curiosity and color

The funny thing about calling into question the accepted understanding of a tertiary issue (as I have done over the last year or so, regarding the status of women in Christian spaces) is that you find out how many people actually hold it as a secondary doctrine—or even almost primary. Not because they really believe that what I think about the “role” of women in churches and marriages has any bearing on my standing before God (I don’t think?), but because our whole culture currently runs on extremes, and we generally don’t know how to handle the idea that gray area or other interpretations exist. Especially as it regards things of God and the Bible.

Of all things, surely these, at least, must be black-and-white.

Right?

I certainly used to think so. But the more time I’ve spent poring over the pages of the Bible and listening to the Spirit that brings them to life, the less I’ve been able to retain that monochrome worldview. Do we really think that the nature of God and His glorious design for Creation and humanity and the kingdom of heaven can be described without a full scope of color and light? Ezekiel tried to tell us what it was like to witness just one brief vision of God’s glory, and the passage is bursting with color:

Something like a throne with the appearance of lapis lazuli was above the expanse over their heads. On the throne, high above, was someone who looked like a human. From what seemed to be his waist up, I saw a gleam like amber, with what looked like fire enclosing it all around. From what seemed to be his waist down, I also saw what looked like fire. There was a brilliant light all around him. The appearance of the brilliant light all around was like that of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day. This was the appearance of the likeness of the Lord’s glory. When I saw it, I fell facedown and heard a voice speaking.

Ezekiel 1:26-28

It gives me pause to recall how much of my life I’ve spent limiting how God is “allowed” to act in my life, in the church, or in the world. We build our tidy sets of theological walls, made from little rows of black words on a white page, to contain our gods—proof-texting and cherry-picking and forgetting altogether that the true God operates in another dimension, where our comfortable boundaries are meaningless.

In that realm, color and creativity and living water flood out from every crevice. Curiosity is rewarded with wonder. Ask, and receive—seek, and find. The Father God reveals His heart. The Savior Jesus wins our access. The Holy Spirit beckons us in.

It’s a new and better Eden, lush with the Creator’s life-giving presence and heart-changing glory. He is abundant, and abundantly generous, giving us Himself.

God forbid we wait around to die instead of taking hold of the victory and living like citizens of that kingdom now! Abiding in the nurture of God’s heart is for today. Abiding in the triumph of Christ’s defeat of sin and death is for today. Abiding in the tranquility of the Spirit’s voice is for today.

We’ve met the true God. Can we stop trying to shrink Him down into the form of a golden calf?

We’ve been set free, made new by grace. Can we actually shake off our chains and stop fearing what it means to live without the tutelage of the law?

We’ve been adopted as daughters and sons into the Royal Family! Can we please stop acting like we’re still banished and cursed?

I know that we haven’t entered the full reality of Christ’s victory yet. But that seems like a poor excuse to actively choose a life characterized by defeat or narrow-mindedness. The Spirit of God—who raised Jesus from the dead!—lives in us. Hallelujah!

Let’s wonder at these truths, and fear not our wondering, because if God is good and holy, He will reveal His goodness and holiness in response to our honest curiosity. And then, even here on earth, we might get to see hints of heaven’s glorious color.

incomprehensible

Last week in Bible study we covered this rather-difficult-to-put-in-a-nutshell truth: God is incomprehensible.

Several times while I was reading the material, I caught myself thinking, Duh. Of course God is incomprehensible. This is obvious. Why do I need to read about it?

Oh, the irony of thinking Duh in response to the words “God is incomprehensible.” That reaction is exactly why I needed to read about it.

If you know me or are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have made it my life’s work not only to know God as He has revealed Himself in His Word, but also to make His Word accessible to others so they can know Him, too. But God is incomprehensible—and that makes this whole errand seem, at face value, rather foolish. I can know God in a measure sufficient to walk in relationship with Him and to whet my appetite to know Him more, but I will never know Him entirely, even with an eternity ahead of me to try (let alone in this life).

The more I meditated on God’s incomprehensibility over the last week or so, the more I noticed two internal reactions surfacing: first, frustration; then, humility.

Frustration that I have read the Bible front to back many times over, and still barely skimmed the top off its riches of wisdom. That I’ve studied under scholars, both formally and informally, and can’t even hold all of that information in my mind at once—when there is infinitely more out there to learn. That I—a person who finds great security in facts and knowledge, turning every anxiety into a deep-dive of research and logic to soothe my fears—will never know God fully. Not in this life and not in the next. Never.

I know Him enough to know that this isn’t a frightening truth. But it is a frustrating one. I can imagine myself sometime in eternity future, still trying to plumb the depths of His character, and the deeper I go the deeper He gets. I suppose it will be something like trying to travel to the edge of an ever-expanding universe.

But after the hot swell of frustration came that gentle friend, Humility.

The incomprehensibility of God has humbled me to the point of wondering how I have ever made any but the most basic and absolute claims about who God is and what He is like. How we could ever try to color Him inside any lines—denominational, political, cultural—or stuff Him inside any box? I keep thinking of the entire book of Job, in which Job and four secular philosophers wax eloquent on how God would definitely do this and never do that, and God’s response is, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

What if my denomination isn’t the one doing it “right”—it’s just doing it right in one small way, while the others do it right in other ways, together forming a kaleidoscope of glimpses of God’s glory? What if my political values aren’t “right”—they are just one valid way of looking at many complicated issues, and there is more than one way to love my neighbor with my vote? What if my cultural blinders keep me from seeing and accepting and celebrating how differently God might be working in people and places who are very much unlike me?

If I have learned anything by meditating on God’s incomprehensible nature, it’s that I know far less than I think I do about God. I don’t know which church He’d go to, which style of worship He’d choose, which candidate He would vote for, or whether He really still calls people to obedience through dreams and visions. What I do know is that He is good, and that He is King, and that all of us are probably wrong about a humbling portion of the rest of our most-cherished beliefs.