Simplifications

After months of voracious reading and many bible studies I’m just so done with what other people have to say about God. Particularly the ‘hard’ questions. The ‘what the crap?!’ questions… We don’t say that do we? Well, I’m saying it: WHAT THE CRAP??!

I’m tired of what others have to say about who God is. So, I started back at the beginning, literally. I started at Genesis and I’m reading the bible through, without commentary. Who are You, Lord? This is my question. Only He can answer.

I’m in Numbers presently… it’s painful. It seems like God wipes out a few thousand people every few months for some form of disobedience. Its been driving me crazy. What is up with that? Merciful… loving… ?

In all honesty previously I just chalked scriptural events like this up to ‘well, it was a different time.’ Yeah, but HE is not a different God. Yahweh is still Yahweh, yesterday, today and tomorrow so Yahweh who killed 17,000 people before Aaron interceded is still reigning supreme. Ignoring that with which I am uncomfortable does not make it less true.

So, I’ve been asking Him, almost constantly. Who are you, Lord?

He is a God who kills. I don’t like to talk about that do I? I like to talk about the love, the mercy, the patience… and I try to fit the Almighty into the tiny. Then when He puts on His boots and kicks the walls down I’m blown away.

I think today He put it to me in a context I can grasp. When I taught Jr. High (and quite honestly when I taught college) the first weeks of a new year were rough. Really really rough. They were rough on me and rough on my students because they were the ‘lay down the law’ weeks. This month set the tone of my classroom for an entire year and I absolutely could not afford to let anything but anything slide. If a student stepped a millimeter over the line I had to enforce consistent consequences or chaos would reign. Such consistent discipline created a classroom environment that allowed me to teach in the “butts in the air” style that is most suited to my personality and subject. In the end it gave everybody a lot more freedom, allowed us all to enjoy each other a great deal more and I got to regularly show my kids how much I cared.

Numbers describes the establishment of Israel as God’s chosen nation. I think, in a super super simplified way, that maybe God had to get it through to them that He is the great I AM or they would have just kept suffering and never would have come into a place where they could enjoy their favored status. I’m not saying God patterns himself after teachers but maybe that good teachers pattern themselves after the Creator of teaching? – Just a thought   

Then, all of this thinking about teaching brought me back to when I was coaching Jr. High basketball. I had a precious, and I do mean precious, group of girls who I adored. They were fast approaching womanhood with integrity and I was fiercely protective. One morning after an away game I discovered that my girls, my girls, had left the bus absolutely trashed. I don’t mean it was a little messy I mean it was trashed. I was so mad I probably turned purple. Those girls ran lines that afternoon until they puked. I was beyond furious… at the same time I took absolutely NO pleasure in watching them suffer. I hated it. I hated every second and fought the temptation to let up after each set of ‘suicides.’ I asked myself why I was so mad and it was simple; I knew these girls, I loved these girls, and such behavior was way beneath them. I honestly don’t think their punishment would have been as severe if I didn’t know and love them so well. Seems contradictory but if you think about it I think it makes sense.

God tells us He disciplines those He loves. Discipline sucks and I’m soo not blowing off the death of thousands of people. It sickens me. I’m just thinking it sickens Him too.