December 12, 2010

Too Holy

One of the things I often feel guilty about is that I don't communicate with God as much as I "should"... If I feel guilty about it, though, then that means the desire for the desire (which might just be the desire, in itself) is there; I'm just not acting on it. So how do I change that?...

I think I'm going to start actually trying to talk to God- literally, plainly, audibly.

Seriously, though- when there's no one else around, nobody intruding on my sense of actuality with their own, why don't I just talk aloud to God? I mean, He's there with me, in that moment, so why can't I speak out loud to Him, as if He's standing right in front of me?

... Actually, maybe it wouldn't be appropriate, or cognizant, to voice my thoughts and feelings to God the Holy Father, the Perfect All-Being. It almost strikes me as boorish. I mean, I feel (and believe) that God transcends, or is complexly beyond, this whole concept and perception of Time, of existence, of interaction; He seems too big to be concerned with the inefficient, petty vocalizations and syntax we have attached to the abstraction that is actually communication.

After all, why did God have all of the regulations, rules, rituals, temples, rites, and sacrifices of the Old Testament? I think it was because He longed to interact with His people, to truly and rightly love them. But something had to change for that to be possible- not because He was incapable of love, but because humanity was (and is) incapable of loving Him in return, incapable of sincerely recognizing and respecting His Being.

Hence, Jesus. He was human, at one "time," pushed and forced along by the same experience of Time that presently drags us in its churning wake. His lungs once pulled in air and oxygen, He had a pulse (and it even eventually stopped), the hair on His head grew and had to be cut, He had to deal with the physical barrier of His own skin. Jesus Christ is God, to be sure, but He was human, as well; and that holy, full-of-wonder mystery (a "paradox," to our crude attempts at "reasoning") is our salvation, our one and only genuine way to interact with the divine, without being damned for our inherent sin.

So maybe I can just imagine it's Jesus there (here) with me. (How's that for a metaphor?)

However, the Father is still out there. And I don't mean "out there" as in beyond the clouds, beyond the expanse of the sky, hiding somewhere off behind the horizon-line. I mean out there as in existing beyond even the very planes, perceptions, "laws," and experiences of this entire Reality- too awesome for words or description, too holy for understanding or comprehension, too prodigious for this puny mind's imagination, much less exchange.

Maybe that very fact is one of the reasons He became a man (became the Son of Man), so that we would be able to finally relate to Him, interact with Him, so He could bridge the unending rift and unknowable gap between the imaginable and the unimaginable. Now, both I and God have the bond and commonality of this shared experience, this allotted rationale and reality, this sense of "reason" and everything that is included with it. We have seen, and worn, this fragile, tragic, and pitiful human state.

But, thankfully, all of this soiled and spoiled humanity could never possibly tarnish the phoenix of the Son, nor blemish His inerrant and aggregate Perfection.

3 comments:

Whipflashinaction said...

Hey Casey, just was reading your most recent post and noticed that you said that Jesus WAS human. I don't really know for sure, but when I flip through the pages of Biblical knowledge that I've archived, I'm unable to find when Jesus was relieved of his humanity. Just a thought to ponder. Holla.

A Convicted Heart said...

Hmm... True, His "body" was actually raised from the grave. I guess what I was trying to reference was His actual/physical/literal lifetime of sharing this "human" experience- which, according to our own limited and temporal sense, I would say that He is no longer undergoing.

jnash said...

Interesting, I actually had this same debate with a Muslim friend of mine a few months ago.

His argument ran, simply, that God, as the only infinite, perfect and transcendent Being, could not and should not ever be tarnished with humanity and that the idea of anything human residing in heaven is absurd.

My reply to him was that when Christ returned to heaven, he did so as GOD (that was the Ascension). He did not return to heaven, as I see it, as human. However, He did retain all the compassion and love for his sons and daughters that is characteristic of his role as the Mediator. So in other words, although not physically human with the same faulty body and constant temptation to sin, Jesus Christ resides in heaven with a full and complete understanding of our human condition, and it is that fact which makes Him the only appropriate savior and mediator.

Just my two cents. It is certainly an interesting discussion.

Also, I really liked your point about the OT rules and regulations being the only way YHWH could interact with His people at that time, before Christ's coming. This is the very point my pastor is making during out study of Leviticus.