BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

When Mack has his first face-to-face encounter with God the Father (Papa, portrayed as a big, affable African-American woman), the first person of the Trinity points out some basic problems with the way Mack has approached life.

Mackenzie, you really don’t understand yet.  You try to make sense of the world…based on a very small and incomplete picture of reality…like looking at a parade through the tiny knothole of hurt, pain, self-centeredness, and power, and believing you are on your own and insignificant.  The real underlying flaw in your life, Mackenzie, is that you don’t think I am good.  If you knew I was good and that everything — the means, the ends, and all the processes of individual lives–is all covered by my goodness, then while you might not always understand what I am doing, you would trust me.  But you don’t. (The Shack, p. 126.  Windblown Media, 2008).

For me, that is the nucleus of the problem with nearly all of us.  J.B. Phillips, author of the Phillips Translation of the New Testament, warned us almost 50 years ago that our God is too small.  Not only too small, but too narrow, too bigoted, and often too much like us in every way.  Paul Tillich informed us that the best definition of God might be “Wholly Other,” totally beyond our understanding and comprehension.

What we fail to remember is that for Christians, God is just like Jesus.  If we could ever get that through our thick heads, many of our misunderstandings about God would disappear.  The God who is just like Jesus is love, perfect love, and so can be trusted, because Love can never act in ways contrary to what is best for us.

In the words of a contemporary Christian song, “when you can’t see God’s hand, trust his heart.”

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday