The Personality of God

God is a person, with a personality, with a character of distinctive features. As a spirit, God is neither a male nor female, but God has become known to humans with a male nature to the fore, in particular as Father, "based on the understanding of the intimate familial relationship"(*) humans have experienced with God. The Emory University-based theologian Gail O'Day writes:

Just as it is false to the richness of the Christian tradition to use father language as generic language for God, it is equally false to the tradition to speak about God in general terms that flatten the vitality and depth of biblical metaphor and language. God is Father in John, and the Church's job is to move beyond the assumption that Father is simply a synonym for God and discover what father language in John contributes to a fuller understanding of God and the Christian life. (**)

God has a story to tell, and one wonders what there is to tell about the billions of billions of billions of years before "our" universe was created 13 billion years ago. Of course,  there are also multiverse theories relating to other universes pre-existing or co-existing with ours. Still, in a limited way, we do have insight into the nature of God. There are, first, insights into the existence of a being of ultimate significance built up by humans everywhere right from their origin, and even an awareness hinted at by the chimpanzees observed by Jane Goodall. Of greater importance to our understanding is the experience of the Hebrews over the 1850 years since the migration from Ur to Canaan of Abraham, who was answering a divine imperative; and, even more dramatically, those gained by living with Jesus of Nazareth, who the early Christian community quickly came to recognise is eternal God and, from a certain point in history, human as well.
This is how the first Christians saw Jesus-God active among them:

His state was divine
yet He did not cling
to His equality with God
but emptied Himself
to assume the condition of a slave,
and became as we are;
and being as we are,
He was humbler yet,
even to accepting death,
death on a cross.
(Letter to the Philippians 2:6-8
The Jerusalem Bible)

From that experience of God-with-us, the Christians then and in subsequent eras have known God to be loving, compassionate, our healer, our servant, and on the cross, our redeemer. There is a great mystery about this that Compassion expresses this way:

By entering with us into the condition of a slave, God has been revealed to us. [But] self-emptying and humiliation are not a step away from God's true nature. ... Rather, in the emptied and humbled Christ we encounter God, we see who God really is, we come to know true divinity. ... As Karl Barth says, "God does not have to dishonour Himself when He goes into the far country and conceals His glory. For He is truly honoured in His concealment. This concealment, and therefore His condescension as such, is the image and the reflection in which we see Him as He is. (***)

Wounded healers: Artwork by Joel Filartiga

One other mysterious element of God's compassionate nature that Jesus reveals is that "Jesus did not come into the world clinging to his intimacy with His Father as if it were his private domain. He came to include us in His divine obedience. He wanted to lead us to God so that we could enjoy the same intimacy He did." (*)  Obedience is integral within the community that makes the trinity of divine persons, and Jesus' obedience is "full undivided attention to the voice of His beloved Father". (*)
(*) Compassion, 2005 edition, H.J.M. Nouwen, D. P. McNeill, D. A. Morrison, New York, Doubleday.
(**) 'John' in Women's Bible Commentary, C.A Newsom and S.H. Ringe, eds (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 1998.
(***) Church Dogmatics, IV/1,  K. Barth, Edinburgh, T.& T. Clark, Sons) 1956, p.188.

Splendid Suns

A noteworthy book that I have just finished is A Thousand Splendid Suns by the Afghanistan-born Khaled Hosseini, the author, too, of The Kite Runner. It was in the bestseller lists by 2008 because it brings alive the turmoil of the past 30 years in Afghanistan and makes real the heartbreaking events that still disrupt the lives of families and tear at the social fabric there. The story is mostly about the heartbreaking life of Mariam, who finally killed her brutish husband when he was trying to kill the second wife in the household. Despite the circumstances, the Taliban judge sentenced her to death. In the last minutes of her life Mariam rises above all the hardships she had faced and has this reflection:

Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami [bastard] child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.

Mariam then puts herself in the hands of God, “He makes the night cover the day and the day overtake the night”, as she kneels at the order of her executioner and waits for the bullet to her bowed head.
The novel continues with Mariam's positive tenor by describing how the willingness of some to share the difficulties of Afghanistan at war allows love to reach the most neglected.

Saving Ourselves

People soon realise that, as persons, they are crippled or their growth is stunted  in some way. They often turn to exercise to correct their physical state in the hope that the outcome will also be that their hearts are no longer stony, their minds not so bound to the world around them, and their emotions not so disordered.

Many others take up self-improvement programs. I've been invited to join such a group, called "Discover Your Potential". It runs over five Saturdays, from 9am-1pm and the cost is US$500. The participants are told that the investment of time and money will enable them to:

• improve your quality of life
• learn how to work with your mind to adopt positive thinking
• gain insight into your conditioning and beliefs, why you do the things you do and how you can change them
• learn why you have the results you have right now and how you can improve them 
• learn how to love yourself, appreciate yourself and build up self confidence
• Learn how to work with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
• learn how to interact with others in a positive way, understand their motives and behavior
• understand your impact on others
• learn to manage your energy better
• learn how to meditate, how to live in the now, and how to reflect on nature in order to be able to understand yourself
• learn how to use affirmations & visualizations
• learn how to use the Law of Attraction to manifest your desires and goals
• find your passion in life
• experience happiness and piece of mind

All this seems like reinventing the wheel. "Know thyself!" is attributed to a wise Greek of the 6th Century BC. Buddhism and Catholicism have long fostered that deep meditation that produces peace, and a lifestyle that is disciplined, positively-oriented and thereby fulfilling, despite all manner of problems on the way.

Christians know another factor is involved, too, in a happy life - a close relationship with the person who made it all possible, the person who is God. That orientation beyond ourselves, that life lived with the guidance of our Creator, is the most successful way, the direct way  to the fullness of life. A relationship with the person who is God is also the quickest way to break from the  aggressive consumerism that snares our hearts and minds in its deadly traps of materialism and selfishness. God is the source of peace, and the gospels acknowledge that, given the community's experience of  the promised peace, joy, and fullness of life.   

The Queen as Messenger of Joy

In her 2011 Christmas message the Queen gave striking testimony to the role Jesus can play in our lives. She spoke of the many instances of difficulty families and nations had encountered during the previous year. Then she gave her splendid testimony, such that I have not seen previously. The Queen concluded her message with these words of witness:

Finding hope in adversity is one of the themes of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world full of fear. The angels came to frightened shepherds with hope in their voices: 'Fear not', they urged, 'we bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
'For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.'
Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves - from our recklessness or our greed.
God sent into the world a unique person - neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.
Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God's love.
In the last verse of this beautiful carol, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, there's a prayer:
O Holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin
And enter in.
Be born in us today.
It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord.
I wish you all a very happy Christmas."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16328899

Entering into thankfulness

At Christmas, many surprises of a good kind await a person living in a state of alertness to all that life can deliver from the hands of the natural world and from the generosity of the people around us. However, despite all that makes the going hard, we can find peace, even joy. Here are two poems that explore the necessary deep-seated spirit.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

     From Collected Poems (North Point Press) 1985

Sabbaths 1998, VII

There is a place you can go
where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light

on the water. Trees are there,
leaves, and the light
on leaves moved by air.

Birds, singing, move
among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come

to no thought of these,
but they are themselves
your thoughts. There seems to be

little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.

None of us stays, but in the hush
where each leaf in the speech
of leaves is a sufficient syllable

the passing light finds out
surpassing freedom of its way.

— Wendell Berry

                 From Given (Showemaker & Hoard) 2005

For more about Wendell Berry’s view of life, see

 http://www.amazon.com/Wendell-Berry-Religion-Heavens-Earthly/dp/0813125553#reader_0813125553

Christmas and gratitude

The English writer G.K. Chesterton had powerful sense of gratitude that become stronger the older he got.  Here is what he wrote about day-to-day thankfulness:

What has happened to me has been the very reverse of what appears to be the experience of most of my friends.  Instead of dwindling to a point, Santa Claus has grown larger and larger in my life until he fills almost the whole of it.  It happened in this way.  As a child I was faced with a phenomenon requiring explanation.  I hung up at the end of my bed an empty stocking, which in the morning became a full stocking.  I had done nothing to produce the things that filled it.  I had not worked for them, or made them or helped to make them.  I had not even been good—far from it.  And the explanation was that a certain being whom people called Santa Claus was benevolently disposed toward me…What we believed was that a certain benevolent agency did give us those toys for nothing.  And, as I say, I believe it still.  I have merely extended the idea.  Then I only wondered who put the toys in the stocking: now I wonder who put the stocking by the bed, and the bed in the room, and the room in the house, and the house on the planet, and the great planet in the void.  Once I only thanked Santa Claus for a few dolls and crackers, now I thank him for stars and street faces and wine and the great sea.  Once I though it delightful and astonishing to find a present so big that it only went halfway into the stocking.  Now I am delighted and astonished every morning to find a present so big that it takes two stockings to hold it, and then leaves a great deal outside: it is the large and preposterous present of myself, as to the origin of which I can offer no suggestion except that Santa Claus gave it to me in a fit of peculiarly fantastic goodwill.

http://www.gratefulness.org/readings/dsr_chesterton.htm
See also the movie at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ

Biblical Insights into Our Condition

The account in Genesis 3 of the fall of humans from their state of joyful peace in the garden of paradise has Eve tempted by the serpent who urges her to eat of the forbidden tree of knowledge - "You will be like gods, knowing good and evil". The drama asserts that "the core of sin is the attempt to replace God as the determiner of morality". The International Bible Commentary (1998) goes on: "Eve understood the command of God clearly enough. But both she and her husband desire to be like God, and agree to the sin. They are immediately aware of their lost innocence and the new strength of their sexual passions as they find themselves naked. Now they are indeed more knowledgeable..., but it is the 'practical' knowledge of sin's effects and its power in human actions".

This mysterious incident recognises that human nature is disfigured, but a person is not demeaned, and much of the Bible tells of individuals and the privileged nation being held to account for failure to uphold their responsibilities as humans. Also, they have retained an intimate relationship with their Maker. That is borne out in Psalm 130, the De profundis, used by Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire, among others, because of  its vivid depiction of a life in the depths of an evil of the person's own making. The Commentary says here, "There is an interesting link established between [God's] forgiveness and fear: rather than the anger of the Lord it is divine goodness that should give rise in us a fear of offending God".

A third insight into the continued intimate relationship with our Maker is provided by Psalm 137, where the first line goes "Beside the streams of Babylon we sat and wept...", inspiring many artistic works, even into the 21st Century. The psalm focuses on the period of exile in Babylon. The Commentary offers this insight:

The ending of the psalm contains a famous and furious curse on the enemies of Israel. [Further,] a cruel beatitude is reserved for anyone who will avenge Israel by striking at Babylon and smashing its little ones against a rock. This embittered and rhetorical cry that ends the psalm is, however, an appeal to the divine judgment and should be interpreted in the light of the other 'imprecatory' psalms such as 58 and 109. It is a manifestation of the tragedy and despair of an oppressed people but also of the enfleshment of God's word in the emotions and historical experiences of humanity.