Mysterious God?
One of the most frustrating things to hear in times of tragedy is the useless platitude: “God works in mysterious ways.” Even if it is true, no one who has just lost a loved one when they were far too young wants to hear that the reason their daughter died in a car crash is because God is mysterious. Sometimes people don’t need to be told to look for a silver lining, especially one that no one can see yet. It’s a meaningless and empty saying.
And yet… In a less tragic context, it makes a good point.
God can be mysterious. Obviously there is the mystery of how divinity and immortality work. Of course the nature of God is a mystery that defies comprehension or explanation. However, sometimes even God’s intentions seem mysterious. When we look over the Old Testament, we get very different views of God over the course of Israel’s history. God seems to be very violent at times, happy to order babies to be executed because of the sins of their parents. Elsewhere, God opposes the idea, saying children will not suffer for their parents. Sometimes God seems to be peaceful and loving to all people. Other times, God commands war and bloodshed. And who really incited David to take a census of Israel (2 Samuel 24:1, 1 Chronicles 21:1)? Sometimes people are so confused by God’s actions that what one calls an act of God, another Biblical writer calls an act of Satan!
Unfortunately, God’s plan and character isn’t laid out clearly. We are invited, even encouraged, to wrestle with the text, to struggle for meaning amidst the varying perspectives on God. The Bible was written by various people who had experienced God in some way or another. Not everyone had the full picture. Some people misunderstood God’s will and activity. We have to fight to put together the puzzle pieces into a clear enough picture to understand. This isn’t to say that the Bible is inadequate. In fact, this is exactly what makes the Bible such a living document that is still profound today. Because no singular narrative easily, coherently emerges against all others, the Bible speaks to many people in many different contexts. The poor see themselves in the downtrodden innocent suffering ones, for whom God shows tremendous love and mercy. The powerful see themselves in David and Solomon, hoping to learn from their examples to lead well. The Bible is a story full of insiders and outsiders, men and women, young and old, wise and foolish, warlike and peaceful, and just about everything else we can think of. If you look closely, you will even find the age-old argument between small government conservatism and people calling for a modernized and centralized political authority. This book has something for everyone!
But as much as this uncertainty and variability can be a gift, it can also be a great danger. You can find support for almost anything in the Bible. One who seeks to judge and control those who are less righteous than themselves can find support in the Bible. One who seeks to deny rights to women and abuse children can find support in the Bible. One who seeks to justify a genocidal war, claiming to be a bearer of God’s justice, can find support in the Bible. As much as we condemn what theologians call “prosperity gospel” today, one can derive it from certain passages in the Bible. With so many possible interpretations, does that mean every interpretation is permissible? Hopefully not, but how can we determine which interpretations are acceptable and which aren’t? What criteria do we use to judge?
This is a difficult problem. God was mysterious even to the writers of Scripture, who, in case this needs repeating, didn’t even know how to decide whether an action was undertaken by God or by Satan. How then can we interpret their interpretations of God’s actions? Unfortunately, God is invisible, and only a select few have directly spoken with God, but Colossians 1:15 may present us with the norm we need to test interpretations. Jesus “is the image of the invisible God.” When we look upon Jesus, we see God.
Of course, this talk of Jesus being the “image of the invisible God” may be particularly interesting to one who recalls the first chapter of Genesis. God made humankind in God’s image. The original intention was for us to bear God’s image in the created world. We were supposed to be for the world what Jesus was for us. Because of the power of sin, we were unable to execute the mandate God had given us. Now, humanity is the cause of much of the world’s problems. We destabilize the natural order of things, polluting the earth, depleting resources, causing unnecessary scarcity, and tearing up the land with our wars. Though we should have been the bridge between God and Creation, we are now helplessly seeking a bridge ourselves.
Fortunately, we have one, not so much for us to cross back to God, but for God to come to us. Christ took our place, bearing our responsibility and our sin and restoring us to our relationship with God. Christ is the image of God. Christ is the example of what we should be as well as the test by which we know what God is really doing.
Because we can see God in Christ, we have a reliable method of determining which interpretations accurately represent God’s work. We can compare our understandings of God to our understandings of Christ. God is a God who loves us so deeply that God is willing to suffer and die on our behalf. God washes the feet of traitors. God breaks bread with sinners and cares deeply for the poor. God talks to outsiders and drives merchants out of the holy places.
We can judge any theology, any interpretation of the Scriptures, by how closely it aligns with the ministry of Jesus. Prosperity gospel, theologies of violence, theologies that privilege the elite and self-righteous over the poor, as well as many other modern ideas break down upon the rock that is Christ. In Christ, we get our best sense of what God values and wants from us. Of course, Christ also gives us the example of what we are to do as the bearers of God’s image ourselves. I feel a little bad for starting and ending this post with a cliché, but I think this is a lesson that many of us have already learned. When we aren’t certain about what God is up to in the world or what we should do, we can ask one simple question. What would Jesus do?
