shema

Does God Change?

Posted on February 25, 2015 Written by savage Leave a Comment

On 23 Feb 2015, Humans of New York posted this picture on Facebook, along with a fascinating quote:

“I’m a rabbi. But I don’t try to provide any answers. I tell people what tradition says, and if they find meaning in it, and it works for them, then they are welcome to apply it. If not, we’ll look at other possibilities. I think that every generation has a responsibility to create its own understanding of religion. I believe God can grow as we do. I could be accused of diluting Judaism, but I think that if it has no relevance to people’s lives, Judaism will cease to exist.”

It’s a timely quote, along with Rob Bell’s rather unfortunate statement that if Christianity remains committed to its core values, it will fade away and die. However, the Rabbi isn’t striking at the core values of Judaism like Bell struck at the core values of Christianity – instead, this Rabbi actually bolstered Judaism, and provided a workable model for Christianity as well.

But there’s a statement in there that stands out.

“I believe God can grow as we do.”

Naturally, many people find a lot of beauty in what the Rabbi said (and I’m among them), but many comments also centered on that phrase, and took issue with it.

I think there’s danger in that phrase, but I don’t think the phrase itself is dangerous – nor is the idea dangerous, as long as we remember who God is.

Some people stated that God, being above the concept of time, does not ever change. Others stated that a God who “changed with the wind” was not God. Others stated that God has no need to change, being, well, the “I am,” being without cause and without the need for justification or response.

I understand all of these sentiments, and from God’s perspective, they would be perfectly correct. God is the “I am.”

When God told Moses that His Name was “I Am that I Am,” God was saying that He existed without anything else: He needed nothing to exist such that He was a response to it. God was the cause. God was the source. God was the beginning.

God was grunge before grunge was cool.

Change is a response to circumstances; as time passes, or things happen, we change in relation to the world around us to compensate for the changes the world endures.

God doesn’t need that relation. He is beyond it. There is no change.

How, then, can I agree with the Rabbi?

The key is to remember who God is – unchanging, perfect, unified, Holy – and also to remember who we are.

We change. We grow. We change perspective.

With change, with growth, with perspective, our understanding of God – individually, and corporately – also changes.

Does this change God, though? Or is it just a play on words to say that God changes?

I think it’s closer to the latter. God has no need to change, but there is a continuing, individual revelation; God appears to us each individually from where we stand.

This is part of why Rob Bell’s dismissal of core Christian values (namely, the Bible) is so important. If we accept a continuing revelation of God, then we have to have a way of determining what is constant. Otherwise, we lose any ability to tell the difference between God and whim.

We have to have axioms: God exists. He is knowable. He is One. We exist. We are separated from God. We are to love Him. We are to be His people. We can know what His Will is to at least some degree.

Without those things… there is no God. There can be no relationship between us and Him. Destroy any of those, and we lose any context in which God becomes important to us in any way.

That does not preclude a growth in understanding; that doesn’t prevent God from doing different things at different times, fully within His Will.

Consider Nineveh. He sent Jonah to Nineveh to save its people – and a generation later, destroyed Nineveh so much that armies walked nearby, unaware of the existence of what had been the greatest city in the world.

The important question is not “Can God change?” but “Can we change?” We can, and we do. Let’s use that change to become closer to God, and to bring others along with us.

The greatest commandment

Posted on December 17, 2012 Written by savage Leave a Comment

I was thinking about what Jesus said the greatest commandment was: to love the Lord your God with everything you are… and what does that mean?

Here’s the text from which it’s drawn:

³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

(Matthew 22:34-39 ESV)

Here, Jesus is referring to Deuteronomy 6:5:

⁵ You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

(Deuteronomy 6:5 ESV)

Now, this is simple text, right? It has some axiomatic concepts that are pretty obvious:

The Lord exists. (Otherwise, what is to be loved?)
You exist. (Otherwise, what is performing the act of dedication?)
The Lord is supreme. (Otherwise, this is not a “command,” but a… simple aphorism, I suppose.)
You are to commit yourself wholly to the Lord.

There are some others that are also implied, but in my experience they’re rarely discussed.

The commandment is one of total dedication to the Lord. There’s nothing wrong with that; many, however, take it to mean that you subvert everything you are, in order to experience that dedication.

Yet… is that what God wants from us? To become mindless shells?

The sages – and the second greatest commandment – say “no.”

We are to “love our neighbors as we love ourselves,” paraphrased. The key phrase, the empowering phrase, is “… as we love ourselves.” How can we love others if we subjugate who we are? How can we love God if we are not as He made us to be?

To be a certain way – regardless of what that “way” might be – we must first be.

We are to love; we are to respect ourselves such that we can respect others; we must own who we are, or else the offering to God (of our souls, minds, and strength, in the “greatest commandment”) is worthless.

Thoughts for being leaders for our families

Posted on July 12, 2012 Written by savage Leave a Comment

The men’s study for Monday nights has started back up. This week, the fellow speaking (one of my church’s pastors) asked for a more interactive session, where men contributed some of their ideas for being “lead learners” for their families.

The text was the Sh’ma (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

In English, from the ESV:

⁴“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. ⁵ You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. ⁶ And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. ⁷ You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. ⁸ You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. ⁹ You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This particular pastor was a teaching pastor at his church years ago, and had this position despite being a “pioneer Christian,” meaning a Christian whose family was not Christian, and who had no family support or education in the faith. A mentor told him that he should become the “lead learner” for his church, meaning one who learns first and teaches as he learns.

It’s worth pointing out that this pastor is a fine man, a strong Christian, an honest person who is a wonderful example of an overseer in the tradition of 1 Timothy 3:1-7. He blesses those around him.

So he went into the Shema as a source text, showing us that this core statement of Judaism (and thus Christianity, being echoed by Jesus as the “Greatest Commandment” in Matthew 22:35-40) tells us, as leaders of our families, to be the same “lead learners,” to focus on our own lives in Christ such that we can help others in our families as well.

It was interesting feedback. From memory, and thus poorly quoted and incomplete to boot:

Find a mentor.
Love the Bible, and study it.
Study with your family.
Discipline yourself to make study a regular occurrence.

I wanted to add “be willing to fail” to the list – because one of the things I want my sons to know is that the attempt is the thing, not success. That isn’t to say that I want to try to fail, because I don’t.

But I want my sons to see me picking myself up, returning to the task until it’s finished or I have an alternative solution. I want them to see my dedication to accomplishment; I don’t want them to think any failure is the same as all failure.

One thing I’ve started doing recently: I’ve started praying with my family. I started taking time to pray for my family a few months ago, but they don’t see me praying for them; it’s something I can say that I do, without actually doing it.

But if I pray with them, they see the evidence of me taking the time, instead of thinking I’m spending some abstract moment perhaps in prayer for them – they know, without a doubt, that I’m committing time and energy to prayer, they see how I pray and when I pray.

They may not follow my example. They may not even believe my sincerity; that’s all right. Time will heal every issue there, by the grace of God. I just want them to see real evidence of someone taking time to pray for and with them, so that some day they might remember that old, grey, broken-down fellow who took the time to care, and lead the best he could.

And who knows? My sincere hope is that some day they exceed me in every way – and they now see the bar I’m trying to set in my own life.