More of Jesus

For some reason or another, I feel it necessary to state one more time that theology is not satisfying.  Every time I hear one more New Testament scholar quoted, or hear one more dissertation from a biblical language expert about the nuances and meaning of a conjunction in a particular passage, I come away empty.  For instance, Romans is 16 chapters long, how can you write a two volume commentary on a letter to a church? And yet that and much more has been done.  It seems to me theology falls into the same trap that any "ology" falls into, publish or perish.  I mean, how many commentaries have been written by respected "experts" on the book of Romans.  If you have one or two insightful, faithful works, why do you need fifty or a hundred?

It goes back to something my wife has said to me dozens of times and that has informed my perspective and preaching in my latter years, "Just tell me about Jesus."  Don't lecture me on Paul's use of particular words in his letters, or talk about overarching concepts like justification or election, bring me face to face with Jesus, and then do it again, and again, and again.  It never get's old, and it satisfies my soul like nothing else can. You can constrain me ultimately by your arguments and proof texts by wearing me down to the point where I no longer care and give in, but you can't change my heart with arguments, only with Jesus.  Enough said!

God and Man at Table are Sat Down

The Christmas story tends to make me think about things that I am content to not even consider during most of the year.  As I once again struggled to comprehend the word incarnation, my thoughts turned back to our whole conception of God, how we come to know of Him, and ultimately how we come to know Him.  And the scripture very matter of factly declares that in the face of Jesus we behold the face of God.  Actually it says something more like He is the very image of the unseen God, something I am sure would delight the Greek church fathers, but I prefer to personalize it a little more. Not that this helps me any further in my understanding, but somehow it is reassuring at a deeper level.  So here are two random thoughts that somehow were generated as part of this ongoing consideration.

First, the church has always referred to the humbling (actually humiliation) of Christ, what Paul refers to as emptying Himself of His glory and descending to the lowest part of creation, and the exaltation of Christ, being glorified and exalted at the right hand of the Father.  And it occurred to me that while many people are humbled (or humiliated) by circumstances, or behavior, or poor choices, or life reversals, Jesus voluntarily gave Himself into humility, and only one who is totally self-assured, who has no doubts about who He is or what God requires of Him in the moment, can do that so completely.  And here's the mystery, that humiliation was not to bring Christ low, but to allow Him to fill all in all, leaving nothing untouched and everything charged with potential, awaiting only that day when He delivers up the Kingdom to His Father.

Second, as Christians we bemoan the fact that the world makes gods in their own image and likeness rather than the other way around.  Paul again says that they exchange the glory of the living God for a false form. But I wonder if sometimes we (i.e. the church) also do not do the same thing.  Oh, I am aware that theology claims to draw its conception of God solely from what is revealed in the scripture, and all of the creeds and confessions and catechisms can tack on a proof text or two to back up their statements, but sometimes I wonder if we still do not push the limits of what is revealed and rely too much instead on underlying philosophical suppositions that we have inherited somewhere along the way and don't even realize as being there.

For instance, we state that God is perfect, but to me that seems more of our idea rather than His.  It is something we expect our God to be and we only speak of Him in superlatives such as immortal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so on.  But that is the problem with theology, it is still something we do because of our bent to classify and dissect and integrate again.  But it always comes back to the point that God must be thus and such because, in our minds, He could not be God unless He was that way.  I came to this point indirectly as I moved from Christmas to the question as to why I exist.  A perfect being is all sufficient, He has no needs and therefore angels and man and creation as a whole are unnecessary, and yet here we are.  And I know theologians have asked the same question because they have written volumes to explain it and it always seems to come down to some form of we exist because God desires to display His glory.  And it was just at that point that I said to myself, is this not a form of pride?  Now as humans, we consider pride a sin, it is self seeking.  But that is exactly what God displaying His glory does, it lifts Him up, exalts Him, demands our attention and worship.  It is pride, but perfect pride, if there be such a thing.  And when I get to thinking things like that I conclude that I don't, and probably most other people don't know God as surely as we think we know Him.  And I'm fine with that.  It just took Christmas to remind me once again of something that St. Augustine once said.  It goes more or less like this, my words about You are so much less than my thoughts about You, but You are ever so much more than my thoughts.