In the beginning there was a couple named Adam and Eve. They lived a perfect life in Paradise. That is until one day they ate the wrong piece of fruit and God kicked them out of Paradise...forever.
There was a man named Noah. God told him to build a really big boat (but it was smaller than some boats we build today). He told Noah that his family could come on board as well as two of most animals and more of some others, everyone and everything else would die in a flood. That's right, every dinosaur, every bird, every animal, every man, every woman, every smiling, cooing, newborn baby...all dead. And now this story is used as a decoration motif for infant's nurseries.
There was a man named Abraham, God told him he would have a son with his wife Sarai. Abraham married Hagar also and had a son with her, Ishmael. God told Abraham that wasn't the son He had in mind so he was to send both of them into the desert...alone...they could not return...
There was a man named Moses. One day God told Him to speak to a rock in the desert and it would give water for all the children of Israel. Moses hit the rock with a stick instead. God said, now you can't go into the promised land, but I will let you look at it from the top of a mountain.
There was a man named Joshua. God told him to march around the city Jericho for seven days and then the walls would fall down. He was then to march in and kill every living creature. Death by sword for every single animal, man, woman, and baby.
There was a man named Job. God told the devil that he could take all of Job's possessions, kill all of his children and give him painful boils. When Job asked God why, God responded, who are you to question me? The end.
There are some things I wish weren't in the bible.
I think we haven't known how to deal with these stories and so our mental preservation instincts have kicked in and we have dealt with them as exactly that, stories. We've turned them into crib sheets. We've turned them into cliche answers for the pain in our other's lives, but somehow we have a hard time swallowing those cliches when it comes to our own pains. The one thing that has become very evident to me is that there are some things that simply must be wrestled with. Some of these stories have no simple, quick, nice and neat, wrapped in a package with a pretty bow answers. God is not that simple. God will not be contained in niceties.
But He is good. He is love. He is kind. He is just. He is righteous. He is light and in Him is no darkness. He always does what is right. He is the good shepherd. He is the Father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes down from above. And we are His children.
So what are we to do with these stories then?
First we must lay aside our preconceived notions. We must stop looking at these stories in the fully colorized, comic book version of the bible. We must take down the Noah's ark quilts from our babies nursery cribs.
Second, we must stop looking for answers. We must lay aside our quick and simple one paragraph solutions for the stories (i.e. God did this because....). Many of these stories are left with no moral, with no resolution, it is simply an account of what happened.
Third, we must wrestle with the stories. We must begin to allow them to unsettle us, to make us uncomfortable, to force us to question. We must allow our discomfort to grow us. Not once in the bible are we shown an instance where a true seeker of God questions Him and is destroyed for it.
Fourth, we must hold fast to what we know to be true of God in these journeys. He is good. He is love. He is kind. He is just. He is righteous. He is light and in Him is no darkness. He always does what is right. He is the good shepherd. He is the Father of lights from whom every good and perfect gift comes down from above. And we are His children. We must let these truths guide us through the fog where things are not clearly seen or understood, through the murky waters of uncertainty.
Fifth we must always keep in mind the purpose of these stories; they have been given and preserved through the millennia to teach us much of who we are, who He is, what our world is like and our place and purpose in it, and His readily available and eternal kingdom.
So wrestle, accept no easy answers, and discover who God really is. Discover who you really are. Discover your place and purpose in this life. Discover His kingdom.
My next post will be one of my recent wrestling journeys. May you be blessed with much discovery.
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