Isaiah 55:1-12
I recall trying to start a conversation about Jesus with a guy doing graduate working at Oklahoma State. I’m pretty sure He was majoring in CIM (Crushing Inferior Minds). I was prepared to offer him an honorary doctorate by the time he was done with me. That was one of those days when I was pretty sure the Great Commission was just meant for the first 12 disciples. It was as if my would-be-convert had said, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, thou worm, so are my thoughts above your thoughts”. And, in my heart, I said, “Amen sir, it is as you say.” Isn’t that a horrible feeling to know your thoughts are inferior!
How do we feel about this commentary regarding the relative impotence of our intelligence? Note; Isaiah even adds that His ways, as well as His thoughts, are in the “way-higher-than-ours” category. Is this less offensive coming from God? Or, is it more? What form does the offense take? One group just walks away from that thought or that way quietly as an agnostic or an atheist. Anther, which is more rare, just faces off with God as an antagonist.
Both have seen enough reality, in their assessment, to refute any possibility that an all-powerful, all knowing, all-loving God is involved directly or indirectly in the affairs of man. (especially the all-loving part). It is an interesting phenomena that life usually plays out for them just about as they suspected it would – free of any noticeable interventions by God. Could this phenomena be explained by the fulfillment of a spiritual law that is linked to Christ’s declaration; “May it be done unto them according their faith“?
Note: C.S. Lewis used the term materialist to describe those limiting their reality to only that which can be observed and quantified.
So much for atheists and agnostics. What about Christians? Are we offended by God’s word, or by the notion of our smallness next to His vastness? Can Christians be materialists in that C.S. Lewis-sense of the word, where we insist on seeing before we will believe? What would that look like if we were? I am proposing that many of us Christians are materialists and that often our offense finds expression in our questions.
A fascinating bible chapter regarding questions is the first chapter of Luke. Zacharias has not seen adequate proof of God’s faithfulness. He and Elizabeth had been praying all their lives for a child who never came. When God finally answers their prayers, he demonstrates that in his heart he is a materialist by the spirit of the question he asked Gabriel, “How shall I know for certain?”. The words that formed the question were innocent but the spirit of the question was not.
Was Zacharias’ question really that much different than that of Mary’s; “How shall this be, since I am a virgin?”. Perhaps there is some advantage to youth. Maybe she had not accumulated enough evidence against God’s faithfulness yet to indict Him as absent in the affairs of men. Mary’s was a true question. Zacharias’ was, in spirit, an indictment. There was, in Mary, that precious innocent quality of faith that agrees with heaven and says, “For nothing is impossible with God” regardless of what I have or have not seen.
A few years back, God arranged the circumstances of my life such that I discovered I had some “Zacharias” in my heart. It was filled with questions of the wrong type. My questions and prayers were just lightly disguised complaints and indictments. The disgruntlement was always just below the surface fueling a peculiar zeal and passion that actually passed as “elder-quality” spirituality. It is too lengthy to go into here but I eventually discovered a theme, or root, of bitterness, shading my perception of everything.
I called my zeal peculiar because, while my burden as a Christ follower should have been light, mine had become unbearably heavy. Yet, I was toting it around, with a bit of pride, as “my cross to bare”. My definition of faith at that time was: trusting that God is good in the presence of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Is this the faith that we are told pleases God? I don’t think so. I had some friends whose faith seemed peculiar in the other direction. Their definition seemed to be: trusting that God is good all the time, looking for and regularly finding sufficient evidence to support it. For this group as well, it seemed that it was being done unto them according to their faith. This makes sense;
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is rewarder of those who seek Him.
Since dealing with that bitter root, it has been an unfolding discovery that God is in a much better mood than I had thought. I am no longer reading books like; Why God Does Bad Things to Good People (imaginary title) or Wilderness Spirituality (real title) or reading the scripture and only finding places where it seemed God’s word contradicts itself. There is no question that the light (or spirituality) in me is of a far better quality today. It is like having a father-filter on the lense through which I see life as opposed to a step-father filter. So, not too surprisingly, faith and trust are not nearly so difficult.
Because of my experience I no longer see agnostics, atheists or even Christian materialists as beyond coming to Christ. I believe they too are thirsting at some level. I believe, since we are made in His image, that all our interpretations and impressions about life which seem to indict God which have been stored away in our “The God Who Is Not” or the “God is Indifferent” file, might just have been secretly slipped into a master file called, “Oh, But How I Wish It Were True”. I believe there will be some who hear afresh Jesus’ invitation which will not return to Him without accomplishing that for which it was sent, which was to win back our fractured and deceived hearts for Himself. Listen;
“Ho! Every one who thirsts (asks honest questions of God) come to the waters; and you who have no money (no discernable faith stirring that you know off), come, buy and eat….Incline your ear to me and come to Me. Listen that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you.”
Father, may You receive this reward of Your suffering; an understanding among the prodigals as well as us elder brother types of Your kind and long suffering heart. Root out the things awry within us that alienate us from Your affections and those of others. Amen.