One of the risks of living in an academic environment is
that you begin to view the entire world academically. Relationships, for
example, can get a little bit complicated when you start analyzing behaviors
and patterns in terms of psychological theories and start spouting off academic
gibberish when all your girlfriend really wants is a hug.
A Christian’s relationship to God can fall prey to the same
sort of over analyzing. Now before you get the wrong idea, I am NOT saying that
we should not think critically about what we believe. The hard honest questions
need to be asked of our faith lest it be an immature and unrealistic wishful
thinking. What I AM saying is that we can forget about the personal aspect of
our Faith, not because you or I am a person, but because God is a person.
When we address God in an academic setting we are really
just talking about him, not to him.
When we ask questions we are really asking about
him and not asking him personally. This often yields interesting, amazing,
maybe even fruitful knowledge about God and how he works, but we tend to forget
that God is a person, a person who introduces himself.
I will never forget my Theology of God and Creation class
when the professor asked us to try and describe God. As a theology major I was
eager to accept the challenge and rifled through my mental notes to find every
descriptor of God I knew was Biblical. God is good, he is loving, he is all
powerful, he is omnipresent, he is the creator, sustainer, redeemer, on and on
it went. As we shared our descriptors the prof said, “Yes, you’re right. But
that’s not how the Bible speaks of Him,” and he directed us to the Psalms in
particular.
What we found were descriptions like ‘God is the God who saved
me, who sees me, who cares for my soul, who gives me victory, and prepares a
table for me.’ These people described God by what he was doing in their midst,
like he was a real person and not just an abstract concept. Our language as
academics values the abstract but the Biblical authors knew God as imminent,
involved, almost tangible. Even the subtle difference between God as Eternal (a
philosophical word that is not in Scripture) and God as Everlasting (a biblical
word that is much more earthy) is telling of this reality.
What we tend to forget is that God is already at work and
that there is a dynamic conversation between us and God that is already going
on that we are invited to participate in. What do I mean by dynamic
conversation? I mean that God has already reached out to us in the person of
Jesus and has given us the ability to commune with him, to live life in his
power and in his will, and this opportunity is always present with us through
the Holy Spirit interacting with our souls. We tap into this conversation by,
believe it or not, speaking to God as though he were here right now (which he
is of course) and sincerely asking him to make you a part of what he is doing.
This is commonly called prayer.
In communing with God he will speak into your heart a great
many things. What do I mean when I say ‘speak into your heart’? I mean that you
will inherently know when God has spoken to you. For the scientifically fixated
reader out there I mean that God will manipulate the atomic and subatomic
matrix of your brain to communicate to you ideas, emotions, and concepts for no
other reason than he loves you and made a promise long ago that whoever seeks
him will find him and will not be put to shame. It’s a novel concept, you talk
to God and he talks back.
But because I am writing this to address academics, we know
that it’s also deeper than that. To become part of the dynamic conversation
between God and all of creation it’s not just about you or you and God, it involves
everything. Now obviously ‘everything’ is too big to fit into any human mind,
so God doesn’t just dump the entire conversation into your head. What I mean
when I say that it includes everything is that it involves what God is doing,
not just in you or in your particular spheres but in everything around you. You
are, in a sense, plugging yourself into the will of God and allowing it to
shape how you think and act. What is the will of God you ask? It is the
redemption of all creation in all spheres, it is love in the perfect sense, but
not just as an abstract concept, but as a dynamic, living, and (from our
perspective) messy interplay between God’s actions and the world around us. God
actually has ‘projects’ (if I can use such a word) that are taking place around
us that we can participate in, often without even realizing it, and by ‘plugging
ourselves into God’s will and power’ we become his agents. This is for what is commonly called ‘The Kingdom of God.’
Why has God allowed this to happen and by what means has he
allowed this to happen? Because the blood of Jesus is both our righteousness
before God as well as our channel to God for he is our eternal sacrifice and
our eternal mediator. Participating with God, through God, and in God in this
manner falls under what is commonly referred to as ‘Faith.’
Let us never forget that God has acted first, that the
conversation is alive, dynamic, current, and the most applicable thing to
whatever question we may be asking or problem we may be facing. Let us never
forget that the Word of God is self-communicating and makes himself knowable to
the one who seeks after him. What do I mean when I say the Word of God? I mean
that God speaks. God speaks throughout all time. This speech is uninterrupted,
consistent, and timeless. The Reformers of the Church, as well as the ancient
Church Fathers identified three modes of the Word of God. There is the written
word. Yes, God literally speaks to you today about today when you read The
Bible even though it was written thousands of years ago. There is the spoken
word of God, when God speaks through the mouth of a pastor or prophet. Yes, God
is literally speaking to you today about today when a pastor gives a sermon
because he has plugged himself into this dynamic conversation and God speaks
through him into your heart. Finally, there is the Word of God spoken by
Christ, the physical manifestation of God as the human being Jesus of Nazareth.
Because Jesus is the mediator between God and man all forms of the Word of God
are spoken by Jesus. It is actually not the Bible that speaks to you, but Jesus
through the Bible. It is not actually the pastor who speaks the Word of God,
but Jesus through the words and message of the pastor, into your heart. It is not actually the stars, the sunrise, or anything in nature that speaks to you about God, any speech of God is spoken by Jesus.
Let us never forget that God speaks, that God reveals
himself, that God is active, and that we are called to participate in his
speech, revelation, and activity. Our focus as academics needs to be on Christ,
not about Christ. Let us know God, not just know about him.
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