The Color of God

sermon by guest speaker Joel Eikenberry
Job 42:1-16

This weekend Torin and I had the opportunity to go to Pittsburgh for an overnight.  We stayed a beloved Bed and Breakfast called the Parador Inn, ate Irish food, tromped around downtown Pittsburgh in the snow, had a delicious seafood meal, and then...the piece de resistance... we saw Wicked at the Benedum Center (be still my heart).

Not only did the in-laws watch the boys, Joel stepped into preach the sermon.  (which was nice since it took us two hours to get home on Saturday after the play due to snow).  Thank you Joel for bringing us your Good Word!

 

THE COLOR OF GOD

I have had a recent reminder that I need to be cautious about what I say.   On November 10^th a sermon Torin preached here started out with a quote from me:

“Job is the most useless book in the Bible.”  He links that to discussion of the series of sermons going  on here in Morgantown about forgiveness. He mentions that I suggested “we should have a sermon on forgiving God.  While I don’t remember all the conversation Torin and I had, whatever I said led to an invitation from Torin to preach a sermon on forgiving God.  I accepted the challenge, perhaps in a weak moment, though this is really more a simple reflection and it isn’t really about forgiving God.

I am not a trained theologian or preacher and not very orthodox in my theology.  I really don’t have answers; rather I am in an ongoing search for what seems right in my soul.  This is a personal reflection; sharing some thoughts about the nature of God.   

I still don’t like Job much.  What is troublesome to me is the apparent capricious nature of God as he and the devil spar and use Job as the betting token, so to speak.  That is not my vision of God. 

My understanding of the nature of God has changed as I have grown up, as for most of us.  It was formative that I was raised in a Christian home and attended a missionary boarding school in Nigeria.  Events in my life, things I have read, influential teachers, leaders and friends, and even a minor in philosophy in college have had great influence.  But they have raised questions that I have struggled with.  One of the biggest questions has been why bad or unpleasant things happen, to both good and bad people and what does that say about the nature of God.

A bit less than five months ago we were preparing to move into our new home and were doing some repair above a door.  The ladder I was standing on was very light gauge and one leg of the ladder actually bent.  I fell and dislocated my shoulder which led to surgery from which I am still recovering.   We had placed the ladder appropriately and so we were not really careless. 

But that raises the question: Why did that happen to me? 

I don’t think it was to punish me for something.  Was it natural law?  Certainly gravity as invoked (and I assure you it still works fine).  After all, God created the universe with natural laws and they operate whether we like it or not. 

That can explain a lot of things that happen.  Consider earthquakes destroying whole towns; Tsunamis with flooding and devastation; hurricanes.  But for me there are also limitations to this type natural law explanation.

And on a larger stage consider what is happening in Syria currently with so many apparently quite innocent people dying.  Or stories we hear of human trafficking.  What about 9/11?   They really don’t seem to be just natural law.  They involve mostly human choices; societal and cultural issues.  Can we explain it as some “greater purpose?”  What about sin or wrong doing?  Are such things inherent in human nature?   Where is God’s hand in these things? 

So I have a dilemma.

How can I reconcile the troublesome, even evil, things we witness with a God who made all things and whose nature we say is love?  Where is justice?  How do events such as these fit the will of God?  

And it leads to other questions.  Is there is a real force of evil, a Satan, outside of God’s creation.  If so, then God did not create everything. And if there is this evil force, can it act in opposition to God’s will?  If so, God is really not all powerful.  If on the other hand God is all powerful but allows those forces to act (or even capriciously engages them as it seems in Job), then that doesn’t mesh well with a view of a loving God, a just God. 

So what is the nature of God?

Well, here I admit I am at risk of speaking of things I do not understand and of wonders way over my head, to paraphrase the Job text.  Yet, what I have seen and experienced on the one hand, and been what I have been taught does mesh, does not make sense to me.  Unlike Job, I have not had direct vision from God nor heard from God directly.  But I, as all of us, have had some direct experience of God.  So, based on that experience, with both wonder and limited understanding, I go ahead.

Consider the possibility that indeed God did create all, and really is all; that God created and allows both good and evil?  That was a hard thought for me initially, but when I considered some of my own experiences it seemed to make good sense.  To illustrate, could I know, let alone understand, what light is without experiencing darkness?  The concept of cold for someone who has only lived in the tropics would be limited indeed compared to ours, especially this year.  Would I be able to understand or appreciate good health and lack of pain without at some point experiencing either?  In these types of situations, can I appropriately understand and appreciate one without experiencing the other?

Perhaps God created both good and bad, both love and fear, allowing us to recognize one in the presence of the other, and we can appreciate and value the great difference.  Maybe God has both good and evil within the being of God, but the totality is greater than either and therefore richer.  As one pastor friend suggested as we discussed my quandary, perhaps God is more truly purple than either blue or red.   In the book “Conversations with God” it is put this way:

“Perhaps love is to feeling what perfect white is to color.  Many think that white is the absence of color.  It is not.  It is the inclusion of all color.  White is every other color that exists, combined.

So, too, is love not the absence of an emotion (hatred, anger, lust, jealousy, covetousness), but the summation of all feeling.  It is the sum total.  The aggregate amount.   The everything.”

I have developed a vision where evil does not exist as an enemy to good but is a part of the whole within the nature and being of God, which enriches and even completes God’s creation.  This vision allows me to choose light, and need not fear darkness.  It allows me to truly have joy in good health, and recognize it even as I struggle with pain.  When I experience the down side and even evil, I know it to be the flip side of good and can possibly choose to react with love and not from fear. 

Knowing that I have that choice doesn’t mean I do choose well much of the time.  That doesn’t necessarily make the unpleasant and bad things any better.  It doesn’t mean I like things that seem wrong.  My shoulder still hurts.  Injustice it appears is no less than it was.  Wars unfortunately still continue.  As Anne Lamott says in her book, “Stitches”:

“… a reasonable person can’t help thinking how grotesque life is.  It can so suck, to use the theological term.”  (I like that writing style.)

We experience both the good and bad; the desired and the undesired.  And I think we have both a good side and a bad side within each of us. Yet we as total beings are greater than either one and have a richer existence.

I have come to believe God did create absolutely everything.  God made all.  God is in everything, including me and you.  God is compassion and justice, peace and joy, but also within the totality that is God is included the hate and fear, and injustice we see expressed in our world.  And just as our good and bad sides don’t make up our total being, so for God these two sides together are a greater totality.  And in that totality I understand God as love.  This is a God who is within me, who made me, who knows all about me, and who can accept and love all of me; the good, the bad, and in between.   

In recognizing both good and evil, and by choosing what paths bring out my best side, I have a fuller experience in God.   I can choose to be and live in congruence with the highest self I can envision in spite of things happening to me or around me that I don’t like or understand. Or, as is often true for me, I can choose not to.  If I choose to live in the love and the light of the great I Am, and if I am granted grace to achieve that choice, I believe it will lead me to live in a way that is closer to union with God.   There I can find peace, in spite of all the tumult and trouble around and in me.  And from that place I find I don’t really need to forgive God at all.