I listened to a great lesson yesterday about two mistakes that people seem to make when they think about God. They either go too far with viewing God as so other worldly that he is virtually unknowable, or they go too far the other direction and view him as too this worldly and small. The theological term for God's "other ness" is transcendance, and God's "near ness" as immanence. Classic Christian doctrine is that God is both transcendant and immanent.
Going to one extreme and neglecting the other is dangerous. Too other worldly, and God is unknowable. We end up not really knowing who God is or what he is like or what he requires. You end up with a worldview that resembles Islam. The focus is on repeating the same words, pointing the right direction when you pray, kneeling the right way, praying at the right times of the day, and hoping like crazy that God is not in a horrible mood.
Too this worldly and you end up with a "Jesus is my homeboy" T-shirts. God is your bud, a friend to call upon in times of trouble. No reverence. No sense of awe. No wonder.
This church has swung back and forth, erring on both extremes, through all of history. Most of the controversies have been about the nature of Jesus Christ. Heresies in the early church, like Docetism, depicted Jesus as basically a ghost. Their view was that the physical world was evil, and therefore God could not incarnate as a man. He was too other worldly for that.
Then there were the heresies which went the other direction and had Jesus as just a man. There was the heresy during the second and third century known as monarchianism which asserted that Jesus was not God but a man infused with divine power. Monarchianism gave rise to a more insidious and wide spread heresy known as Arianism, which also attacked the very essence of trinitarian doctrine. Arias, a bishop in the city of Alexandria (one of the influential cities of the ancient world and a hotbed of Christianity in the second and third century), asserted that God made Christ. Christ was less than God. Arias was the true reason for the convening of the council of Nicea in 325 AD -- not a power grab by the emperor Constantine as Dan Brown would have you believe.
The current cultural pull, which began a few centuries ago in the enlightenment, but has its most recent expression in the Da Vinci Code, is to depict Christ as just a mortal prophet (as Dan Brown calls him). Influential, but just a man.
A similar kind of tension exists in our view of God the Father. Is he so high up that he becomes impersonal? Or, is he so familiar that he becomes old news?
The teacher drew an interesting word picture about wonder. Do you remember when you first visited a theme park like Disneyworld? You probably gazed in wide-eyed wonder at the rides, the characters, the lights, the sounds, the action. Did you get all of the Disney characters to autograph your little book? Do you remember your first roller coaster ride? I do. It was on the comet at Hershey Park.
As we grow up, what happens to that wonder? What happens with each trip to the park? As a six year old, then a ten year old ... a thirteen year old ... a sixteen year old ... an eighteen year old. Does Dumbo's flying ride hold the same awe to an eighteen year old as it does to a six year old? Obviously not. We become jaded. Rides gradually become cheesy. We become less and less impressed.
I sometimes wonder if that is not what happens to covenant kids who grow up in the church. They hear the Bible stories year after year. They grow up around hymns, sermons, pot lucks, youth groups and on and on. God becomes familiar. Jesus' death on the cross becomes old news. The wide eyed wonder wears off.
Don't misunderstand me. I am not bashing church. I believe in family worship, Christian education, youth groups, sermons, hymns, catechism and all of the rest.
My question is this. How do we keep from losing the wonder? How do we keep from inoculating our kids against the majesty of God? Let me make it more personal. For those followers of Christ who are reading this, how do you keep from losing the wonder?
Wonder is a reaction to the wild, the unknown, and the uncontrollable. Somehow by the Spirit of God we need to connect what we know about God's character from Scripture with the messiness of time and space. As musician David Crowder has put it, "When his divinity and our depravity meet, it is a beautiful collision." Maybe the key to preserving wonder is this -- that we should always be "pushing the envelope" -- not for the sake of fomenting chaos and revolution, but for the sake of edification, redemption, and reformation. We should be "pushing the envelope" in a certain direction. And that direction (I would suggest) is Christian love.
I was just reading in the Puritan Thomas Watson last night, and he had this to say about love:
"Such is the love a gracious soul has to God, that many waters cannot quench it. He loves a frowning God... A godly man loves God, though he is reduced to straits. A mother and her nine-year-old child were about to die of hunger. The child looked at its mother and said, 'Mother, do you think God will starve us?' 'No, child,' said the mother, 'he will not.' The child replied, 'But if he does, we must love him, and serve him.'
Watson goes on:
"Do we love God? ... Do we love him for his beauty more than his jewels? Do we love him, when he seems not to love us?"
Posted by: Daniel | June 19, 2006 at 13:26
The solution, I think, is to see Him more clearly so there will be new things to wonder at. The more I study His Word and apply it to my own life, I find wonder (and shame) in the depth of my own depravity, and wonder (and joy) in the depth of His love and mercy. The closer I get to seeing myself as I really am, the greater an appreciation I get of what He did for me. I don't expect this process to be complete until Heaven.
Posted by: GotToBTru | June 19, 2006 at 14:04
Great start to the conversation.
Love inspires wonder.
The cross inspires wonder once we realize two things. One, Christ would have gone to the cross even if the world's population was 1 -- you. Two, it was your sin that required Christ to go to the cross. Three, it was his love for you that compelled him to go. Once the cross is personalized, wonder follows...
This ties together both of your thots -- love, and seeing ourselves for how we really are.
If we don't have a clear look at ourselves then the cross appears very, very small -- therefore, Christ's love looks small.
This is, sadly, the problem I find in many churches. We grow up thinking we are good people -- hence the cross remains small -- and our sense of love (and wonder) fades.
Studying the crucifixion creates in me a sense of wonder. Reading what Christ went through on my behalf instills wonder. The movie The Passion acted as a catalyst in that regard -- it focused my mindshare on the suffering of Christ. I was filled with a sense of wonder and unworthiness in the moments after walking out of the theater.
What are other ways we can retain wonder?
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | June 20, 2006 at 09:08
I think the solution is very simple. Get them interested in science. Biology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, etc. They will never run out of reasons to be blown away by God's creation, and by the utter impossibility that it's an accident. I know I never have.
Posted by: John M. | June 20, 2006 at 16:58
I could not agree with you more. Science is about discovery. Discovery inspires wonder.
It is interesting, even atheists have the same reaction when they study God's creation -- wonder. Sagan is a good example of someone who marvelled at creation. Sadly, of course, he chose to praise the Cosmos instead of the One who put it there by a spoken word.
Creation should inspire wonder -- it did for the Hebrews, just read the Psalms sometime :)
Posted by: Mr. Dawntreader | June 22, 2006 at 07:21