Sunday, September 14, 2008

The Nature Of Interactions With God

It's hard to think of God as an entity, every word seems too small and limiting, too insignificant. God is the force of existence, the power, the very being-ness of everything. But He also interacts with us and that's just so bizarre. I don't see that God is like some huge person (man, woman, perfect "blend") because if He's as immense as He is, then we're like a speck in a microscope; how could He interact with us when our whole world is too small to withstand a breath? It seems we'd be more like sea monkeys in an aquarium in a child's room, the child may love the little creatures but would only be caring in a general way. Could a child distinguish between this sea monkey that helps the others and that one that attacks the others and steals food? Maybe so. God is more than a child but if He reaches in to help or change something, wouldn't it be like a child reaching in to a sea monkey and trying to do something specific? The very act of the child reaching into the water would disturb things and touching one would probably kill it due to the size difference.

I think this is how people in the Bible were in interaction with God, his Spirit filled them, at least for a time, and their actions showed there was another presence. I don't believe everything they said and did from then on was directly from God. Just like now, God may put His spirit in us but we don't seem to "hold onto it" very well. Are we to be a conduit? And if so, will it look the same in every person? How do our human personalities and understandings affect the message that comes forth?

This is why Jesus is seen as God by many I believe. He was full of the spirit and never acted on his own because God kept him in His presence always - when God does that, nothing of your own self seems to matter, there is no real desire to go anywhere else. We saw God in a human form and Jesus said we should be just like that as well. I definitely don't believe that all the immensity and everythingness that is God squished itself into a human man. Neither do I believe that God, the existence of everything, died.

Hear O Israel, YHWH our Elohim, YHWH is One, Blessed be the name of YHWH.
OR: Hear O Israel, YHWH is our Elohim, YHWH alone, blessed be the name of YHWH.

Jesus was the exact representation of the Father, when they looked at Jesus, they saw God. I know that scripture says there's no way to write all that Jesus said and did in a book but I sure wish they had written more! We have a few parables and teachings, a short scant record of his life, not enough! That probably was the point, we should be so full of the spirit of the Holy One ourselves that we're "writing" our own book with our own lives.

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