Finding Faithfulness

God is faithful.

We know this is certain. A covenant promise. Throughout the Bible, one is confronted time after time with instances in which He fulfils a promise (rescuing the Israelites from every possible bad guy ever, Abraham's having a son, Nehemiah getting done the wall of Jerusalem, Jesus Himself, et cetera...) In nearly every case, we have seen God work in miraculous ways the likes of which, honestly, few of us will ever see ourselves. When was the last time God parted a river on your way to work?

Yeah, not exactly happening.

Clearly, God the Rock is constant in nature and character. His intentions never change because, well, He isn't constrained to our scale of time. However, how He chooses to have influenced our lives is particular and individually distinct from each and every other person. Custom tailored have our lives been so that we are who we are. So we are where we are. So you know who you know. Right now.

My question is then thus: how are we to distinguish God's faithfulness in our lives today? When I look back on the life I have lived, how am I to identify that which is directly of God and that which isn't?

Without much else in explanation, I feel there are a couple logical roads that one could follow after the previous question:

1. Everything is an example of His faithfulness, including that which is supernatural in character.
   
2. Nothing is an example of His faithfulness except that which is supernatural in character.

I'm most positive these are less likely roads than ends in a spectrum of possibility, but regardless. The difference in the above lies in how we view the events around us.

The fact that I'm living in a house, with food readily available, and plenty of comfort... is this God's faithfulness, or simply a result of living in a prosperous country? Is my living in a prosperous country directly a result of God's planning and provision?

I would then ask, if in fact it is God's faithfulness, this comfort I enjoy, is that also to say that three quarters of the world experience less of God's faithfulness than I? Or is it simply different faithfulness?

Hmm...

A Time for all things: Faith

Faith is... so very important. This goes without saying. Christianity would be nothing if it were not for this concept. Without it, an Infinite God is beyond the scope of a belief system, because faith is what is required to fill the gaps of what we don't know or understand.

It allows us to act without having all the pieces.

It allows us to verbalize without knowing the full impact of our words.

It also provides followers of Christ a convenient cop-out for not pursuing a more intimate understanding of God.

Most of Christianity, surely, compares depth of adherence to Biblical precepts with that of a Relationship. Our "Relationship" with Christ. Therefore, I will continue along similar lines of analogy. As with any friendship, understanding is very key. If I were asked if I understood the one I loved, and answered "no, not in the least." what would your impression be of my love?

That it's shallow. Surface. Self-serving, even?

( --> Oh, how easy it is to sustain a merely self-gratifying level of Christianity...)

Problem: God, being infinite as He is, certainly is not completely understandable. Or even comprehensible! So, then, how much is too much to expect?

At what point are we depriving our relationship of Faith? At what point are we depriving it of knowledge?

Selah

Changing the Unchanging

I still don't get this,

how is it that God can change His mind? It came up last night, that in the book of Jonah, God once again seems to have changed his mind. " Jonah 3:10: “…He had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction He had threatened.”


Hmmmhhgh? Hold on just one second. He threatened them, but then didn't destroy the Ninivites? If He knew that He wasn't going to destroy them to begin with, then why would He have threatened them? To coerce them to reject their evil ways? Is that alright?

To seek a random second opinion, I here lift a quote from a certain gotquestions.org .

"The Scriptures that are interpreted as God seeming to change His mind are human attempts to explain the actions of God. God was going to do something, but instead did something else. To us, that sounds like a change. But to God, who is omniscient and sovereign, it is not a change. God always knew what He was going to do."

This was quoted from what could be called the concluding statements of the article. This is what it all boils down to... and we make one big circle back to were we began. We go from Original Question -> The Bit we're specifically questioning. -> Weak Rebuttal -> To the bit from which my original question was spurred.

If God always knows what He as going to do (because He's already done it... because He's transcendent of time), then there can be no changing of mind. Unless it has been specifically calculated to bring about a specific outcome. Which would mean that God is manipulative. At which point the question becomes, are righteousness and "manipulation" mutually exclusive?

In the Meanwhile

The mind is truly remarkable in capability. It's hard to fully grasp the majesty of complex biology going on right behind the eyes that let me see, that let me know that I see. That allow me to respond to what I know that I see.

God has given us a mind to know things...to know Him, of course, but to know other things too.

This week has been one filled with many...other things. That is, of course, a freedom we have pre-packaged with our free-will. That's the amazing part of His grace and generosity, that He would allow us the capacity to ignore Him. He gifted each of us with the capability to forget, the intellectual choice to think outside of Him.To let slip slowly from our active mind as innocuously as a bead of sweat or change from a torn pocket; the wonder of Christ. The reality of Him. Our place in the midst of it all, momentarily lost in the meanwhile.


And so He waits patiently for our return, because He knows that we will, or will not. There is no frustration, only love and incomprehensible understanding of us.


He is waiting for me.

and I am too busy...

In the meanwhile, I have forgotten...

His Distant Presence

I cannot run from His presence... He will never forsake me, yet how is it I can feel so detached? So distant. I don't even remember running away, and even if I did, how could I be farther away? He's like the air that surrounds us. Like the atomic bonds that bind us. But stronger, more pervasive, more.

More than we can know...so where is He? Where am I? How did I get here?

I feel that there should be a more concrete basis behind Christ. I'm told faith isn't a feeling. So, alright. I'm not feeling all that much of anything in particular. That's good, right? If it isn't a feeling, then how is it that we struggle so much when we aren't feeling spiritual? Our perspective must be totally screwed. We should feel perfectly natural in the absence of a Holy high. A Christ fix. These are the day-to-day. Weekend retreats and missions trips only come seldom often.

But this isn't the case.

When we aren't feelin' it, we read books. We pray harder. We blog: "Where are you?" Workshops are held. Coffee and donuts provided. The pillers of your spirtual community are soughht out. All to be told, it's not a feeling. Tough it out. Faith is a committment.

It must be more than this. It must be. Please, let it be more than this. I thought that filling "the void" with Christ was what was to fulfil me. Is not fulfilment a feeling? Contentedment. Not feeling that you are lacking, even if you seem to be.

But it's not a feeling. It's a committment. It's a pledge to something you can't always feel, but that should bring you feeling.

But God is Love. Love is a committment and a feeling. Not always a feeling... wait a second, maybe I'm on to something...

regardless... I feel distant. A cold distant planet longing for a sun... I feel full of my head and empty of my heart. I could think of a dozen reasons why Christian morality is beneficial and worthy of pursuit, but what of the belief? Ah, the preverbial carrot before us: Heaven. Ahhh... that's another fun nut.

God is. Love.

God is, was, will be... love.

At church today, I was struck with that oh-so-common quote: "God is Love." I don't know why...but is there more to this?

His love...must be something foreign to us. But not completely. We see broken pieces of it everywhere. A glass that has been shattered all over the floor. The loving-kindness of a friend, the forgiveness of a father, the gentle embrace of a beloved, the patience of a mentor... but pieces they remain. Moments in time. Individual points. Everyone fails in love.

Love is something that has been so distorted by the ambitions and sentiments of capitalism, by the won-ton carelessness of "the media," it is something to be profited from. It is something to be purchased. Something to be hedged, to be taken, to make a statement with, to fall into. We're taught this from a young age. It's no wonder we struggle with finding what is real in relationship because we're so far from real it becomes hard to discern from the distance. How has this impacted our dynamic with God? Our perception of Him? Our expectations? If He is love, how has our understanding of Him been distorted?

Hang on that for a minute...selah I believe is the word. Each of us has been affected differently by our respective cultures. Clearly this distortion will be different for each of us...

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Another matter came to my mind aswell this morning, and it is of this void I hear so much of. This "hole": we try to fill with everything but God. What is this a metaphor for exactly? A need for intimacy? A need to be part of something larger? I've never felt this hole, except a desire for human intimacy...a desire for my works to be of merit. To be contributing to something greater. But these feelings are coming from a heart that has already been "saved," so where's the difference?

Is it that my void has an outlet, someplace to be anchored in? I never seem too lost in the woods...and at least I know I have a purpose, without even having to try. No searching required, only trust.

Perhaps there's a different reason entirely why money and greed don't satisfy the soul...


My musings for a busy Sunday are thus concluded. For now.

Funny thing: God is complicated

This weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to converse with my peers regarding basically the contents of my previous post: the Infinity of God. This has been the subject of much of my personal, internal quandaries, and I feel I have as of yet heard a decent response to my questioning...until perhaps now.

Not that my questioning has been satisfied entirely, but, as it turns out, God is merely more complicated than I had thought. Funny thing to say, I'm sure.

For instance,

God can change His "mind." Example: Moses begging God not to absolutely destroy the Israelites in the desert after having forsaken Him time and again. (Exodus 32-33) God relents His fury. How is this even possible? Things get sticky here, because if one assumes that He had already planned on saving Israel before Moses pleads to Him, then that makes God out to being manipulative, which seems totally out of character. But...how could He not have known?

There are other specific incidents throughout the Old Testament where God holds specific conversations with people, (Walks through the Garden with Adam/Eve, the Burning Bush, the Anointing of David, all the Prophets and them being spoken to...etc) and then, most prominently, The Christ in the New Testament.

Apparently, the conclusion is that God can enter into and out of our time.

???

How can He do that? When He's...here...does He not know everything? But He must...but He can't?

I was told there's a new theology gaining in popularity that says that God has limits to His knowledge, that He can only know that which has already happened. But then, what about prophesy? What about His plan? (Well, I suppose there is a difference between His will and plan). What about purpose?
I don't like this idea that God can have such crippling limits.

So, what then? He is the same, always. Was, is, and will be -- simultaneously. I was asked, does that mean that Christ is concurrently child, dead, and resurrected? Maybe existing in separate time-lines... I can't say. Is He ministering right now to all the people that could have possibly existed now, but aren't due to the decisions made in our time-line? But that's just crazy string-theory, right?

Maybe.