A Danger, a Difficulty, a Directive, and a Diagnosis

This experience of the psalmist warns us against speaking too glibly about the God of the Bible. Let us therefore keep in mind a few further things.

First, a danger. There is something extremely arrogant in our presumption that we can understand or (even worse) write about God. For we always run the danger of reducing God to an "object," into a "something" about which we can write descriptions or make diagrams. Also, we need to remember that we haven't got "the whole story on God," that even when we have said all that we can say we have still barely scratched the surface. No one has a full and unimpeded vision of the pure divine majesty, and the story of Moses being allowed to see only God's "back" is a very early attempt to drive home this point. (See Ex. 33: 17-23.) So let us never think that we can reduce God to a series of statements or to four chapters in a book.

Second, a difliculty. We find it difficult to think of God ex. cept in terms that come from our own human experience. As
a result we describe God in terms that seem to make him like us-larger, perhaps, and older and more experienced, possibly with a long beard, sitting on a throne. This kind of limitation of God to grade-school notions must certainly be avoided. And yet, on the other side of the argument, we may notice that categories drawn from our own experience are the only categories in which we are able to think, and if we do not claim too much for them, some of the human categories we use may be a lot closer to the mark than impersonal ones. When we say that God is "personal," for example, we do not mean that he is "a person" like us, with arms, legs, and fingernails, but that, whatever else we may say about him, he is at least one with whom we can enter into personal relationship and fellowship. He may be much more (and certainly is), but since we enter into relationship with persons and not with stones, we use human rather than geological categories to talk about our relationship with God.

Every attempt to "put God into words" will involve a measure of distortion, since we are trying to describe in terms of our own experience someone who is vaster than all our experience. We must recognize the inadequacy of our human symbols at the same time that we continue to use them-since we have no others. It is like the artist trying to depict three dimensions on his flat two-dimensional canvas. Let us say that his picture has railroad tracks which disappear at the horizon. Actually, the tracks are parallel right to the horizon. But on the canvas they are not parallel. They converge toward each other and finally join. When we see the painting in an art gallery, the painter succeeds in telling us the truth (the tracks are parallel) by painting something else (his tracks are not parallel). Language about God is much the same. For we too, like the artist, are trying to put into the dimension of our own experience something which is vaster than our own experience can fully understand.

Third, a directive. We must remember that the Biblical understanding of God always retains a sense of mystery. The Latin phrase, mysterium tremendum, should ring a bell for anyone who tries to talk or write or think about God. There will always be an element of awe, of wonder, of something akin to fear and yet not quite the same as fear. Cold, descriptive words do not capture what this means, but an excerpt from The Wind in the Willows makes the point superbly. You may recall the time when Rat and Mole were looking for Portly, a baby otter who had gotten lost. They were transfixed by the unearthly music of the "piper at the gates of dawn," the animal's god Pan. They made their way toward the source of the music.

Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror-indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy -- but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near.

Finally the Mole dared to look up, and found himself in the presence of "the Friend and Helper," with whom, safe and content, was the baby otter.

"Rat" he found breath to whisper, shaking. "Are you afraid?"

"Afraid?" murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. "Afraid! Of Him? O, never never! And yet -- and yet -- O Mole, I am afraid."

In this "pagan" experience, Kenneth Grahame has unforgettably captured an authentic Biblical note, a note which is expressed in such passages as Isa. 6: 1-8; chs. 40; 45; Ex., ch. 3; Job 42: 1-6; and countless others.

Fourth, a diagnosis. We must face the disturbing fact that there are differing conceptions of God in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. At times he seems like a bloody tyrant, exulting in the death of men and women. At other times he embodies mercy and forgiveness. At times he is only one god among many, and at other times the only God.