God, I Think

Am I the only one who struggles with the Old Testament? Don’t get me wrong, I’m familiar with the stories. Or more accurately, I know what I was told the stories meant. I'm beginning to realize those aren't necessarily the same thing.

Over the last few months, the Narrative Lectionary we follow on Sunday mornings has brought us through Ruth, Esther, Exodus, and now Genesis. To be honest, I've had more than one yawn and an eye roll. Sometimes I genuinely wonder why we're still talking about any of this thousands of years later.

I’m starting to wonder if the Old Testament isn't actually what I'm struggling with. I suspect that I'm struggling with the version I inherited.

When I learned these stories as a child, nobody said, “Here's one way people have understood this.” They just told me what they meant. Noah was about obedience. Abraham was about trusting God. Exodus was about God rescuing God's people. The Ten Commandments were God's rules. David was a hero. The prophets predicted Jesus. Everything fit together remarkably well, but then I grew up.

Now I see something messier. People trying to become a society, wrestling with land, power, wealth, poverty, war, sex, property, outsiders, kings, justice and religion. They're making laws and building institutions. They're watching those institutions fail. They're losing everything, going into exile, coming home and trying to figure out who they are again. Throughout all of this mess, they're trying figure out God. Woof! 

Maybe I've spent too much of my life trying to make all those things agree. What if the Old Testament is really about generations of human beings trying to understand God while simultaneously trying to understand themselves? I can relate to that!

Granted, this perspective isn’t exactly groundbreaking theology, but it’s new to me. And that possibility has made these stories new again.

Recently I was thinking about how I've never gotten to read the Bible for the first time. Before I could ask what these stories meant, someone explained them. I never even had the chance to be troubled by them because someone had already explained why I shouldn't be. Those interpretations became so attached to the stories themselves that I'm not always sure I can tell them apart.

Which makes me wonder: What if I got to meet God again for the first time? Before I was old enough to go looking for God, someone had already told me what I was supposed to find. I suppose that's how faith gets passed along. We inherit it from people who inherited it from somebody else. But inheritance is complicated, and ideas about God can become so familiar that they stop feeling like ideas about God. They just feel like God.

Genesis says humanity was created in the image of God, but human beings seem remarkably talented at reversing the process. We create gods who look suspiciously like us. Our God shares our priorities, approves of the people we approve of, and has serious concerns about all the same people we do. What an amazing coincidence, right?!

The Old Testament itself might be one long warning about how complicated this is: generation after generation trying to understand God from inside their own culture, politics, fears, hopes, prejudices and assumptions. Why would I assume I'm somehow exempt?

Maybe some of what I call God is God. Maybe some of it is theology, tradition, or simply me. I don't think the answer is to throw everything away. I'm not interested in replacing one kind of certainty with another. I just want to be curious again.

I can't actually meet God for the first time. I can't unread the Bible, unhear the sermons, or forget Sunday school. But maybe I can become more aware of the introductions, and become curious about the difference between God and what I've been told about God.

So over the next few weeks, I thought it might be fun to explore “God” together. (Which is a ridiculous sentence when you think about it.)

What is God, anyway? Who is the God we were given? Where did that picture come from What happens when our picture of God stops working? Perhaps the question I'm most interested in: How do we know when we're encountering God versus when we're encountering a portrait of ourselves that we've been taught to call God?

I don't know where we'll end up, and that's sort of the point. Anyway, I hope you'll be into this exercise with me. For now, I'd love to know: When you hear the word “God,” what’s the first picture that comes to mind, and where do you think that picture came from?