What We Talk About When We Talk About God (8 page)

Which leads us back to our original insight that
how
you believe and
what
you believe are two different things. Two people can believe the same thing but hold that belief in very different ways.

You can believe something with so much conviction that you'd die for that belief,

and yet in the exact same moment

you can also say, “I could be wrong . . .”

This is because conviction and humility, like faith and doubt, are not opposites; they're dance partners. It's possible to hold your faith with open hands, living with great conviction and yet at the same time humbly admitting that your knowledge and perspective will always be limited.

Do you believe the exact same things you did in the exact same way you did five years ago?

Probably not.

You've grown,

evolved,

changed,

had new experiences,

studied,

listened,

observed,

suffered,

reflected,

and reexamined.

That's how faith is.

We learn as we go.

Years ago I was struggling—really, really struggling to make sense of a number of things in my life, in a lot of pain. I started going to a counselor who gradually helped me understand why I was feeling how I was feeling and how I got there and what a better future might look like. It was, as I look back on that period now, truly life-changing. My counselor, who has become like family to me, wasn't ever pushy or judgmental or condemning, and he never tried to get me to believe exactly as he does. And yet he had no problem looking me in the eyes and challenging me and confronting me and pointing out when I was way, way off base. He was kind and humble and open, and yet firm and rock solid and unshakable.

All at the same time.

He was a man of faith,

deeply grounded in his convictions,

and yet those firm convictions didn't close him down or harden him or make him brittle and closed-minded; they had the exact opposite effect. They seemed to make him more flexible and limber and engaging.

Like a tree,

planted near water,

with deep roots.

A storm comes and the tree doesn't break because it's grounded enough to . . . bend.

I believe that this is one of the most urgent questions people are asking at this time about the very nature of faith: Can conviction and humility coexist as the dance partners we need them to be?

I say yes, they can. I have seen it up close, and it's possible. It requires that we pay as much attention to
how
we are talking as to
what
we are talking about, and it requires us to leave the paradox as it is, the tension unresolved, holding our convictions with humility.

All of which leads me to something my friend Pete wrote:

When it comes to talking about God, that which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we must never stop talking.

So now, with that said,

and not said,

on to the God who is
with
us.

CHAPTER 4

WITH

So finally, after

open

and

Both,

we get to

With

and

For

and

Ahead.

I remember years ago hearing someone tell a dramatic story about something incredible that had happened in his life, and the way he summarized what had happened was “. . . and then God showed up!” It was moving to hear how thrilled he was, but I had one of those “Wait—what?” moments soon afterward. If God
showed up,
then prior to that, was God somewhere else? And if God was somewhere else, and then God came here for that person at that moment, why didn't God show up for all of those other people in all of those other moments who could have used some showing up?

I've encountered this conception of God countless times over the years, a perspective that isn't as much about
who
God is as
where
God is. I've heard people pray and ask God to
be with them;
I've heard songs inviting God to
come near;
I've heard a good event described as a
God thing
—all of these undergirded by the subtle yet powerful belief that God is somewhere else and then comes here to this world from time to time to do God sorts of things.

The problem with this as one's
only
conception of God is that it raises endless questions about when and where and why God chooses to act.

Or not act.

I don't know why the Holocaust happened or why that young girl was abducted or why that uncle got a brain tumor. And neither do you. None of us does. And anybody who can tell you why God decided to come here and act in one instance but not another should not be trusted. Lots of people were given
only this particular conception
of God at some point in their lives and they're still living with it: that God is somewhere else and may or may not come here from time to time to do God sorts of things.

Do you see what this leads to?

This conception of God can easily lead people to the notion that life, the world, existence, etc. is perfectly capable of going on without
that
God.
That
God becomes, in essence,
optional
.

That
God may or may not exist.

Great effort, then, is often spent trying to prove that
that
God even exists, which can, of course, fail spectacularly.

 

There is, I believe, another way to see God, a way in which we see God with us—
with
us, right here, right now. This isn't just an idea to me; this is an urgent, passionate, ecstatic invitation to wake up, to see the world as it truly is.

I recently bought some new snorkeling gear, and as I was pulling it out of its packaging a little tube of something fell out. I was so excited to get to the water that I didn't think anything of that fallen tube as I grabbed the gear and headed out. I got to the beach, put on the fins, adjusted the mask, and made sure the snorkel was firmly attached, and then I dove in, expecting to see the reef below in stunning color and detail.

But I couldn't.

I could make out shapes and a bit of color, but otherwise my mask wouldn't stop fogging up. It was then, out in the water, several hundred feet from shore, that I remembered that little tube, which I realized was a special solvent I'd heard about—one you wipe on the mask so that it won't fog.

Having interacted with literally thousands of people over the years as a pastor, I've often felt like my job was to help people discover where they dropped that little tube, because seeing is the first step to pretty much everything.

I want
you
to see.

Not in a superficial, check-the-box, oh-yeah-now-I-get-it casual sort of way, but in an “Oh dear God, my eyes are finally open” sort of way.

To explore this seeing and what it means for each of us, let's first go to the dining room table at my friend Rosa's house. Rosa is Italian and she's an amazing cook—that's a bit redundant, isn't it?—and she makes these huge meals that take hours to eat while her husband John goes back and forth from the kitchen bringing plate after plate of food and inevitably—usually sometime around the first round of dessert—someone will mention how
transcendent
or
out of this world
or
sublime
or
divine
or
glorious
the meal has been.

I imagine you've had similar experiences that you would use similar words to describe—maybe you were holding a newborn child or hearing a favorite song performed live or standing on the side of a mountain or floating in a lake or even washing dishes on an average day when you became aware of something else going on, something more, something just below the surface of whatever it was you were experiencing—something you'd say was sublime or glorious or transcendent.

Sometimes it's extreme, adrenaline-inducing moments, like the other day when I was out on the ocean paddling on my board and I heard a sound I'd never heard before. Like a wheezy two-pack-a-day uncle clearing his throat, only louder and
lower
. More subterranean rumble than cough. As I turned around to see water shooting up from the surface, I realized that I was close—really, really close—to a whale.

So I did what anybody would do in that situation: I paddled closer. (Which my wife Kristen would probably point out is
not
what most people would do.) My heart was beating furiously like the kick drum in one of those early Metallica songs. As I glided along next to the whale, I was overwhelmed by a sense of what I would call
acute smallness
. The dark bluish-blackish color of its skin, the sheer volume of water it displaced when it came to the surface, and the size of my board in comparison to its size all conspired to impress upon me:

“You, Rob, are a very, very small being in a very, very large world.”

Other times it isn't the adrenaline-producing mountaintop and whale moments; it's the times we're overwhelmed by depth and intensity of feeling at the other end of the spectrum. I recently went to lunch with a friend at one of my favorite taco places. About twenty minutes into lunch, he began to tell me about the unraveling of his marriage. He told me about their history together and how it got them to this point and what it's doing to her and what it's doing to him and what it's like for him to go grocery shopping and then go back to his new apartment, all alone.

Somewhere in our conversation the full force of what he was saying hit me—divorce, the effect on their kids, the image of both of them at some point
taking off
their wedding rings. It was as if our interaction up until that point had taken place in my mind, but all of a sudden it dropped with a dull thud down into my heart and I was engulfed by sheer, unadulterated sadness and sorrow that permeated my entire being.

I choked up, right there in my favorite taco place.

There are the highs,

there are the lows,

and then there are the normal, average, everyday moments like washing dishes or making your kids breakfast or walking the dog or giving the neighbor kid a high five when you find yourself catching glimpses, clues, and glances of depth and dimension and fullness.

Sometimes it catches you off guard; sometimes it sneaks up on you from behind; sometimes you find yourself slowing down and becoming gripped with a certain stillness, like your heart is slamming on the brakes while it whispers in your ear, “This matters, this is significant, slow down, pay attention,” like your soul is trying to take a picture because of the realization that
whatever's going on here right now is worth capturing
.

When we try to describe these moments and we use words like
transcendent
and we talk about something being
out of this world
or about an event as having
depth
or being
sublime,
what we're talking about is our sense that

it is what it is,

but it is also, at the same time,

something more
.

It was a meal, but it was more than a meal, in the same way that it was just a conversation, and yet it was more than just a conversation.

You were there, fully present, taking in every tactile dimension of the experience, and yet your visceral, physical experience drew you higher, farther, beyond that very same experience.

It's as if the present, real-time, flesh-and-blood taste of that meal around Rosa's table somehow pointed
past
itself, its vitality and joy an echo of a larger vitality and joy.

In November of 2011, I was walking through the second floor of the Phoenix Art Museum when I came across a massive wall of pink and yellow that appeared to be changing color. As I walked toward it, I began to see that the wall was actually an installation, about fifteen feet tall by thirty feet wide, made entirely of sheets of paper—thousands of them, maybe millions of them, some yellow and some pink, all stacked and arranged with great care and precision to produce this particular effect. It was mesmerizing. So simple and yet so genius. Who does that? Who decides to stack that many sheets in such a precise, intentional order? Who has that kind of patience? And how did the artist know it would produce such an emotional reaction?

It was just a wall of stacked sheets of paper,

and yet it was more than just a wall of stacked sheets of paper,

in the same way that it's just a song,

and yet it's more than just a collection of notes, noises, and melodies.

To be as precise as possible, then, I imagine you're like me in that you regularly find yourself having experiences that
point past themselves to a larger reference point, to something or somewhere or sometime or someone beyond the experience itself in its most basic essence.

These moments have a familiar paradox inherent within them, in that they are both

near and far,

close and distant,

right here and yet somewhere else,

all at the same time.

(Have you noticed how often first-time parents speak of being over the moon? What does a tiny infant have to do with outer space?)

Often you can touch these experiences,

hold them,

lean on them,

sing along with them,

breathe them in,

see them in their proximity and nearness,

and yet they have a compelling way of leading you beyond them, as if they were a window or a door into another room.

 

The ancient Hebrews, it turns out, had a way of talking about these experiences we've all had, those moments when we become aware that there's more going on here, moments when an object or gesture or word or event is what it is and yet points beyond itself.

They believed that everything you and I know to be everything that is exists because of an explosive, expansive, surprising, creative energy that surges through all things, holding everything all together and giving the universe its life and depth and fullness.

They called this cosmic electricity,

this expressed power,

this divine energy,

the
ruach
of God.

They believed that this divine
ruach
flows from God because, as the writer says in the Psalms, the whole Earth is God's, all of it infused with
ruach,
crammed with restless creative energy, full of unquenchable life force and unending divine vitality, undergirded and electrified by the God who continually renews the face of the Earth.

When the Hebrews talked about the world, then, they didn't talk about a world that went on day after day doing its thing while they discussed whether or not there was a God out there somewhere who might or might not exist. What they talked about was all of this life and vitality and creativity and stars and rocks and talking and pasta and tears and whales having a singular, common, creative, sustaining source—whom they called God—who powers and energizes and sustains it all.

And that
all
includes us.

While they understood this
ruach
energy to be as wide as the universe and powerful enough to fuel and animate and sustain even the stars, as it's written in the Psalms, they also understood this
ruach
to be as intimate and personal as the breath you just took and the breath you're about to take.

In fact, they often referred to
ruach
as breath, as in the story of Job, where it's written,

As long as I have life within me,
the
ruach
of God in my nostrils . . .

The wisdom teacher in Ecclesiastes echoed this understanding in writing that every single one of us is the recipient of this energy and life force and divine breath, given to us by God to sustain us and fill us and enrich us and inspire us and give us life.

We all, the Hebrews insisted—before we do or say or create or accomplish anything—have been given a gift, as close as our breath, as real as life itself.

But breath wasn't the only way they understood
ruach.
In many cases they used the word to refer to what we would call
spirit,
although that word
spirit
can bring with it a number of associations in our world that the Hebrews didn't have. In our modern world, many people understand
spirit
to mean something less real, less tangible, less substantive—something nonphysical, often relegated to the realm of religion. Something that may or may not exist.

But
ruach
doesn't divide the world up like that.

In Job God's
ruach
garnishes the heavens,

and in the Psalms it's the
ruach
that brings things into existence.