Wednesday, October 06, 2021

Another Chapter 8 Excerpt

Excerpts so far from God with Ten Words:

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Not everyone has a great father or mother. Some fathers are abusive. Some fathers are distant and uncaring, perhaps even completely absent. A few parents even give their children their every wish and whim, providing no preparation for a harsh world that is likely to smack us around a few times.

It goes without saying that none of these models measure up to God as our perfect parent. Because of the failings of our earthly parents, God sometimes uses people to step into the gaps of our upbringings to help us see more clearly what such relationships can be. As an old song used to say, “God uses people, just like you and me.”

God is not like a parent who is never around or completely absent. That is not to say that we are likely to feel God’s presence every moment of every day. Sometimes, as part of the “growing up” process, God lets us learn to walk in silence. But such silence is temporary. God is a parent who is ever-present, even when we do not feel it.

God is not abusive. We will talk in the next chapter about God as judge. There are pictures of God as wrathful in the Bible, especially in some parts of the Old Testament but also sometimes in the New Testament. Like the pictures of God where God does not seem to know everything or be present everywhere, these are imprecise pictures. As we will see, they are especially examples of God meeting Israel within an extremely harsh cultural framework and also a picture of the consequences of living against the grain of the way God has made the world.

The primary image of God is found in the Old Testament “creed” that is repeated in every part of the Old Testament. “Gracious and compassionate is the LORD, slow to anger and great in steadfast love. Good is the LORD to all and his compassions are over all his creations” (Ps. 145:8-9).

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