Category: Contemplations

Two doubts

A friend asked me last week, “What is the viewpoint of Christianity on people who believe in Jesus as their savior, but they have doubt about it?” Here is my reply:

I had to think about your question for a few minutes. I think there are two ways to doubt, and I think the Christian view depends on which way the person doubts.  To illustrate my opinion about the two ways to doubt, read Matthew 14:22-32, the story of Jesus walking on the water.

Peter shows two kinds of faith. The first faith says, “Jesus is really who he says he is.” Jesus says, “It’s me, not a ghost,” and Peter believes him and tests him. He doesn’t just test him by saying, “Okay, what did we eat for breakfast yesterday?”, he tests him by asking God to do something for him that only God could do. In this case, Peter believed that Jesus, who had the power of God, could make him walk on water. A ghost couldn’t do that. I feel like there is a comparison between this and the faith that says, “God, if you are really who you say you are in the Bible, save me,” and then makes an action of the heart to “step out of the boat” in trust.

There’s another kind of faith. Peter looked at the waves and then began to sink, because he doubted. What did he doubt? I don’t think he was doubting whether it was really Jesus at that point. He was doubting whether he could really walk on water. (I don’t blame him—it would be freaky.) He lacked faith in himself. Was he really able to do this? By our analogy, this is the doubt that asks, “Am I really able to receive God’s salvation? Do I believe enough? Am I good enough?” Lots of Christians sometimes think, “Am I really saved?”

But this kind of doubt doesn’t mean that a person “might be” a Christian, because, like Timothy Keller tweeted the other day, “It is the object of our faith, not the quality of our faith, that saves us.” That’s a beautiful mystery about Christianity—it’s not on you. You don’t even have to “believe well enough.” Peter cried out to Jesus and Jesus grabbed him and kept him from drowning. God is merciful on one who believes and doubts, but calls to God to help their doubt. I think the other good example of this is in Mark 9:14-29, the story of the boy with the unclean spirit. Personally, I have often felt like that father who cried, “I believe, help my unbelief!” (verse 24).

So every person has to look at their own heart. If they have the kind of doubt that says, “Umm…..I don’t think you are really real,” and stays in the boat, then do they really believe? But if they have stepped out of the boat and truly called out to Jesus in their heart, then they should have no fear about their doubt—God has got them by the hand.

The essential issue

I just reread a series of posts I made over a year ago about gay rights in an attempt to plumb the depths of the Christian stance. It’s always interesting to read yourself from a long while back. Very insightful to read things I wouldn’t otherwise remember saying or thinking. (It also makes me think that I would have to clean this blog before I run for political office, heh.) I suppose I agree with much of what I said then: I still don’t believe gays should be allowed to marry, or that a gay lifestyle is okay. However, I do think that my perspective on how I should approach the issue of gay rights has changed significantly.

Essentially my feeling on the matter is that it’s not worth writing about anymore. Looking back at my posts, considering everything, I just don’t think it’s what I want to focus on. This doesn’t mean I’m changing my position; it just means that, as a believer, I need to play defense on this issue, or deal with it on a need-to-talk basis. This fascinating interview with Rosaria Champagne Butterfield drove home how much overlooking the issue is really the key to dealing with it. If someone brings up the topic, looking for a fight, I’ve got to be like Jesus and hold them off with evasive answers that point to the deeper issues. Often Jesus refused to fall into the traps of the Pharisees and Sadducees when they laid out a controversial catch-22 and held a mic eagerly in his face. He transcended the issues. Taxes to Caesar. Marriage in the afterlife. What authority he did his ministry under. He was a master at bypassing nonessential issues to get to essential ones, and I should have the same approach.

The essential issue that I should focus on as a Christian isn’t homosexuality vs. heterosexuality–in fact it’s not sexuality at all.

Reading St. Augustine’s confessions this year reminded me that sexuality is something to be entirely submitted to the Lord. His conversion experience brought a commitment to total continence and lifelong celibacy. Wow. That’s not something you hardly ever see, at least with express intention, in the evangelical church. Yet it was widely practiced and regarded as superior in the 395 AD church. Is the heart of the married believer any different? No. Being married this past year (since June 2012), I have learned that even in marriage God calls us to lay sexuality on the altar. Whether one partner thinks sex is god or the other thinks it’s gross, or worse if they both err in the same direction, it takes the grace of God to realize that sex is a gift from him, and to have the willpower to stamp it “GOD’S” and let go of our “rights” in the matter.

Reading Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan made the final connection between this and the gay issue. He came out as gay and lived that way for several years, getting involved in drugs and drug dealing too. When he did come to faith, it was through brokenness, in prison, through the prayers of his mother. It wasn’t an intellectual decision: he reports his conversion as happening first, then it sort of occurred to him that he should give up drugs, and lastly, his heart already awash with the holy spirit, it dawned on him that his lifestyle was also under God’s say. Yuan never says that he doesn’t feel gay impulses anymore or that he has heterosexual feelings. He isn’t “happily married now with five kids.” Although I haven’t read him further to check, it seems his natural sexual orientation hasn’t changed much. But the most powerful thing that he said in the final chapter was, “I realized God doesn’t call us to heterosexuality. He calls us to holy sexuality.”

Augustine and Yuan brought me to a new understanding of Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:10-12:

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

Before I had eschewed the application of this passage to sexual orientation because I had heard it very poorly done by alleged Christians who used it as license for homosexual lifestyle. But that’s not the spirit. Eunuchs don’t have sex. The point is that people abstain from a sexually active lifestyle for various reasons. Perhaps Augustine is one who “made himself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps Yuan is one who has “been so from birth.” (Here I think it unnecessary to split hairs between nature and nurture. My doctor friend Paul assured me that there is no “gay gene” and actually laughed at me for asking. The point being that the feelings or orientation is not expressly willed. And we must agree that this is often the case with those who encounter sexual impulses.)

This passage, together with that confounding one in 1 Corinthians 7 in which Paul recommends celibacy to marriage, seem to make it clear that sexual activity should not control the Christian, or even be assumed as a right or taken for granted. It is granted only to those “to whom it is given”. Christianity doesn’t elevate those who are married (in fact, perhaps the opposite). God ordains marriage as a holy institution between a man and a woman, but there is nothing about marriage or even the orientation capacity to enter it that is of substance in the eternal kingdom. You are not less or more based on your marriage status or sexual orientation, as long as that sexuality is submitted to him and sanctified by him.

The issue with gay rights is the gay agenda, not the people, because the agenda is an ideology that elevates the right to a lifestyle over the message of Christ, that we must lose our life to find it again in him. Sexuality is a smokescreen. It just happens to be a huge part of how humans are wired, and thus a litmus to the heart, but like every single fiber of our heart and every synapse of our mind, it must be buried with Christ in death, until it is raised with him. What part of us will we withhold from God? We will always withhold when his spirit has not overcome us, and we will never withhold when it has.

Thus the essential issue worth chasing, the issue to which all issues return, is an issue of the heart, the love struggle between man and God, the Gospel. In short, I have decided to make my life’s voice more about the gospel and less about issues like gay rights. Of course there is a place for engagement with culture and for articulating the Christian response to things. Yet I am encouraged by the memory that we and our kingdom are not of this world, and that the way to make social change is to champion this one simple message, Christ crucified, and let it wreak havoc on every other sphere.

Socrates and the living word that has a soul

From Socrates’ Phaedrus:

Soc. I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.

Phaedr. That again is most true.

Soc. Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power-a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten?

Phaedr. Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?

Soc. I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.

Phaedr. You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which written word is properly no more than an image?

Soc. Yes, of course that is what I mean. And now may I be allowed to ask you a question: Would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take the seeds, which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in sober seriousness plant them during the heat of summer, in some garden of Adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees them in eight days appearing in beauty? at least he would do so, if at all, only for the sake of amusement and pastime. But when he is in earnest he sows in fitting soil, and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight months the seeds which he has sown arrive at perfection?

Phaedr. Yes, Socrates, that will be his way when he is in earnest; he will do the other, as you say, only in play.

Soc. And can we suppose that he who knows the just and good and honourable has less understanding, than the husbandman, about his own seeds?

Phaedr. Certainly not.

Soc. Then he will not seriously incline to “write” his thoughts “in water” with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others?

Phaedr. No, that is not likely.

Soc. No, that is not likely-in the garden of letters he will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are spent.

Phaedr. A pastime, Socrates, as noble as the other is ignoble, the pastime of a man who can be amused by serious talk, and can discourse merrily about justice and the like.

Soc. True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness. 

————-

True words live in souls. There is a living word of knowledge, a reality which language points to, that exists in the mind. Words outside souls, on paper or in oration, are but the images or symbols of the reality. St. John calls Jesus “The Word” because the message Jesus communicated to us was not merely spoken or written words but living word, that is, his soul. The True Word was Jesus himself, and his words were the images of him. “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). God sent no mere word in ink, nor did he plant his message in the pulp of papyrus, but rather in the soil of living hearts. “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). He gave more than a divine message or a holy book that “preserves a solemn silence”—he put his Voice into the hearts of his people to be the continual, living fountain of knowledge. Rhema beneath logos. This gift preserves the logos, and protects the texts passed down through history. “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:26). It is no less than the texts, yet it is much more, for “He will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). The Lord, a wise farmer, came and tilled our uncongenial souls, making them suitable soil for his word, and wrote in them “an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner”, the Holy Spirit that enlivens the Body of Christ and makes us “happy to the utmost extent of human happiness.” The Word lives on the pages of the holy book, but more so, he lives in the souls of the Church. Praise be to God, who, being affectionately desirous of us, did not share with us a proclamation of redemption having “the attitude of life”, but appeared to us as the “living word of knowledge which has a soul,” “being found in the likeness of a man” (Philippians 2:7), and by his death setting up more than a school of scholars—a living and breathing spiritual dynasty that “shall stand forever,” (Daniel 2:44), in whose hearts burns the living knowledge of divine truth.

On the terms “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Holidays”

A lot of people in Christian circles, including me until two weeks ago, grumble about the fact that the term “Christmas” is disappearing from signs, ads, and cultural vernacular, being replaced with vague terms like “the holidays”. However, I recently had a thought that stopped my grumblings: We should appreciate it when people outside the Church replace “Christmas” with “holidays”. Let me explain.

The Christmas season is a Christian holy time remembered by those who follow Christ and honor his birth. However, as an American cultural entity it has increasingly been reduced to a generic holiday—reindeer, Santa, snowmen, snowflakes, Christmas cookies, mistletoe, sleigh bells jingling, Christmas trees, presents. If you’re lucky, some angels and shiny stars that vaguely resemble something from the Bible story. But when someone who is not a Christian celebrates this stuff, he is ripping off the holy, turning the temple of God into a den of “happy feelings”. I went to one of those drive-through Christmas lights shows with my in-laws last week, and there was a big lights display saying “Celebrate our Differences!” with Hanukah, Kwanza, and Christmas icons. Celebrating our differences is not celebrating Christmas. How many times do you see those signs that spell out “Peace on Earth” in ornate typography preceded by the words “Glory to God in the Highest”, which is part of the original quote? In separation, do they not become words of “‘peace, peace’, when there is no peace”? My point is that the secular version of Christmas isn’t of value to the kingdom of God, because generic tidings of comfort and joy do nothing but bolster man’s faith in his own goodness—it is THE tidings of comfort and joy, the message of which the Church is the steward, communicated in full, that are holy. Outside of that message, the aura of Christmas is a distraction at best.

You would rightly ask, doesn’t a cultural celebration of Christmas help weak or “cultural” Christians to get closer to God? Isn’t it better to have a culture where you can occasionally see nativities amidst the holiday gunk? Yes, but the celebration is good to the extent that it comes from the church, not from the culture. Let nativities be put in the front yards of Christians who are often afraid to be seen as Christians, as a step of faith aided and energized by the special gravity of the holy season, rather than as a way to be “traditional” or because it makes the rest of their Christmas lights feel somehow more righteous. And for the family whose minivan sees the nativity while driving around to look at Christmas lights, it is of spiritual value only inasmuch as Dad or Mom explains its real meaning and lifts it up as ultimate. To misunderstand the nativity, or to explain it only partially, lumping it in as just another icon of the “season of good will” alongside warm-hearted Scrooges and Grinches and miracles on 34th Street, is to put a muzzle on the power of the nativity and the good news that it means. And we should not expect our “culture” to fully understand the message of the Incarnation nor preach it rightly—that is the job of the Church.

So let “Merry Christmas” be said by those who really mean it, and as for those who hesitate to say it, preferring “Happy Holidays”—those who do not identify with Christianity, or who lay claim to it in sentiment yet deny its power and render it neither exclusivity nor authority—let them be welcome to refer to their generic celebration of human virtue or family ties in generic terms. In fact, I regard it as a sign of respect for Christmas that people are no longer willing to refer to the generic celebration by that name. We who believe in the true meaning of Christmas must observe it in a sacred way that brings its full weight to our hearts and the hearts of those who watch us observe it, so that it will be made evidently more than and distinct from a winter break or time off or a time to see relatives or to give gifts and charity—as the holy day of the birth of Christ our Lord.

Authority issues (Freedom is not independence)

In church this week, Jeff Noble compared King Solomon to King Jesus. When Solomon became king he had to consolidate his empire by eliminating several people who posed threats to his power. For example, his brother Adonaijah, who had already tried to take the throne, without David’s consent. Jesus, in the same way, will consolidate his kingdom. In the apocalypse he will come as a warrior with a flaming sword, surrounded by his angel army. On that day “every knee shall bow,” and those who in life rejected his kingship will then be rejected from his kingdom. As Jeff said, “He will tolerate no challenge to his authority.” There’s no doubt about it: You don’t have to look very far in the Bible to perceive that God asserts unequivocal, unflinching, absolute authority over creation.

Jeff also said that we in the modern West have authority issues. Ever since the Boston Tea Party, Americans have been throwing off yokes with a cry of, “Freedom!” You can see it in our political parties, our approaches to sex, sexual orientation, medical decisions, guns, property (“get offa my land!”), money, lifestyle, music, fashion, you name it. Take it from Miley Cyrus in her hit We Can’t Stop:

It’s our party we can do what we want to
It’s our house we can love who we want to
It’s our song we can sing we if we want to
It’s my mouth I can say what I want to

Independence and equality is deeply rooted into the American value system. And for good reason, I’ll say. It has developed out of oppression and inequality. The Boston Tea Party, from King George III. The French Revolution, from the strangling of the poor. Civil rights, from racism and slavery. We are right to champion freedom and equality and resist undue assertions of authority.

However, this same skepticism of authority has gradually doubled back on God. When we postmodernists bump up against this absolutely authoritative King God, some of us recoil in revulsion (“How dare this God demand to be worshiped? How selfish!”)(cf. Oprah). Some of us just don’t connect with that part of God. We obey him out of obligation and fear and performance-based acceptance. But whether we are the prodigal or the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, whether we run away from God’s authority or try lock-step conformity, something is missing. The Bible calls us to embrace and love God’s authority (cf. Basically all of Psalm 119).

How do we do that? How do we love and embrace God’s authority? 

I believe the answer is in part that God’s grace enlightens our hearts to depend on God’s strong hand like a son does his father, and find it more freeing than independence.

Freedom and independence aren’t always the same. Independence means not needing other things. Take marriage for example. If my wife and I are living in a dysfunctional cycle where I come home and do my own thing, don’t talk to her, don’t pay attention to her, and she does the same thing, keeping to her room, ignoring and avoiding me, are we independent? In a sense our relationship is more independent than it should be. We don’t rely on each other to do anything. However, is that relationship free? I don’t think so. Pins and needles. Awkwardness. Unaddressed hurt. That relationship is a ball and chain, and the more independent you become, the heavier the weight secretly gets. That’s because freedom isn’t just being in charge of yourself, cut loose, independent: Freedom is being properly dependent. For the slave, it means getting out of there, but for marriage, it means coming together and learning how to communicate needs and meet each others needs in love.

As marital freedom comes through right dependence in marriage, so ultimate freedom comes through right dependence on God. God made us for relationship with him, so freedom means learning our roles in relationship to him. For example, my money is not my domain, it is God’s gift, and I am a steward. When I learn that role, I can loosen my death grip on the wad of cash and be generous. And as I do it, trusting in God to provide what I need instead of myself, I learn that he is much better suited to the task, and I can breath easy, and finally be free. While assertion of authority by a man against another man is often oppression, when God asserts his authority, it is like the strong hands of a father as he reaches over his frustrated child, trying to unscrew a cap, and says, “Here, let me.”

We are left to decide whether we will yank our bottle away from the Father and say, “No, it’s mine!” or yield willingly to his strong hands and learn how much love resides within his power. The issue of how we handle God’s assertion of authority is in the end a question of whether we know and believe that he loves us. In any sphere in which we know the love of God, by faith, by his precious and very great promises, we will not WANT to do it on our own. We will embrace his authority as a child does that of a good father whom he knows loves him back. We will find freedom in dependence.

Are Allah and God the same?

Well, in some sense, yes. Allah is simply the Arabic word for “God” – Arabic language Bibles use that word too. And of course, Islam shares a large amount of historical ground with Christians and Jews. They too worship “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Any Muslim will tell you that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same God. It’s just that Jews and later Christians mistook, perverted, or forgot the teaching of their prophets, and so God finally sent his final, once-for-all revelation (through Mohammed), promising that this time, he would protect it forever against human tampering. So Muslims believe that Christians are simply misguided worshippers of Allah.

It’s true, Christianity and Islam are 99% the same in the essence of daily life and outward practice of faith (prayer, fasting, charity, praise and worship, etc.). The more I learn from Muslims about the inner workings of their faith, the more I am impressed and amused by how remarkably similar we are. Many missionaries encourage Muslim converts to keep many of their practices when they become “followers of Isa”.

However, if we’re talking about the true identity of the God that Christians worship and the God that Muslims worship, I believe they are seriously different.

Islam is all about the absolute unity of God. It’s called Tawhid, the oneness and uniqueness of God. In fact, associating any created thing with Allah is called “shirk” and is an unpardonable sin. In Islam Jesus is a great and special prophet. They even believe he will come back from heaven. But by no means did he share in Godhood (nor did he claim to until his followers put words in his mouth).

This collides with the Christian concept of God as trinity, and subsequently with the hypostatic union of Christ (100% God and 100% man). These two concepts of God have been nonnegotiable elements of Christian doctrine since the earliest councils that defined the faith. They’re not just important because all Christians hold them; they are paradoxes of faith that are essential parts of the gospel. We must believe that Jesus is God because if Jesus is not God, his death is a mere example of obedience, not atonement laden with the infinite power of divine blood, and his resurrection was not victory over death on our behalf. (It is no coincidence that Islam teaches that Jesus did not die on the cross and was not resurrected.) While Christians do affirm with Muslims that Christ is prophet, they believe he is so much gloriously, crucially more. His claims about himself according to the Bible (his co-creation of the world, eternal existence, one-mindedness with God, claiming the name I AM, the ability to forgive sins and to curse, etc.) were drastically presumptuous “shirk” if he was not in fact God Himself. As C.S. Lewis said, “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse…let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

So the question of the identity of Jesus ends up redefining our concept of God/Allah at the root level from which faith springs, causing a butterfly effect that seismically splits between man-trying-to-get-to-God religion and God-coming-to-man gospel. The hope of the believer is not in prayers, in fasting, in praise and worship, in devotion, in charity, in honorable living, or in any of the other thousand surface things that Islam and Christianity have in common; our hope is in Allah who took on flesh to do what we could never do, to live the human life we should have lived, and to die the death we should have died, Immanuel, God With Us.

Can universities do without God?

A while ago I went to a lecture at Virginia Tech from a guest professor, Dr. James Anderson, entitled “Why Universities Can’t Do Without God: The theistic foundations of modern education and research.” Let me try to get the gist of his argument down.

(1) The existence of universities assumes the existence of two things: rational thought and objective moral standards.

Dr. Anderson pointed out that things like university honor codes, the protection of intellectual property rights, and expectations for the behavior of students, faculty and staff, are all based on the assumption that objective moral standards exist. As if to corroborate his point, about a week after the lecture, I got an email that was distributed to the entire VT community announcing the 2012 rights and responsibilities of the Virginia Tech community. It set forth strong moral expectations for everyone in the community. Furthermore, I got an email about a university-wide initiative to support charities, with the encouragement to “have a heart and do our part” – an appeal to moral virtues like selflessness and generosity.

Secondly, Anderson pointed out that rational thought is an assumed foundation upon which the university is built. Academic discourse and scientific inquiry in any field of research attempts to articulate, ascertain and define realities. The principles or reason and argument are inherent. Truth values for statements are assumed.

The next part of his argument is constructed in modus tollens. He argues that, if God does not exist, these two things could not exist either. To show this, he quotes four prominent atheist philosophers who discuss the implications of an honest, consistent atheistic worldview on the issues of objective morality and rational thought.

[at this point my notes vanish. Oh well, I present the above for what it’s worth]

 

Old Testament laws in perspective

I once had a conversation with a friend who said that the God revealed in the Old Testament seemed, generally, a ruthless, crude, righteousness-and-damnation God who demanded sacrifice and killed those who disobeyed, in stark contrast to God in the New Testament. “Can they be the same God?” he asked. I didn’t really know how to answer him. I think you’ll agree: at first glance, God seems to soften out quite a bit in the New Covenant. But God is unchanging, the same yesterday, today, and forever. It’s suspicious if his demeanor changes significantly over time. So why is the Old Testament the way it is?

Paul Copan’s book Is God a Moral Monster? has helped a lot. It addresses the accusations of the New Atheists (Dawkins, Hitchins, etc.) that the God of the Old Testament was a self-centered God who endorsed polygamy, misogyny, and genocide (of the Caananites), and who enforced all sorts of irrational laws (the cleanliness and dietary laws). Above Copan’s tactful exegesis of difficult passages, including many linguistic considerations that alleviate common misreadings, he posits a general perspective toward the Old Testament that is capable of assimilating the almost-embarrassing passages of the Old Testament on a sweeping scale. In essence, he argues that the Old Testament laws were not an ultimate moral code – they were neither intended to be permanent, nor did they claim to be. This complies with overall Biblical teaching on the dispensation of the covenants, where the Old Law served as a tutor and temporary preparation until the coming of the Messiah.

Furthermore, the laws self-admittedly conceded to many immoral realities of the ancient Near East, but in addressing those realities, they did not endorse them. They were examples of “case law” that assumed an undesirable event in order to explain what sort of remedial action ought to be taken in that case. In this way the Old Testament is full of examples of negotiation with the errors of the ancient Near East, to draw them significantly  albeit relatively, closer to the absolute moral standards. They are contextualized scaffolding, and should not be confused with the ideals themselves.

I am who I am

In semantics theory, nouns are defined essentially as things that, when you add a predicate [event or attribute] to them, make a statement with truth value [are either true or false]. For example, “Bob” is something that needs a predicate like “breathes”, and when you put them together, “Bob breathes” should be true or false for a given model of the world.

Paradoxically, verbs are no more seminal. They are defined as things that, when you add a noun [entity] to them, make a statement with truth value. “Breathes” needs a noun to make the statement “Bob breathes.”

One of the beautiful things about God’s name YHWH, “I am that/who I am”, is that it is a paradoxical loop. The subject is defined by the predicate, and the predicate is defined by the subject. God seems to say, “You want me to define myself? My being itself is a statement.” He is the one thing that doesn’t need something else to be true. To have truth value, every entity needs a predicate, every predicate needs to have an entity as its subject. But God is both: He Himself is true. That is so beautifully and mysteriously evident in The Name.

There is no subject about which God can predicate, no thing that he describes, nothing outside of himself. He is not bound by any external concept. Similarly, no predicate can comprehend and define God the Subject. The only way to describe God is Himself. “God is love” (1 John) does not mean that love delimits or defines God, but that God is God, and love is a part of God. God defines love.

He defines everything, in fact. See, everything else in the world is either subject or predicate, swirling around in a circus of dependent definitions. When I want to know what some new thing is, I will look it up in Wikipedia or the Dictionary. When I want to know what God is, I must sit in holy silence, “be still and know that He is.” He is the root of all being, the paradox, the first mover, the uncaused cause, the self-defining entity. I AM WHO I AM. There is no more awesome name, none worthy of greater awe and worship. Hallelujah: Praise be to YHWH.