Choose Again

None of us intends to have a shallow, deep, or poor theology; it just sort of happens, even when we know we're prone to it and can feel it creeping it. 

For example, I am one that is prone to intellectualism. I know this, and yet, it still happens. It doesn't take much for me to be reading and studying and worshiping devotionally, but then something about this God of ours or His Word or His heart or whatever strikes me, and I think, "That's interesting" or "That's cool" or "That's hilarious...it's so God." 

And then, all of a sudden, I'm out in search of other interesting, cool, and hilarious so God things I can discover, which means that I have placed God under a microscope rather than a stethoscope. I'm no longer interested in His character or His heart, but rather, I am interested in His facts and His presentation. 

Ugh.

Most of the time, this process is so subtle that I don't even know it's happening. It just sort of...oozes in without my noticing, usually because I am able to tell myself that I'm still investing my spirit in God, investing my soul in Him, that this is how I connect with Him the best. 

But it doesn't take long before my soul feels parched, my spirit weak and I realize that it's happened yet again. I've become more enamored with the idea of God than I have with the love of Him.

It takes a conscious decision to pull me back, and it's one that I have to make continuously until I get back into the habit of engaging God devotionally. I know I'm not alone in this, which is why I've chosen to be honest about it in this space. Most of us, if not all of us, struggle with this, and it makes us question not only our faith, but ourselves.

If we can't even do this God thing right, how are we supposed to anything right? If we can't be faithful and keep our perspective holy, how can we expect God ever to answer us? We don't deserve His answer. He's probably...and this is one of the tragic secrets of modern Christianity...extremely disappointed in us.

Do you feel that? An overwhelming number of Christians believe that God is eternally disappointed in them because they just can't "get it right;" you're not alone.

But I don't look at it that way, and that's also why I wanted to share this truth with you, in the hopes that it might encourage you in times like these when you're tempted to think that you've gotten it wrong...again and you're...never going to get it right and God is...always going to be disappointed in you.

When I go off-track, when I let my human proclivities take off on me, when I begin to approach God academically, totally in love with the idea of Him but dangerously disconnected from the heart of Him, it takes a conscious decision to pull me back. And this means that I get the blessed opportunity to choose God again.

And again and again and again and again and again.

Every time this happens, I get to rediscover who God is all over again, and I get to choose Him anew. I get to decide, again, to give my life to Him. I get to learn, again, that He is worth my sacrifice. I get to come face-to-face with all of these things that I've forgotten so easily, but yet seem so simple. And yes, I could probably beat myself up over that; enough of us do. But instead, I rejoice. Because it means a couple of things.

First, it means that I made the right choice the first time and that, given the opportunity to do it all over again, yes I would. How often do we get to say that in life? How often do we get the chance to affirm that we made the right decision about something major in our lives? Having to choose my faith again assures me that I would and I did and I will. I'm doing something right, and all it takes is for me to do it wrong to figure that out.

Second, it means that my faith is always new. It's always growing, always developing, always refreshing itself. It doesn't grow stale on me. It can't. It's got to be compelling and surprising and incredible enough to keep bringing me back, and that means that it's always got to have that ability to strike me in a new and powerful way. Every time I re-encounter God, I find what I always knew about Him...and I find something new, too. New mercy. New grace. New love. New word.

So yes, my faith gets off track sometimes, just like I'm guessing yours probably does. And maybe it'd be easy to chastise myself for that, to think less of me, to start to question things. But honestly? The only question I ever have is: how do I get back to it?

And I get to say yes all over again. I love that.

Limiting God

Throughout our history, men have been prone to one error or another regarding God, all of which keep us from forming a rich and deep theology. It began, of course, in the Garden, when Adam and Eve thought that perhaps God could not have meant exactly what He said and dared to eat the forbidden fruit and, well, we've had problems taking Him at His word ever since. 

Prior to the coming of science and the kind of academic inquiry that we are so used to in our own day, God was taken for granted. Human beings just naturally assumed - and believed - that God had everything to do with everything. This meant a couple of things. One is that human beings had very little or no responsibility for their own lives, since God was going to do whatever God was going to do anyway. A second, however, was that God was responsible for absolutely everything. 

But this, of course, raised questions. How could God do some of the things that were happening in the world? How could He ordain them to be this broken way? How could God decide to murder someone or rape someone or burn someone's house down? If God is responsible for everything, we cannot possibly develop a theology of His goodness because there is no pure goodness; it's always a mix of good and broken. So this kind of blind faith, this reckless attribution, keeps us from a solid theology of God. 

And then we moved into the age of scientific inquiry, where we became very sure that we could ask questions and investigate and come to a good conclusion about anything and everything. And if we couldn't, then whatever we were asking about must not be "real." So we started asking questions about God, digging into the past to uncover His presence and character and richness. And we found some very good evidences for God being who He says He is. 

But we also found that our scientific inquiry can only take us so far. There are some things about God we just can't cut open in a laboratory, some things we cannot possibly "study" in any academic sense of the word. So we were tempted to start to write these things off, and we did. And all of a sudden, we found ourselves with a God in whom there is no mystery - in whom there can be no mystery - and therefore, nothing supernatural. No sense of an "otherness" of God. Which keeps us, yet again, from developing a solid theology, for we cannot fathom and cannot accommodate anything about Him that is beyond our understanding or our knowing. 

Now, we have moved into a more relational existence in the postmodern world, where things are what they are based on their relation to other things and we seek to be in relationship with everyone and everything, so far as we can. And we've come to believe that perhaps God is here among us and perhaps He is a friend, someone we can know and trust and love and be with in a real and vital and powerful way.

But while God is a good friend today, He's not, like, a good friend. That is, we're pretty sure that He's the kind of friend that we've come to surround ourselves with on purpose - the kind of friend who pretty much agrees with everything we already believe, who doesn't dare speak anything even slightly controversial, who keeps it on the "down-low" and just sort of chills with us. You know, like a cool friend. And this, too, keeps us from developing a meaningful theology because God has no opinion about anything, no standards, no nothing. He's a "go with the flow" kind of God who doesn't ruffle any feathers and doesn't have an expectations and just likes, you know, being with us. 

It's a constant temptation, and it's one we've faced since almost the very beginning - this temptation to use what we know of the world to miss what we could possibly know about God because our knowledge is so limited, so finite. Because we let ourselves be boxed in by the vogue philosophies of the day. 

If we want to develop a rich, deep, life-giving theology of God, we have to break out of these molds and find a way to broaden our vision for Him, to expand our horizons, to open our hearts in new ways. Can we do it? We can. 

But it's not easy. 

Like a Servant

As tempting as it is to study in depth the character and nature of Laban from Genesis 24 to Genesis 28-31, there are other characters in these scenes that have perhaps much more to tell us about who we are and how we are to live, not in relationship to one another, but in relationship to our God.

One of the fundamental differences between these two scenes is the man with whom Laban is dealing. No, we're not talking about the difference between Eliezer (most likely) and Jacob; we are talking about the difference between a servant and a master.

Jacob was a master. He came to Laban on his own behalf, in search of his own wife, and fell in love with the object of his own affection. It's far easier to keep this man right where you want him because he's acting on his own account. Jacob was content to stay seven years, seven more years, seven more years because his beloved was where he was. Rachel was there. It was easy for Jacob to make this place home because he had there everything that he wanted; he was content. 

On the other hand, Eliezer was a servant. He came to Laban on behalf of his master, Abraham, and his future master, Isaac. He was on a mission, and there was nothing for him in the land of Laban. There was nothing that could convince him to stay, no matter how cunning Laban might have been, because his loyalty and his life were elsewhere. He was operating on behalf of someone else, someone not present, and so he already had his marching orders. He could not be contented in a land far away because his life was elsewhere and already firmly established. 

The importance of this cannot be overstated, particularly for those of us who are attempting to live a faithful life for the Lord. This world sometimes does a pretty good job of tempting us to stay, of drawing us into a certain place and telling us it's just fine there, of pulling us off-mission for its own sake (or simply for the sake of stopping us). 

We have to remember that we are servants, not masters, to avoid this trap. 

If we are masters, we're content just about anywhere. We take our lives with us, and they can be contented and fulfilled just about anywhere. It doesn't occur to us that this might not be our place because we have everything we want here. We set things up around us so that we're happy here. We travel with our households and everything in them, and there's nothing anywhere else that can call us away, call us back. At least, not right away. Not pressingly. It's easy to convince us to stay seven years, seven years, another seven years because we act on our own behalf; we're content wherever we are. 

But if we are servants, then we'll always be restless for home. Our lives? They're somewhere else, and they're already firmly established. We're on mission, and it's difficult to distract us from that because there's nothing here that can satisfy us. We already have our marching orders, and all the wonders and glories of this world can't change them. We're living and acting on behalf of someone else, and it is His purpose that is our purpose. It is His glory that is our glory. It is His story that is our story. So no matter what, you cannot convince us to stay, for we are a people on the move by our very nature, servants of the One who sent us in the first place. 

This is not the place to which we have come; it is the place to which we go. And we will always be working toward coming home. 

If you want to defend yourself against the wiles of this world, if you want to make sure that you don't fall into any traps, if you want to be impervious to the snake, it's really quite as simple as this: remember that you are a servant, not a master. 

You work for Him. 

And you've got places to go, things to do, people to see, so there's no reason at all for you to get stuck here. No matter what Laban says. 

Beware the Snake

While it's important for us to recognize that Laban, even as sly and cunning as he appears to be, is a product of his circumstances just like the rest of us and that, in fact, it may be he's had experiences in his life that have changed him, it is just as important for us to also recognize that maybe Laban is just a slimeball, a snake. 

Maybe, if Rebekah had not agreed to go in Genesis 24, Laban would have pulled the same kind of stunt he pulled a few chapters later with his daughters. Maybe he would have drawn out the whole thing so long that Abraham would have been without a servant, a very good servant, for decades. Maybe the entire coming of Israel would have been put off, if not rerouted altogether, if Laban's question had not been met so boldly by Rebekah's faithful willingness. 

Maybe, just maybe, in Rebekah, we have a woman standing up to a snake, the reversal of Genesis 3. 

For whatever reason (and there are a number of reasons, far too many to dive into in such a short space here), some persons among us are just snakes. They are just wily creatures, the kind of men and women who are cunning, but only for their own gain. They really don't have your best interest at heart and certainly don't have God's, and they'll do whatever it takes to get their own way. They'll do whatever it takes to be "right" about something, even if they are desperately wrong. And they hold the power in this world to really throw things entirely off track if they aren't recognized, caught, and stood up to and stopped. 

The great thing about snakes, though, is that they often reveal something glorious about God without ever even intending to. The snake in Genesis 3 revealed God's tender mercy when, after it had deceived Adam and Eve, the Lord came walking in the cool of the day to find them and to make them coverings out of fig leaves. The Lord who knew their nakedness and was unashamed by it felt their shame and covered them, not because He had to but because He loved them. That never would have happened without the snake. 

Step a few chapters later into the Laban story, and we see for the first time the gentle strength of a beautiful woman. We don't recognize it until a few chapters even after that, when we see Laban for who he really might be, but when his character (perhaps) is revealed, if we go back and then look at Rebekah - at the dignity, the grace, the certainty, and the conviction with which she said, simply, "I will go," we see something here that we could never have known, and that is the incredible confidence that God has given us for our journeys. 

We can step boldly into our yes because we know the One who ordains our steps. 

Rebekah knew the Lord who was calling her to a foreign land, even through the voice of a servant she had never met, and she trusted that more than she feared the snake (maybe), Laban, who could have thrown the whole thing off course. That's powerful. 

Most of us fear the snake. We hear the hiss and see the fangs and think that it's just a matter of time before it sinks its teeth into us, so we we give in and we give up and we give ourselves over to whatever devious schemes are afoot, thinking this will save us from the snake's bite. But what we ought to know about the snake can save us from cowering in fear, for there are two truths that are real beyond all the hissing and showmanship of the serpent:

First, snakes are cowards. It's not as hard to stand up to them as it seems, especially when there's something greater on your side. And every snake needs to be stood up to. 

Second, snakes, often without realizing it, reveal something about God we could not have known otherwise. They reveal His tender mercy. They reveal His divine plan. They reveal His powerful presence and His intimate love. So look for what you can learn from the snake, which is much more than merely to fear it.

When you hear the hissing, beware the snake, yes, but look for the Lord, for He, too, is present and near.

Shifting Questions

Laban certainly learned something, for some reason, from his initial experience with his sister Rebekah and the servant of Abraham in Genesis 24. Because when he has the opportunity to do it the same way with his daughters a few chapters later, he doesn't. 

In his encounter with the servant, Laban, attempting to do the right thing by his sister, asks her what she wants. This would have been extremely uncommon in those days, as it doesn't much matter what a woman wants in a patriarchal society. Marriages were arranged, and the women often had little, if any, say in their own future. But these were special circumstances; the servant was not just asking Rebekah to get married, but he was asking her to move to a foreign land away from her entire family. Laban, the kinsman-redeemer responsible for her, asks her what she thinks about the whole thing. 

And Rebekah says, "I will go." 

So she goes, and even though Laban asks for her to stay just another day or so, she has made up her mind. She will go. There's no reason to wait, no reason for even just one more night at home. Her future lies with Abraham and Isaac; might as well start heading for tomorrow today. 

But skip forward just a few chapters, and several decades, later when Laban's daughters are in a very similar position, married to a man who wants to leave and go to a foreign land. Notice that Laban doesn't ask them what they think about the whole idea. 

He can't. It didn't work out so well for him the last time. His sister agreed to go, and he never saw her again. He can't take the same risk with his daughters. 

Jacob, however, asks them. After the Lord comes to him and tells him to take off for home, he shares the vision with his wives, and they tell him it sounds like a good idea to them. They're in. They'll go. And so they pack up and start to go. 

The question has firmly shifted. No longer does the family ask, but the future asks. No longer really is the question, "Will you go?" but rather, "Will you come?" 

There's a dramatic difference here, and it's one that is important for all of us. Most of us think our faith is about going and that there's some kind of guardianship in the place where we are, that it all comes down to whether we're willing to leave our current place and set off for somewhere new and unknown. But the question has shifted from here to there, from one thing to another. And the question God asks is us not usually, "Will you go?"

Rather, He asks us, "Will you come?"

God is on the move in the world. He's up to something. He's doing things. And as our bridegroom, He's taken the responsibility for us. He wants us to go with Him, to be part of what He's doing. But He wants us to know it's not willy-nilly; it's a plan, a real plan, a good plan. He tells us the vision. He lays it all out before us. And then He says, sound good? Will you join Me? 

Will you come?

Because even in a world that doesn't seem to care what we think, even in a world where it doesn't seem like we have much of a say at all, even in a world that seems dominated and driven by "not us," someone has to ask. It's important that they ask. We still get a say as to where we're going, whether we're going, whether we'll come. So God asks. Will you come?

And of course, the answer is....yes.