Who is God? This question is at our core.

 

A "God-shaped hole" has opened in American society and "we risk leaving people at the mercy of a disorienting permanent moral flux", stoking turmoil in the nation, writes Murtaza Hussain, an American national security journalist.

The increasingly obvious absence of God in the US and much of Europe, and so the lack of a common culture, gives rise to this view: "No wonder the newly ascendant American ideologies, having to fill the vacuum where religion once was, are so divisive."  

However, although a survey just out conducted for the Deseret News found "Americans retain core religious beliefs 'even as they are less attached to religious practices and institutions, such as daily prayer and attending services'," the trend lines, especially for the young, press home the poor example the older generations have given in cultivating a life built on prayer, worship, and moral integrity.

The immense distraction of social media also has an impact on the ability of young people to open their hearts and minds to building a relationship with God.

God.

Who is God? 

An exquisite lesson on the nature of God has just been delivered by Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles. He tells us:

Friends, we have the privilege of reading one of the most important texts in the Bible, period. We're in the third chapter of the book of Exodus. It's the text in which God gives himself a name—if you want, defines himself, but as we'll see, in a way that's really no definition at all. But it’s God's manifestation of his own identity.

And so we're on very holy ground with this story.

Here's this famous and beautifully told account. “An angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed.”

We have to pause there. Such an important moment. The fire of God's presence, yes indeed. But it doesn't consume the bush. In fact, it simply makes the bush more luminous and more radiant and more beautiful.

So it goes with the God of the Bible. Unlike the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans who, when they broke into human affairs, destroyed things, incinerated people, because they were in a competitive relationship with this world. For the gods to assert themselves, something in this world had to give.

That's not the God of the Bible. Why? It’s very clear. Because God is the creator of all things. There's nothing in this world that can compete with God. God gave whatever the world has. God is not one more item in the world.

So I can look around this room and see various items in it. What don't I see? The one who designed this room. He's not here, he's not in the room.

And so God, the Designer and Creator of the whole universe, is not competing with us but rather —listen to me, now, — as God gets closer to you, you become more luminous and more beautiful and more radiant.

That's the God now who manifests himself to Moses. But now, watch this very interesting dynamic, which encapsulates in many ways a dynamic you can see throughout the biblical narratives.

“When the LORD saw him coming over to look more closely . . .”

Moses said, "Look, what's going on? Let me find out." Well, there's the aristocratic [though humbled] Moses used to having things his way. “Here's this weird sight. Let me go and investigate.”

“When the LORD saw him coming over, he called out from the bush, ‘Moses, Moses.’"

Well, here's the Lord who knows this shepherd, this nobody who's tending sheep in this mountain range in the Sinai peninsula.

Boy, this God must be a very local, very intimate deity. Very close.

Moses answers, "Here I am." And God says, "Come no nearer! Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground."

Now here's the rhythm I want you to see. Is God close to us? Yes.

See, we don't believe in a deist God, which is to say a distant cause of the universe that way back then or way up there somewhere did his causal thing and then went into retirement, who doesn't really know the world.

Look at a lot of mysticisms where the divine is sort of a principle or a force but doesn't really know us. Look at the Star Wars mythology, which sums up a lot of the spiritual traditions of the world. Sure, there's the force out there which can be used for good or evil, but the force doesn't know me. The force doesn't know my name.

The distant deist prime mover doesn't know my name, but God knows the name of this little nobody tending sheep in the Sinai Peninsula, because the true God, Augustine put it this way, is "intimior intimo meo", closer to me than I am to myself.

Why? Because God is here and now bringing all things into being. The Creator didn't do something long ago then retire. No. God continually creates the universe. All things, moment to moment, depend upon the causal influence of God.

So, of course, God knows me better than I know myself. Of course, God knows my name and knows your name. What does Jesus say? Every hair on your head is numbered. That's how intimately God knows us.

Beautiful. Beautiful. But now wait.

Lest this draws me into a kind of too chummy intimacy with God - “Back off, Moses. Take off your sandals because you are on holy ground.”

Why would you take off your shoes when you're on holy ground?

Well, what do shoes enable you to do? Well, they enable you to go anywhere. If I’ve got shoes on, I can walk confidently over all kinds of terrain. I am in command.

Now take your shoes off, well you're much more vulnerable, right? Rocky terrain. You're not going to be climbing that in bare feet. Take off your shoes, Moses. You are not in control here. You're on holy ground.

Now that word, holy, is kadosh in the Hebrew. The angels in Isaiah chapter 6 chant “kadosh, kadosh, kadosh”, holy, holy, holy.

You know what it means? It means “other”. Other. Other. Different. Transcendent.

Well, you just told me he's intimate to us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. True. And at the same time, as Augustine put it, he is “superior summo meo”. He's higher than anything I can possibly imagine.

The Creator of the universe is not an item within the universe. That which gives rise to the whole being of the finite world is not himself a being among beings. The true God who appears in the burning bush in such a way that he enhances and makes beautiful that to which he comes close, that God is both "intimior intimo meo et superior summo meo".

Closer to me than I am to myself and greater than anything I can possibly imagine. Now we're talking. That's the true God.

This play of imminence and transcendence continues. Listen to what the Lord says: "I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob."

Well, I know your name. I know the name of your ancestors. I know the name of the patriarchs of your people. More to it, "I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt. I have heard their cry of complaint. I know well their suffering."

Now think about this for a minute. Who's the most forgettable people in the ancient Near East? It would've been this poor enslaved tribe of the Hebrews in Egypt. They're not some great empire. They're not some great cultural force. They were enslaved nobodies. And yet God knows them and has heard their cry.

And furthermore, “I have come to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians, to lead them into a land good and spacious and flowing with milk and honey."

Wow. How intimate, involved, how aware of the people of Israel this God is.

So Moses might be thinking, "All right. He told me to take off my shoes and I'm on holy ground and all that, but now he seems, again, pretty intimate."

And so what does Moses do? And here we come to the climax of the story. He says, "All right, if you send me to Egypt to lead these people out and they ask, ‘Well, what's the name of this God who spoke to you?’ What will I tell them?"

Now, it's a reasonable question. What name? That means, who are you? What kind of being are you?

So Moses is asking a reasonable question. All right, Lord, what's your name?

Then comes the line now, which is the most famous line. It's the hinge, in many ways, upon which the biblical revelation turns.

What does God say? "I am who I am."

Now, you might say it's a bit like saying: "Hey Moses, stop asking me such a stupid question. I am who I am."

But press it even further. What's your name? Who are you? How can I specify you? Which being are you among the many beings of the world? Which god are you? There's a god of the river, god of the mountain, god of this people, god of that people.

You're a god clearly. Well, which one are you? What's your name?

No, no, no. The God that Moses is dealing with is not one of those little petty deities, not one little divine potentate among many. The Creator of the universe, as I've said, is not an item within the universe.

“I am who I am.”

[Being a mere item among many is] what God won't do. That's what God can't do. “I am who I am.” To be God is to be “to be”.

That's [13^th Century philosopher-priest] Thomas Aquinas. In God, Aquinas says, essence

Photo by Jeffrey Czum

and existence coincide. Now what does that highly abstract language mean?

Think of this camera in front of me I'm speaking into. That's a type of being. It exists. It exists in a particular way. It's got the form of camera.

There’re all these items around me I can see. There’re people around me I can see who are typical, they're types of being.

I can look up at the planet Mars, the planet Jupiter, I can look at the Milky Way and I can say, all these are types of being. I can name them. I can define them. Their existence is received and delimited according to certain essential principles.

Excuse the philosophy, but that's the way that our tradition has translated this language. They're all beings of some type.

And then there's God. “I am who I am.” To be God is not to be this or that, up or down, here or there, big, small. To be God is to be “to be.”

Now, where is this being itself? Well, everywhere in this room because nothing in this room would exist apart from God.

Where is God? He's in you in the most intimate way possible.

Where is this God who's being itself? Nowhere. Nowhere, because nothing in this room is God. Nothing in this whole cosmos is God. He's intimior intimo meo et superior summo meo, closer than we are to ourselves, greater than anything we can imagine.

It's that God whom we can neither control nor hide from that addresses Moses in the burning bush.

The two paths of sinners, by the way, and we walk them all the time, is we try to control God for our purposes, or we try to avoid him.

Give up. They're both hopeless paths. Rather, surrender to the God closer to you than you are to yourself, greater than anything you can possibly imagine.

And you know what he wants to do? He wants to set you on fire with his own presence to make you as radiant and beautiful as possible.

That's the God who addressed Moses.

That's the God who Jews and Christians have come to know over thousands of years, right up to the present generation. This understanding of God is conveyed in a brief study of the riches of the term kadosh. Knowing our place before God enables us to know who we are - in a deeper way than this catchphrase: "God is God, and I'm not!" Follow that link for a deeper knowledge of the God who knows us intimately.

💢 Read also Putin and the holiness of God

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