Opus 2025-669: To be, or not…

I have heard God described as the great I Am.  This, of course, goes back originally to the conversation that God had with Moses,

(Exo 3:14 KJV)  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

This was a great declaration by God differentiating Him from all the other gods. It was Him stating that He existed.

Then we have the I Am statements of Jesus.  These occur in the gospels where He is asked a question and in the translations that we see it usually comes across as, “I am he”.  The first of these in John is,

(Joh 8:24 KJV)  I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.

If you have the right translation, you’ll notice that the “he” is not in the Greek text.  He simply repeating the statement from Exodus, “I am”.

So one of the great truths that I have embraced and I hope you have too is that God exists and that He is alive.  The question comes what does it mean to be alive?

That gets me looking around my yard and trying to come up with a definition.  The sidewalk is not alive.  The oak tree is.  What are some differences?  One can grow, one can’t.  One can die, one can’t.  One can change on its own, the other can only change from outside influence.  I originally started looking at this comparing, say, your dog with a rock.  One of the differences I came up with is the dog can move, and the rock can’t, but neither can the oak tree and it’s alive.  I thought of the fact that living things could reproduce and rocks can’t, but our definition of God would say that He does not reproduce.

It gets complicated.  It gets extra complicated as science advances and we come across things like the virus, and I think there are other forms of things in existence, which don’t fit the characteristics of life as we know it.

So when we say that God is alive, it’s hard to define.  I think one of the things that that means is that God is self-aware.  There’s also a term in theology, which I can never remember, which means that His existence is not dependent on anything outside of Himself.  I looked it up, aseity.  In other words He’s not created or supported by other forces.  I also think that it means that, although He does not change in character or basic essence, He is capable of the changes that involve thought and interaction with other lifeforms.  Thus we have God changing His mind based on what people do, but that does not change who He is or what His truth is.

This is an open ended thought process.  I expect to continue questioning myself on this for quite a while.  I expect God to reveal new thoughts to me and take me down rabbit trails that I didn’t know existed.  I’m looking forward to the journey.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-136: Password or Trap?

I was reading a very familiar passage this morning about God calling Moses to go and set His people free.  You may be familiar with it,

Exodus 3:13 (KJV) And Moses said unto God, Behold, [when] I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What [is] his name? what shall I say unto them?

I found myself wondering what kind of questions are these, first, the question that Moses asked, and second, the question that the children of Israel would ask.

The questions centered around the name of God, which will be revealed was Yahweh.  Moses has been raised in his early years by his real mother in a Jewish community.  Did he really not know the name of God?  Which brings up the second question, I guess, of did the Hebrew children know the name of God?

The actual name of God is always been a mystery.  The Jews considered it so holy that they refused to pronounce it.  All we have are the consonants and by filling in the gaps we can come up with a couple of possibilities for pronunciation.  The early attempt was by taking the vowels from Adonai and fitting them between the consonants, and that’s coming up with Jehovah.  For some reason, modern scholars have changed their mind and come up with Yahweh.

But that doesn’t answer the question.  Did the children of Israel know the answer and were just checking to see if Moses had the password?  Were they totally ignorant and genuinely curious to know what the name of their God was?  That seems a little strange, but I guess it is possible.  Of course, that brings up the question of why they would believe Moses anyway.

Either way, both God and Moses considered it an important point.  Names were important in those days because names spoke to you about who the person was.  They didn’t just sit down like modern parents seem to do and try to come up with some strange combination that was fun for them and embarrassing for the child.  They sought a name that meant something.

Jesus means Savior, Emmanuel means “God with us” and Yahweh means “I am”.

I was named after my two grandfathers.  For my children, we chose Bible names deliberately.  Do you know what your name means?  Are you living up to it?

It is never too late to begin unless your name means “Immature one year old”.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-128: Depending on the Meaning of “Is”

Various thought trains bring me back to the discussion between God and Moses when Moses was asking “Whom should I say sent me?”  God’s answer is vital to know and understand.

Exodus 3:14 (KJV) And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

The verb “I am” is the root for the noun, Yahweh or Jehovah, which is the given name of God.  If I were dealing with my urban middle school students they would say, “I is” or “I be.”  It seems like a simple point, but it is so central.  It establishes that God’s own description of himself is His existence, and by existing, He is a real personal being.

Too often, we try to reduce God to a formula or a poster, or a recipe that we can handle and manipulate.  It’s much easier to say, “All I need for eternal life is to pray a prayer” then it is to walk in a living relationship with a living God.  Formulas are nice if you’re not nursing your baby but they don’t come anywhere near the intimate contact that breast-feeding provides.  I also remind myself of the other end, the diaper changing.  We always used cloth diapers when our kids were young.  We didn’t have to pay for utilities in our situation so it worked out cheaper but our real purpose was that we felt it was better for the baby than the throwaways of the day.  What paid off for me were the games and the interaction that went on while changing those diapers.  They were great times, really.  I am not just exaggerating, nor is my memory faulty.

In the same way we interact with God in every area of life.  It’s not just a matter of going to church on Sunday morning.  It’s not just a matter of reading through the Bible every year, or a chapter a day.  I do read through Proverbs every month.  I read through Psalms every five months.  Those are routines I have established, not because they carry merit, but because they open up doors in which God, the living God, can speak to me.

The thief on the cross was very fortunate, because he was moments away from death when Jesus extended the hand of grace and acceptance to him.  He didn’t have to worry about tomorrow.  The Philippian jailer, who asked, “What must I do to be saved?” was in a different situation.  That’s why Paul spent time afterwards teaching him the scriptures and about how to live a godly life.

God is. While it’s true that He was and will be, keep in mind that He is.  Now.  Make Him a part of your daily routine.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-013: Solar Grace

As I sat in the dark, focusing on the glory of God, I paused to read a Psalm like I do every day. Today was Psalm 134.  In there I came across this verse,

Psalm 134:2 (KJV) Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD.

My thinking immediately went to that word sanctuary and trying to place how that word could be used in a Psalm written before the temple was built.  The text does not say this Psalm was written by David, so we have no reason to believe it had to be written before the temple was built, but I still wanted to look into that.

So I looked into the meaning of the word sanctuary, and found out that actually a better translation would be holy place or sacred spot.  The word is translated holy much more often than it is translated sanctuary.  As an example, here is the first place the word appears in the Old Testament,

Exodus 3:5 (KJV) And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

Our Hebrew word here is translated as “holy.  So you can see where I realize this could have been written before the temple.

As my mind continued down, it’s rabbit trail, which I believe is often guided by the Holy Spirit, I got to be thinking about how we use the word sanctuary.  For us as Protestants, and I believe even as Catholics, the sanctuary is that large room where people gather together to worship.  That led me to think about worship services, historically, and how the Catholic Church and later the liturgical churches would offer up the host as a part of what we call communion or the Eucharist.  The theology of this has gone through many steps, depending on your denomination, but in the Catholic Church, at least the idea was that you were offering up the body and blood of Jesus.  One protestant pastor, who was virulently anti-catholic, claimed this was a sacrilegious re-crucifying of Jesus, and keeping Him in perpetual agony.

I am not as anti Catholic.  My understanding is that they believe there is spiritual merit, or grace, given by taking of this host.  This turned my thinking to the meaning of grace.

Grace is a wonderful concept.  A beautiful word in the Bible, but I believe it is grossly misunderstood.  The popular definition of grace is unmerited favor.  I cannot accept that because it says Jesus grew in grace, and if it is unmerited, then Jesus was not God and the verse is nonsense.  In other words, walking with God and His grace is not a matter of Him giving us an unlimited credit card that we can us to charge anything we want.  It doesn’t even work with the idea of having a credit card where there’s a limit but if we apply we can raise the limit.  I got to thinking about modern technology.

Grace is like a modern electric commuter train that runs on electricity.  If you’ve been around them, you noticed that they have these arms that reach out and connect to the power line above them.  Thus they are constantly supplied with what they need at the moment.  They don’t have batteries to store it up.  They don’t have an electric tank.  They have a constant source of power.  If we ever get the technology, a better illustration might be having a solar panel on the top of a car that powers everything you need to do on a constant basis.

Of course solar batteries only work when the sun is up.  For your car, that would be a problem.  If we’re talking about spiritual power being radiated from the son of God, and it is no problem because God is always extending his power in his grace.

Spiritually we are there.  Technology is still trying to catch up.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-364: The Descent into Philosophy

I started off thinking about the profane.  That was the old statement of Bill Clinton about the meaning of “is”.  It has a lot of implications.

Remember the declinsion of the verb “to be”?

I am        we are
you are   you are
he is        they are

We take this for granted but there are languages that don’t use it much.  If you are ever reading the Old Testament in the KJV or NASB you will notice that usually the words “is” and “are” are in italics.  That is because the word appearing in English is not in the Hebrew.  Because of how we talk it is implied and thus used.  For instance we might say “The sky is blue”.  Writing that in Hebrew would be “the sky blue”

It might very well matter what the meaning of “is” is.

From there my mind jumped to theology.

In the Bible we have what are called the “I Am” statements.  It is rooted in God talking to Moses and explaining who He was.  Moses asked what name he should use for God when he went to Pharaoh.  

(Exo 3:14 KJV)  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

God spells it out that His name means that He exists as contrasted with the idols and false gods of the pagans in Egypt.  This is where we get the name of God as Yahweh.

And from there I crossed the vapor thin barrier to philosophy.

I love philosophy on the experiential level.  Every time you disagreed with someone it ultimately comes back to your philosophy.  We are all philosophers, but we refuse to admit it.  We think of philosophy is being some kind of vague ivory tower nonsense that only over paid college professors talk about.  That’s part of philosophy, true, but that’s like saying that the meat in a great hamburger comes from a different cow than the meat in your steak.  Two different things, but the same idea.

Believe it or not one of the questions that Philosophers ask is, “Do we exist?”  Or maybe a better way of expressing it is, “do I exist?”  Or you would think that being able to ask that question would answer the question.  In fact the famous philosopher Rene Descartes came up with a summary, “I think, therefore, I am.”  There’s also the speculation of something called the Boltzmann brains.  Actually, the question is, “Do they exist?”  This philosopher came up with the idea that the universe, as we know it, is just our imagination and we are just these mental beings floating around in space and thinking great thoughts.

So do you exist?  According to the philosophers I must exist because I am asking the question, but I can’t be sure about you.  I might be the only aware creature in the entire universe, and I have created all of this circus of reality just for my own amusement.  I guess in a sense you might say that I am what some people think of us God.

Perish the thought.

homo unius libri

 Opus 2023-269:  God Channels Descartes

Most of us are familiar with the trademark statement of Rene Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.”  It is a claim that awareness is grounded in reality.  Not so many are familiar with a statement made by God to Moses:

(Exo 3:13-4 KJV)  And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?   And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

I doubt if Moses had read Descartes.  It is possible that God inspired Descartes.  The God of the Bible is different than the divine essence of other religions because He is aware.  We think of it as the personhood of God.  

In ancient time names had significance in a way that we don’t follow.  Sure, we name people after their grandparents and parents.  In many cultures you did not even receive a permanent name until you had some vision or experience that made you stand out.  It is interesting that in that milieu God chose to emphasize the fact that He existed.

He still does.

homo unius libri

Opus 2022-323: Dark Thoughts: To Be, or Not to Be

In the dark of the morning my mind wanders around the world, and off.

What would you say is the most important attribute of God?  

If you were an ancient Roman or Greek each god had a different characteristic.  One might be fun loving, another sneaky.  One might be the embodiment of sexuality or beauty.  Often their main attribute might be something the believer saw in themselves or wanted.

Christians and Jews would be coming from another angle.  They would be looking at the revelations God has made about Himself in the Bible.  They would have a multitude of choices. Recently I saw the phrase, “Everlasting to everlasting”.  I remember the class where the professor said there are three “God is” statements:  God is love, God is light, God is spirit.”  Sometimes the reference is specific, other times inferred.  But there is one that trumps all others, that makes Him different from all other versions of divinity.  

God’s major attribute is that He exists.

You might have some memories of the call of Moses.  He and God went round and round.  They came to a theologically central point when Moses asked who should he say sent him.  

(Exo 3:14 KJV)  And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

There is a play on words going on in the Hebrew that we might miss.  The Hebrew used for “I am” is the verb form of the word “LORD” in the next verse.  The main Jewish name for God basically is saying, “I exist.”  God picked that name himself.

A good place to start.  

homo unius libri