Divine Drama Queen
16
Jul
2010
I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn’t fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming.
When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I’m not pleased. This God says he “hates” sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It’s just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting.
Take his conversation with Hosea. The Lord is disgusted with Israel, and he asks Hosea to enact a parable. He orders Hosea to take a prostitute for a wife; she becomes a symbol of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. This is no down-on-her-luck-but-with-a-heart-of-gold prostitute like those so often portrayed in movies. This is some sleazy woman who, even when given a chance at a decent life, keeps “whoring.”
God then tells Hosea to have children with this woman. When the children are born, he tells Hosea to call the first Jezreel, explaining, “I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.” The second, God calls No Mercy, because “I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all.” The third he calls Not My People, “for you are not my people, and I am not your God” (Hosea 1:1-9).
This God is like the volatile Italian woman who, upon discovering her husband’s unfaithfulness, yells and throws dishes, refuses to sleep in the same bed, and doesn’t speak to him for 40 days and 40 nights.
We may think this a crude depiction, except that Jesus—God with us—seems to suffer the same emotional imbalance. He rants about Pharisees and Scribes—or “snakes” and “hypocrites,” as he calls them. So upset is he over sacrilege in the Temple, he overturns tables and drives people out with a whip. And then we find him lamenting, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate!”(Matt. 23:37-38).
This God knows nothing about being a non-anxious presence. This is a very anxious God, indeed.
I’d rather have a God who takes sin in stride. Why can’t he relax and recognize that to err is human. I mean, you don’t find us flawed humans freaking out about one another’s sins. You don’t see us wrathful, indignant, and pouting. Why can’t God almighty just chill out and realize we’re just human?