I know that I’ve published blog posts about my journey to find God. I have spent years asking the question, “Who are You God…Really?” Actually, I have learned a lot. It seems that my theology changes and morphs day by day.
Of course, no human can know God fully. God is wholly Other. God’s essence and being lives somewhere outside of where we live. But, God appears to desire that we DO know some things. God, for whatever reason, seems to like us and the Cosmos that we call home. I still haven’t figured out the why. But, I’m glad that God does.
This past Sunday, our parish priest spoke on the text from 1 Corinthians chapter 1, “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
Which is kind of a riff on Isaiah 55, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares Yahweh. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways. And My thoughts than your thoughts.”
With this in mind it’s difficult to see how anyone can possibly grasp God at all. The Scripture seems to make it clear that God is so completely transcendent that to even attempt to know God is, at best, an exercise in futility.
But, (there’s always a “but,” isn’t there?), that whole Jesus thing seems to contradict what the Scripture clearly teaches. Ok, ok, I see that, too. If God’s ways are beyond our ability to comprehend, then Jesus makes perfect sense. Whoddathunk that God would pull something like the Incarnation out of the Divine pocket? Right?
“What is the Incarnation,” you ask?
That’s the thing where God, in all of His Godness chose to stoop down to accommodate our humanness. The writer of the Gospel of John put it this way, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” Actually, the text is closer to “and God became flesh and pitched His tent with us.” That is the Incarnation in a nutshell. God, the Holy and completely “Other” chose to join us right here in our own lived world.
I believe that in the reality of Jesus as a human person, God learned something new.
Ok, stop! I know that there are a lot of folks who think that God is so far removed from our reality that God cannot possibly learn anything new. The theological term for that is that God is “Impassible.” God cannot experience any emotions, changes, alterations, height, width, depth, or any other temporal attributes. God is also “immutable” for these folks. That’s another theology thing that basically means that God cannot change in character, will, or covenantal promises.
Now, if anyone out there has followed or read anything that I have written knows how I feel when people tell me that God “Can’t.” You fill in the blank. God can’t change. Yeah? Who says? You? Well, I think you’re mistaken. I think that not only God CAN change, but God does it all of the time! This means that when God stooped to join with us in our human condition God learned what it’s like to actually BE human. God experienced our joy and our sorrow. Our comfort and pain were altogether something new that God had never felt.
So, while God is eternally Other, God is also, somehow, one of us.
Please don’t misunderstand me. God is always God and Divine. Something that we will never experience. That’s what I meant when I wrote above that we can’t truly and completely know God as God is. The whole Isaiah 55 thing is still a thing.
However, we can, and must, allow God in Jesus to introduce us to God Who is known as Father. Jesus, the Scripture says, has opened a way for humans to know God in ways that we CAN understand.
Jesus is the first person who truly knew God. God is Jesus’ Abba.
And, God can be ours, too.