15. Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Apostles' Creed in Light of Today's Questions (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2000), 10.
16. Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God, 7.
17. Pelikan, Credo, 187, a comment recorded at the fifth ecumenical council at Constantinople in the sixth century.
18. Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, eds., Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition, 4 vols. (books and CD-rom) (New Haven: Yale, 2003).
19. Pelikan, Credo, 7.
20. Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 38f.
C h a p t e r T w o
GOD THE FATHER ALMIGHTY
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LESSON 5
I BELIEVE IN GOD
I believe; help my unbelief! (Mark 9:24)
I wish I could devise the ultimate, compelling proof that God exists. Belief in God has always been hard, but we live in especially perilous times, as cynicism is in cahoots with apathy, with godlessness sprayed all over our culture. I have rational proofs in mind, but you can never compel another person mentally to believe, because belief is not merely mental. When we profess, "I believe in God," we cannot mean simply, "I think a supreme being exists," or even, "I have spiritual feelings in me." We mean something more all-embracing: we mean, "I commit myself to God."
In Old Testament times, if you asked someone on the street, "How many gods are there?" she would have answered, "Well, plenty, but we serve only one." Plenty of gods clamor for our attention, but what then do we mean by "god"? Martin Luther suggested that "whatever your heart clings to is really your god." To what do you cling? What ultimately matters to you? What motivates you? What can ruin your day? The question is: are you attached to something that is big enough to be God? or are you hooked on a mere pretender, or what in Bible times they called an "idol"?
Idols abound; John Calvin suggested that the human heart is a factory of idols. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "there is so much frustration because we have relied on gods rather than God. We have genuflected before the god of pleasure only to discover thrills play out and are short-lived. We have bowed before the god of money only to learn there are such things as love and friendship that money can't buy."1 The false gods in our crazed culture peddle their wares, promising us the moon, but leaving us hollow, luring us (like the sirens of mythology) into shipwreck.
In the Bible, the one true God brooks no competition; God is a "jealous" God, not because God is small-minded and petty, but because God's love for us is so immense that God cannot stand idly by while we squander ourselves on what is a mere idol, on what will only chew away at whatever is good in the soul and leave us as superficial people with pointless lives. Belief in God excludes other loyalties. To believe is to make a choice, a real-life choice, about our priorities and about where we invest our time, our energy, our money, our heart. Lash zeroed in on this issue: "Christianity is an educational project, in which we may learn, however slowly . . . some freedom from the destructive bondage which the worship of any creature, however large or powerful, beautiful or terrifying, interesting or important, brings."2
How might we prove God's existence? No greater proof could be advanced than the changed lives of those who say they believe in God. Many disbelieve in God precisely because they look at believers and see nothing but a mirror image of the world that cares nothing for God. "I believe in God" is subversive, countercultural, life-changing. Because of God, I am different, you are different, we are different. Perhaps the problem today is not that people cannot mentally believe in God. Perhaps, instead, they would prefer to live without God. The problem isn't a lack of belief, but an unwillingness for our lives to be changed.
But then, our resistance to change is the most self-destructive stupidity of which we are capable, for the God who pleads for our belief, for our hearts, is the God who promises us the moon, but then gives us the stars, the God who is "the Father Almighty," the subject of our next lesson.
LESSON 6
. . . THE FATHER ALMIGHTY (PART 1)
When you pray, say "Our Father." (Matthew 6:9, AP)
By definition, God must be all-mighty, and the Bible goes to great lengths to persuade us never to underestimate the omnipotence of God. "For with God nothing will be impossible" (Luke 1:37). Yet, omnipotence can feel impersonal, maybe even intimidating; before raw power, we cower. "Omnipotence can be feared, but never loved" (Jürgen Moltmann).3 God could not bear to be known as merely "Almighty," so God decided, "I will be their Father." We believe in God "the Father Almighty."
Of course, many modern people question how a good God could be all-mighty, with all the agonized suffering that goes on. We will not dodge these questions, but we will need to wait until chapters 6 through 8 to think through where exactly God turns up in the face of suffering.
Many modern people question calling God "Father." Some fathers are distant, cold, or harsh, and children who grow up with such fathers can be terribly confused about God. Some people ask why we use "Father" instead of "Mother." We know God is not a male, and men frequently do not behave in Godlike ways. The Bible itself is adorned with feminine images for God; and I love these words from the medieval mystic, Julian of Norwich:
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he reveals this in everything, saying to us, "I am the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am the wisdom and the tender love of motherhood; I am the light and the grace which is all blessed love; I am the great supreme goodness of every thing; I make you to love; I cause you to long; I am the fulfillment of all your desires."4
We call God "Father" for one reason only: when Jesus spoke to God, he called God "Abba," an Aramaic word that a little child would use when curled up on the father's lap; even a grown child would continue to use this endearing term of affection. Jesus enjoyed such an intimate relationship with the "almighty" God that he spoke to him tenderly as "Abba." The disciples noticed and marveled. Jesus' whole mission, we might say, was to invite them (and us) to discover what it is to curl up on the lap of almighty God, look up, and simply say, "Abba."
Jesus taught us to pray "Our Father." This intimacy seems presumptuous; how dare we? For we are so different from God, so distant, so un-dependent, so frivolous and naughty at times. Jesus grants us an astounding permission: you, even you, can be on such intimate terms with the holy God. This is all grace, of course. When an infant is baptized, we witness the humbling, hopeful truth that we are small, vulnerable, entirely dependent on the unearnable mercy of God, and we remain forever that way. We always live before God as those who are, as Karl Barth phrased it, "inept, inexperienced, unskilled, and immature. [We] may and can be masters and even virtuosos in many things, but never in what makes [us] Christians, God's children."5 Jesus said, "Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). Notice also Jesus taught us to pray "Our Father" (instead of "My Father")! We do not believe alone; we need not go solo, and in fact, we cannot. We are saved to be part of a community, part of a family: the body of Christ. And we may even pray on behalf of those who do not pray and acknowledge for even them that God is our Father.
We may also recall that in the biblical world, sons were apprenticed to their fathers; they learned their trade from watching and mimicking the fathers. So, "saying 'our father' isn't just the boldness of walking into the presence of the living and almighty God and saying, 'Hi, Dad.' It is the boldness of saying 'Please may I, too, be considered an apprentice son.' It means signing on for the kingdom of God" (Tom Wright).6
LESSON 7
. . . THE FATHER ALMIGHTY (PART 2)