–to rightly relate to God and each other. Everyone is relative to God; God is relative to everyone and everything. Some of us relate rightly, some wrongly. God relates to some of us with blessing and to others he relates his disfavor.

The Trinitarian God is internally and eternally relative. Humanity was created relative to God, to each other, and to the rest of his creation. God is relative to all creation; all creation is relative to God.

In the great ecological web of life, everything is related, ultimately to everything, supremely to God. Relational disconnect is impossible in a world created by the trinitarian God who is love.

I realize that I am using “relative” in a special way, but it is a valid usage of language, and it is sound reasoning. In our next blog I will talk about a second usage of relative, one that echoes throughout the Bible.

I realize also that today’s blog is somewhat abstruse. I will try to avoid this kind of writing as much as possible.

I realize also that this has been repetitive and reiterative, but “repetition is the mother of learning.”

If you have been reading this blog for some time, you know that it claims as The Gospel Truth that God is relative and that there are no absolutes. This claim flies in the face of the long-established history of Christian thinking. Thus, it is highly probable that this blog does not tell the truth.

Be aware, however, that what I write and my line of reasoning proceeds from development within the complex story that the Christian Bible narrates; I am not reasoning from the traditions that root in Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, nor any other tradition. If I am wrong, it is because I have not read the Bible with clear eyes.

Anyone who would prove that the idea of divine relativity is wrong-headed, all they would have to do is to prove that:

• The Bible does not clearly reveal a Trinitarian God
• The Bible does not clearly affirm that God is love
• The Bible does not plainly say that all God wants of is love
• God deals with every situation in the same way
• God micro-manages every actual occasion, totally controls every actual entity
• God is never disappointed
• God is impassive, apathetic
• God is never dependant on anything or anyone
• God’s course of action is never frustrated
• God ordained all the attitudes and actions of: Cain, Noah after the flood, Saul, David, Solomon (indeed, all the kings of Israel and Judah), the Herod family, Judas, Simon Peter, Saul of Tarsus, as well as the churches in Corinth, Galatia, and the Seven Churches of Asia
• The Bible speaks uniformly of faith
• The Bible sets forth one linguistic form of a “plan of salvation”
• The Bible speaks of salvation in any definitive language
• God never changes his mind or way
• God intends the failures of the Israel of the Old Covenant
• The human birth of Jesus, Immanuel, was not a new experience in the life of God
• Jesus’ cry of despair made no difference to God
• The Gethsemane prayer and Golgotha’s despair don’t mean what they say.
• The Bible explicitly claims that God is absolute
• Prayer makes no difference to God
• Human repentance makes no difference to God
• God is not up against any strong countervailing forces
• The Bible indicates any kind of ultimate sovereignty other than the Jesus kind
• Any of God’s commands, laws, demands are not rooted in love, aspects of, instances of, and guides or tutors to love.

If you would disprove the idea that God is relative and that there are no absolutes, I am open to consider the possibility that I’ve taken a wrong direction, but I am open only to challenges that are spelled out in terms of the above options. I do not accept the authority of any theologian, tradition, philosopher, or creed, although I freely admit that some of them, inescapably, have been significant elements in the formation of the way my mind works.

I know this much: I know it is possible that I have misunderstood the Bible, because I know that I have neither God nor the Bible figured out. They remain beyond my comprehension.
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It remains for me to revisit many of the line items listed above and explain what I mean and what some of the implications are.

God’s Administration Concised

[This is a supplement to the previous blog, which should be read in preparation to best understand this one. Today I am using the traditional--and appropriate–term, The Kingdom of God.]

Jesus’ theme was “The Kingdom of God”; the Kingdom is thus the core of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but nowhere does the New Testament define the meaning of the Kingdom. Dozens, if not hundreds, of books and lectures have done this for us, but in ways that continue to controvert each other.

Debate about this meaning has raged for more than a century. Few of these touch on more than just one part of the meaning. What follows is a concise definition, one that fits each biblical occurrence of the term.

The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God is King.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God rules.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever things are done the way God wants them done.
The Kingdom of God is: Wherever God’s will is done.

The Kingdom of God, on the scene of human history, is: Wherever God is allowed to rule.
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Some would claim that God is King everywhere, thus the rephrasing: wherever God rules. Again, many would claim that God rules everywhere, thus the rephrasing: wherever things are done the way God wants them done (which, paraphrased, means: wherever God’s will is done).

Most thinking people would agree that many things are done in this world that are not done the way God would have them. In the biblical story, God repeatedly says so. This invalidates the claims that God is King everywhere, and that God rules everywhere. In an ideal kingdom, things are done as the king desires (dictates). God’s dictates are not always done.

Wherever (“wherever,” not meant geographically, but, wherever it is the case that) God is found in control, there is the kingdom of God. Wherever there is a church, a family, an individual, or anything that operates like God wants it to operate, there is the Kingdom of God.

Thus, it is possible for someone to be, “not far” from the Kingdom, in other words, nearly ready for God to rule. The Kingdom is “within,” or “among” you; that is where God rules when he does. Jesus says that we should pray: “Thy kingdom come, they will be done (the same idea reiterated), on earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven things are done God’s way. We are to pray to God that his rule might come on earth as it already is in heaven. Jesus told Nicodemus that without a fundamental change in who we are, God cannot rule in our lives.
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Moving now from the core definition to actual human history, God rules only where he is allowed to. Again, I can almost hear the objections coming: God can rule wherever he wants to. He is not dependent on human co-operation. He is the sovereign (later we’ll devote a day to the idea of sovereignty).

No, God does not impose his will on us. He does not coerce. He is not a tyrant. Read the Bible carefully and you will find that, after the creation of the human and until the end of human history, God works in this world only where there is co-operative human trust and obedience.

Note that in Mark 6:5-6, the Bible says that, in his hometown, “[Jesus] could not do any miracles there,” because of their unbelief. It does not read that he did not do any miracles, or that he would not do them. Rather it says that he could not do them, not because he lacked either the power or the desire, but because of their unbelief.

Here where we live, within the time of human history, God works in relation to us. He works relative to our cooperation. We can disrupt God’s work, God’s rule, by failure to trust and therefore to obey him. God will not force his way on us. God is not a dictatorial tyrant.

Remember, however, that the New Testament makes it clear that a time is coming, beyond human history, when God will rule completely, whether or not anyone believes. God’s rule will, one of these days, be total. It might be a good idea to get on good, cooperative terms with him before that unpredictable day arrives.

The President of the United States, George W. Bush is in trouble. At a rate that is increasingly disturbing to the president, the American people are losing confidence in his administration. Most particularly they are reacting against his administration of the four-year-old war with Iraq. They are much more opposed to the way he has administered the war than they are opposed either to the president or to the war.

On the other hand, the war would have never come about were it not for the detestable way that Saddam Hussein, for more than two decades, administered the internal affairs of Iraq.

Governmental administrations are judged in a variety of ways: the personality of the chief governmental officer, the accomplishments of their administration, or as in the two widely different administrations above, by the manner in which they conducted their administration, the way they led or ruled.
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In the 21st Century, many of us live in nations that have no king, want no king, and are turned off by the very idea of having a supreme ruler with the power to single-handedly rule according to his own dictates. Thus, the idea of the Kingdom of God does not resonate with many of us.

When we are told that, in the Kingdom of God, we are to obey, submit, trust, and surrender our own wishes to the “will” of God, we do not hear this as tidings of “comfort and joy,” as a word of “good news.” We are not about to surrender our all, the all of our “only-one-time, only-one-chance” life, to anyone. It is our life. We find the very idea of submission repugnant.

So when Jesus comes saying, “repent and believe the good news of the Kingdom of God,” these words have little appeal to the heart or mind of 21st Century people. For most of us, there is nothing new about this; we have heard these words and the accompanying story for most of our lives. It is not new, and we see nothing good about “entering” any this or any other kingdom.
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So, what if I make a change in the language, a change that is completely consistent with the language of the New Testament. Drawing on the immediately previous blog for an understanding of “repent” and “believe,” I suggest we take Jesus to be saying: “Change the way you think about, the way you understand everything. Reorient your focus. Change your mind about life.”

“Why,” we ask, “should I give up what I believe to be true and go some other direction?” The answer: “Because God’s way of governing is near, is available. God’s way of ruling is more appealing and attractive than anything we know about. God’s way of ruling–God’s administration, (kingdom)--is good.”

And what is so good about it? For one thing, it takes most of the ways our world is run and turns them on their ear. Someone has called it the “upside-down kingdom”; others say that it is, rather, the “right side up” way of control.

Yes, governance is always about control; it is about the power to control. The Bible claims that the time is coming when Jesus Christ will be made “king of kings and lord of lords, and he shall reign forever and ever.” The time is coming when he shall be put in complete control of all things.

That–exactly that–is the good news. This Jesus, whose story and words we find in the New Testament, will have all things put under his feet. He will be made the supreme administrator and given the power to do what he wants. Why makes this a good word? How can this be good news?

Read, or reread about Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (I suggest, for reading purposes, that you change the traditional order, and read Mark, Luke, Matthew, and then John–just a suggestion). Try as you read to set aside everything you have ever heard or read about Jesus. Try–although none of us can completely do it–to read all this again as if it were the first time you had read it, as if you had never heard anything about it. Then try to imagine a world where this one, Jesus of Nazareth, was in charge of everything. Then you will know why this government, this way of administering human affairs is called, “good.”
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Part of what we are called on to “repent” of--in the 21st Century as it was in the 1st Century–is the old understandings of God’s ways, understandings passed on to us by our society, (and that includes our Christian society). This Jesus Way is not new; it began long ago. On the other hand, it is new, because it has been distorted, perverted, misunderstood, modified, and misrepresented until nowadays it is almost unknown and unrecognizable.

The Jesus Way was born in what we have come to call the “Greco-Roman” world. Judea and Galilee were occupied and ruled by the Romans. The entire Roman Empire, at that time, was, in its language and thought, a Greek world. But the Jesus Way was born a part of that world that was innately Hebraic, formed and filled with the stories and ways of the Hebrew Bible.

The Jesus Movement sprang from this cultural mix. It was relatively pure and simple as it entered the 2nd Century, but then this spring of “living water” began dividing into two different channels–one Greek philosophical, the other the Jesus Way of life--that have commingled, separated, coalesced and divided until by our time they seem to have become inextricable.

This blog is a continuing effort to extricate, as much as possible, the Jesus Way--the kingdom or administration or governance of God--from the theological traditions that have allowed the waters of this spring to become polluted. In the days ahead, we have much more of this to consider.