Son ....or not

In this long slog that I refer to as my Jacob-time, I have been trying to determine what about my faith I believe, and what are the things that are causing me to wrestle with it.  During one of my walks I recently was able to identify and contemplate one of the problem areas.

Like many others through history I struggle with the apparent dichotomy and paradox of a monotheistic faith expressed as a plurality.  Three in one.  Separate and distinct, but all one.  Confusing.  More than that, I have struggled with the fundamentalist  approach to faith that seems to slight not only the Spirit but God the Father as well through a singular focus on the "person of Christ" to the near exclusion of the other two members of the Godhead.  This has bothered me.

Along with that, and clearly related to it, there is the focus on Jesus being the "Son".  That God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.  But yet..... the Son and Father are one, aren't they?  The Word was God and with God.  So wouldn't that mean that God give himself as a sacrifice, not someone else?  How then does this work? 

And then it occurred to me.  Perhaps we have the whole "son" thing wrong.  Are we taking a term literally that was perhaps best used then, and now, as an analogy and as a historical reference point?  Maybe it was intended to describe in terms that humans could understand a relationship that was not gong to be comprehensible to them any more than the concept of God taking human form is comprehensible to us.  As we do perhaps too often, maybe it is an issue of taking literally a term not intended that way.

It struck me, how would the idea of God assuming human form and human nature, be expressed to a primitive people?  Maybe the best analogy of it is a son.  Part mother (human nature and body) and part father (divine nature and infinite life), a son takes attributes from both and combines them.  In human terms, the mother and father unite to generate a totally new and distinct person.  That explains the human nature from Mary, the Divine nature of God.

Where the analogy breaks down is that in human terms the son is totally separate and distinct from the father.  A son's life is a life of it's own unconnected physically to the father (or mother).  As a sacrifice story, it hearkens to the story of faith that the Jews would understand, the story of Abraham and Issac.  Faith. Sacrifice. Relationship. Key elements. The story of Abraham and Issac....one of the classic stories of faith and which has a father sacrificing (or being willing to sacrifice) a son.  If God talked to the Jews in relation to that story, it's a story that they would certainly understand.  Combined with the cultural issue of sons and family, the word works.

As an analogy this fails in the area of life ownership.  On earth, a son has a life independent of any other; once born the son has relationship with the parents but his life...the beating of his heart, the pulsing of his blood...is his alone, untied to the parents.  The theological challenge for me is that using the earthly analogy, one can give only their own life.  I can not offer anyone else's life and have it be the same as me offering my own.

This is why it seems to me that perhaps this is an analogy.  The Lord our God is One. He came to earth and assumed the human nature and human body, but did so while still God, still infinite.  In that form He offered up himself as a sacrifice to cover our sins; His human nature covering the human sin and having human death, His infinite nature providing the infinite blood for all the sins that ever happened.  The part of God that became corporeal was offered up, died, and rose again.  The blood was divinely-human blood, human enough to cover us, infinite enough to cover for us.

I know.  Maybe it's heresy.  Maybe I'm nuts.  But it makes sense to me.  It clarifies in my head the things that I struggle with...the singular focus on only one-third of the Godhead, the issue of one offering up another who is not them.  And maybe it gets me out of my obstruction enough to move on in the struggle.

I'm hoping it's the latter :)

Still.....

I have been in this parched, withering, God-forsaken wilderness and God-search mode for so many years I no longer can remember a time when I was quiet and still with my faith and beliefs.  For so many years now, there have been so many struggles  so much angst and pain....and yet still no solution.   I feel like David in his worst times....How long Oh Lord will I struggle so, will you let me flail around looking for you while all the while remain quiet and hidden? I have even (finally?) started to question why I question, to impugn my own motives.  While I originally started with the question of what I was, was to do, was to become after the divorce, it has become more.  That much was, perhaps, the inevitable outcome of the divorce and the apocalyptic dissolution and desolation of my world, my expectations, my past, and my future.  Looking for reasons and a path  forward would be expected. 

But I never found that new world, that undiscovered, uncharted land.  I still seek to have connections with God....and to find another partner for this life.  The questions have grown,  and have grown deeper, perhaps more cynical.  Questions about the trinity and our singular fixation on the person of Jesus to the exclusion of the two parts of the One who is the One, the I AM.  Questions about why certain sins are viewed as anathema, while others are accepted without judgment and condemnation or ostracism. Questions on how scripture written 2-3000 years ago is to be read and interpreted in these times, and how/if the OT impacts us today if at all.  What "spin" have we put on Scripture in 2000 years, adopting church-made terms and phrases and perspectives as though they were actually what was written. 

And yet, I still seek God, still yearn to love Him and to be loved by Him.  I have learned in the past six or eight years that despite my "feelings" I must posses a strong-ish faith of some type, or I'd have just walked away and given up by now.  I recently (finally) came to realize that God knows my particular, specific, debilitating sins/sin nature and isn't repulsed, doesn't cast me into a particular circle of hell for it.  But I haven't realized the grace of that knowledge He has.

I know that who/what I am has changed over these years, not enough perhaps but at least noticeably.  I care more about others, I give more, I accept more.  Do I love more?  I don't know; I think so but I'm not able to really know.  I still don't "feel" His presence and His Grace.  I still 'feel' like I belong tossed into the trash heap of worth and relations.

But I plod on .......still....still.

d-o-g and G-O-D

It has been a long time since I've blogged here.  While some it was due to winter and depression, a major portion of it was due to my just being bone-tired of the constant battle and discourse going on inside me about God, faith, church and me.  I've been wrestling with God for years now.  Too many years perhaps but at least a number of years and I'm still doing it.  Maybe the past few months have been the resting time, the re-grouping time, or the re-configuring.  I haven't figure it out yet.

Today a friend said something that sparked an image for me, and maybe that image helps me understand where I am and accept it.  He quoted Augustine, church father and man of severally chequered past.  In his writing, Augustine famously said that "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Restless heart.

Yup.

The image that I formed was that of an old dog.  Ever watch a dog  get ready to lie down and take a nap?  The go around in circles, first one way and then the next.  They lay down, get up again, circle again, and the dance continues until they finally have it just so....and then they're out.

I think I'm a dog with God.

I keep going around and around, trying to get comfortable, to find my spot.  There are so many things that confuse, trouble, perplex me.  From the Godhead (if Christ is God made flesh, why do we so emphasize him being Son, wasn't that a figure of speech we've gotten too literal about?), to what it takes to be saved (call on Jesus? Confess and repent? Believe? Demonstrate fruits?  What?) to the "rules" of life (it's grace, it's works, it's both, it's neither).

I'm seriously thinking that my former love was right.  She said, with all her flaws, struggles, hurts, that it was really simple.  " God is love.  Dont'' be a schmuck".  Maybe she's on to something.  I doubt that I'll stop my ruminating, but maybe if I just hold onto it, I'll be okay.

God is love.  Don't be schmuck

Maybe this is what this dog needs to see about God.