The Undiscovered Country

Revisits

In my previous entry, Thomas commented about my view of God. Other people have made the same observation: I humanize God. I describe him sometimes as angry, jealous, frustrated, and saddened to name a few, thereby bringing him down to our level. “Is not God above all our frailties?” they asked me.

The problem I have with that is we sometimes go on the assumption that anger, jealousy, et al, are frailties.

I suggest they’re not - in and of themselves. It’s what we do with our emotions that can twist them into vices. God does not have that problem.

Besides, God humanized himself; both the Old and New Testaments are replete with examples of God’s anger, jealousy, frustration, sadness, even despair and terror.

I’ve written about this before, so if you have the time, here are three entries I wrote in my last journal that best explain how and why I see God the way I do:

From "God's love and points to view" :

Does God love us?

According to a little five year old girl named Anna, God does not.

The following is from a little treasure I found in Grandma Wood’s bookcase entitled “Mister God, This is Anna.”

“Flynn, Mister God doesn’t love us.” [Anna] hesitated. “He doesn’t really, you know, only people can love. I love Bossy, but Bossy don’t love me. I love the pollywogs, but they don’t love me. I love you, Flynn, and you love me, don’t you?”

I tightened my arm about her.

“You love me because you are people. I love Mister God truly, but he don’t love me.”

It sounded to me like a death knell. “Damn and blast,” I thought. “Why does this have to happen to people? Now she’s lost everything.” But I was wrong. She had got both feet planted firmly on the next stepping stone.

“No,” she went on, “no, he don’t love me, not like you do, it’s different, it’s millions of times bigger.”

I must have made some movement or noise, for she levered herself and sat on her haunches and giggled. Then she launched herself at me and undid my little pang of hurt, cut out the useless spark of jealousy with the delicate sureness of a surgeon.

“Flynn, you can love better than any people that ever was, and so can I, can’t I? But Mister God is different. You see, Flynn, people can only love outside and can only kiss outside, but Mister God can love you right inside, and Mister God can kiss you right inside, so it’s different. Mister God ain’t like us; we are a little bit like Mister God, but not much yet.”

It seemed to me to reduce itself to the fact that we were like God because of some similarities, but God was not like us because of our differences. Her inner fires had refined her ideas, and like some alchemist she had turned lead into gold. Gone were all the human definitions of God, like Goodness, Mercy, Love and Justice, for these were merely props to describe the indescribable.

“You see, Flynn, Mister God is different from us because he can finish things and we can’t. I can’t finish loving you because I shall be dead millions of years before I can finish, but Mister God can finish loving you, and so it’s not the same kind of love, is it? Even Mister Jether’s [Anna’s name for Jesus] love is not the same as Mister God’s because he only came here to make us remember.”

The first salvo was enough for me; it all needed a bit of thinking about, but I wasn’t going to be spared the rest of her artillery.

“Flynn, why do people have fights and wars and things?”

I explained to the best of my ability.

“Flynn, what is the word for when you see it in a different way?”

After a minute or two of scrambling about, the precise phrase she wanted was dredged out of me, the phrase point of view.

“Flynn, that’s the difference. You see, everyone has got a point of view, but Mister God hasn’t. Mister God has points to view.”

At this moment, my one desire was to get up and go for a long, long walk. What was this child up to? What had she done? In the first place, God could finish things off, I couldn’t. I’ll accept that, but what did it mean? It seemed to me that she had taken the whole idea of God outside the limitation of time and placed him firmly in the realm of eternity.

What about this difference between a point of view and points to view? This stumped me, but a little further questioning cleared up the mystery. Points to view was a clumsy term. She meant viewing points. The second salvo had been fired. Humanity in general had an infinite number of points of view, whereas Mister God had an infinite number of viewing points. When I put it to her this way and asked her if that was what she meant, she nodded her agreement and then waited to see if I enjoyed the taste. Let me see now. Humanity has an infinite number of points of view. God has an infinite number of viewing points. That means that - God is everywhere. I jumped.

Anna burst into peals of laughter. “You see,” she said, “you see?” I did, too.

“There’s another way that Mister God is different.” We obviously hadn’t finished yet. “Mister God can know things and people from the inside, too. We only know them from the outside, don’t we? So you see, Flynn, people can’t talk about Mister God from the outside; you can only talk about God from the inside of him.”

Interesting, isn’t it? I had to mull it over for a bit. While God sees everything from every known and unknown perspective, I see things from at best three or four, and that’s only if I search very, very hard. In the meantime, I miss other points of view equally, if not more important.

This knowledge gives me great pause when something happens involving other people. I may be right from standing over here, but another person standing opposite of me holds a piece of knowledge, a perspective, that forces me to move - if I'm smart enough to take that knowledge.

I’ve been moved. To silence and to humility.

From "Incomprehensible Invitations" :

I at first thought, “What the hell? How is it I keep attracting all this controversy; all these heated religious discussions where harsh words like ‘blasphemy’ get bantered about? All I’m doing is talking about my faith! Sheesh. I don’t claim to know everything; I’m certainly not (intentionally) preaching, pounding my blog page with my electronic Bible and screaming ‘Thou shalts’ and ‘Thou shalt nots or else.’”

Then I had an “Ah ha!” moment. By the mere mention of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity (not in the Bible, by the way ), faith, religion, and scripture on a public forum, it’s opening the door wide to all those with often such disparate points of view, I’m left beyond confused. Should I really be stunned and overwhelmed by the passions of others when it comes to their faith?

That being said, dear God what a gift! I can’t think of a better way to discover more about God than by discussing and listening to others who share the same desire. God wants us to be challenged, to question our preconceived notions, and scrutinize our faith, sometimes to the point we think we have none. That’s the only way we grow closer to Him. We are but finite humans, using a paltry 10% of our 8 pound brains trying to grasp at the ungraspable, to understand the inconceivable, and to encompass that which the entire universe is but the point of a pin in comparison.

Because we can’t understand all God is, He gives us tiny glimpses – bread crumbs if you will – to lead us in the direction He wants us to go. Anything more we couldn’t take. I’ve been filled with the Holy Spirit, so full I begged Him to leave because I felt as though every cell in my body would explode. I know that sensation couldn’t have been a thimbleful of God’s being. Thank God, because anything more would have likely killed me.

Is it any wonder then, when we disagree over who or what God is? We each see only a minuscule part, and more often than not from a different angle as everyone else.

I go back to my entry on this very subject a few weeks ago: "God's love and points to view" . Every new piece I find or is given to me only makes God that much more incomprehensible. I’m less inclined to “put Him in a box” the more I learn.

One thing about God hasn’t changed, however, and never will: He loves us and wants us near Him, loving Him in return.

From "God is a Simpleton" :

As I said in my last entry, God is far beyond what any one of us can comprehend. Yet, with Him also being about the impossible, could He not then choose to become as simple, or as small as He wants, such as a burning bush, a whisper in a wind, or a human being to teach and suffer death so we won’t have to?

I thought of this after David McClain commented in my last entry: I am a simple man and not one given to deep introspective thought. I simply hold to some basic truths in my life.

God is. I know this because I feel him every time I am rocked by life's storms. He is there to quiet my racing heart and still my fear.

I really can't worry about what others believe or not believe...that is for them to figure out for themselves. For me....God is. I am content.

I love that. I wrote back saying I wish I could be like him more. I can never be satisfied. I’m always seeking, tripping and falling many times along the way. I wouldn’t be surprised if I die stumbling over something.

I’ve always said, “God is wherever you find Him.” Perhaps you saw God in your child’s first toothless, shiny-with-slobber grin, in the blinking, yellowish-green flight of a firefly, or in the astonishing complexity of a fingerprint. Since God wants nothing more than to have a loving relationship with all His children, He can become as small as He likes. Some might say that point of view puts God in a box. To start, perhaps, but though we see Him at first in a small thing, He doesn’t stay there. The closer our relationship to Him, the bigger He gets.