What does “God With Us” Mean?
by Debbonnaire Kovacs
This week's lectionary texts have in common the idea of God caring for us through an endless variety of troubles, from war to storm to the turmoil of being whispered against and hated. But I've been wondering for years, What does that mean, "God will take care of you"?
I can tell you some things it doesn't mean:
You or your children will have enough to eat.
You will not lose your home or job.
Your marriage will succeed.
You will not be attacked, raped, or tortured.
You will not die in some terrible way, whether from accident, disease, or as a casualty of war.
So, if it doesn't mean any of these things, what does it mean? Is God "with us" the way Dian Fossey was "with" the gorillas? Staying as silent and unobtrusive as possible, sitting alongside with a clipboard and noting everything? Watching with the joy or sorrow each event elicits, but not interfering? Liking, even loving the apes, perhaps giving them pet names, but doing as little as possible to have any effect on the experiment? "Day, Month, Year: Debbie had a bad thing happen to her. So sad. It's hard to watch. . ."
Is God "with us" like that?
Or is it more like a friend, walking alongside us with an arm around our shoulders, crying when we cry and laughing when we laugh, listening to our irritations, woes, and celebrations and joining in them with us. . . but powerless to change anything?
Is God "with us" like that?
Or is God with us with us? Is God inside our troubles and joys, as we are? Is God in the boat when we nearly sink, in the armor when we take up the sling against our (and God's) enemies, inside our skin when we are ecstatic or depressed? When I am cut, does God bleed? When I laugh, does God's belly shake?
I recently read a small sentence that struck me: "Remember that what happens to you touches Christ first." Touches him first? I thought about it. Imagine a white board. In the center of it I make a tiny dot. That represents you or me, one human. Then, in the air around the white board, I draw a BI-I-I-I-G circle, way, way too big to fit on the white board. That represents God. When you or I "ask God to live in our hearts," what would that look like? Who would be actually "inside" of Whom?
If that were a fairly good representation of Immanuel, God With Us, then whatever came our way, good, bad, or indifferent, would definitely touch God first. And if God's infinitely bigger than we are, then I submit that God's emotions are that much bigger, too. It touches God first.
I admit, it doesn't really answer the underlying questions of why Bad Things happen (and keep on happening and happening and happening) to Good People. (Not sure I am one of those anyway.) But it does make me feel better. A little. . .
You?
I have enjoyed contemplating the thought, often expressed in the New Testament, that we are "in" Christ when we accept Him as Savior. Nothing can touch us except as it first touches Him. He will ask us to endure and survive no greater strife or tribulation than he himself conquered while living in this sphere.
ED
Thanks Debbonnaire I really enjoyed that. There is nothing like asking big questions, and this is probably the BIGGEST question there is – right up with whether there is a God at all? I think we have all struggled with these problems.
Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God:
Your suggestion seems to be very similar to Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God. God doesn't merely sit and watch us suffer like Dan Fossey with the Gorillas, rather, when we suffer God suffers with us. Jesus wasn't just another man who died on a cross, because that is actually a common occurance in history; rather, it is God Himself who suffered and died on a cross. I believe it was Moltmann who talked about God being with the suffering Jews in Auschwitz. That said, this theory does rectify the notions of God's goodness, but it doesn't really explain why there had to be suffering in the first place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Moltmann
The Jewish notion of mourning, as demonstrated by Job where his friends just sat with him saying nothing for a week, is another good example of this.
Great Controversy and Free Will:
I think the SDA emphasis on the Great Controversy, which is really part of the longstanding Free Will defence, is another explanation as to why there is suffering in the world. But again, this theory alone is a little lacking in making us feel better when bad things do happen. We all understand that in wars there is 'collaterial damage', and a Cosmic battle is no different, but that doesn't make us feel good when a group of innocent children are blown apart in a drone strike – even if the missile also kills a Taliban leader. It also doesn't really adequately explain why God seems to grant miracles to some but not others.
Again, the story of Job, with the great contest between Satan and God, which Job doesn't see, is another good example of this.
Dorothy Soelle's 'God has no hands except from our hands':
I think my favourite answer to this is Dorothy Soelle's notion that 'God has no hands except from our hands'. Given God granted dominion to mankind, it is somewhat up to us to listen or reject the Holy Spirit's urgings to help others. Thus, God doesn't fail so much as mankind fails. However, that theory doesn't really explain accidents and other 'acts of God', except that mankind can actually be responsible for that (Adam taking the fruit, Global Warming causing acts of God etc.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothee_Soelle
The Lord's response to Gideon in Judges 6:14 is the best example of this, where the answer to why God hasn't given any miracles to deliver Israel is met with the Angel's reply that Gideon is in fact God's miracle – 'Am I not sending you'?
Conclusion
I think some of these theories give us glimpses. But I think this side of heaven we really won't have an adequate answer to this tricky question. However, unlike other religions, our God isn't a distant and unknowable, impassible deity; rather, He is a God made flesh. I do get comfort from that.
We humans want answers. Usually, for why bad things happen, but how many ask, why do good things happen?
When we are willing to accept the many things in life for which we have no answers, we will live more happy and content. There are many things in life that have no answers. Those things that we can change, we are responsible for making those changes; those we can't we simply should accept.
Next question.
Isaiah 63:9, In all their suffering, He also suffered, and He personally rescued them. In His love and mercy, He redeemed them. He lifted them up and carried them through all the years.
Why did bad things happen to Jesus? Because we chose sin, because we chose death rather than life, because we chose to doubt God's goodness and thought He could be withholding something better from us. If we think death and suffering causes us heartache, what does it do to Jesus who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities? We numb out our feelings. Jesus feels, He is there with us, He genuinely cares so much that He proved it. He laid His life on the line.
I used to blame God for my alcoholic, abusive father and for my mother who abandoned us too after their divorce. I was angry at God for 2 years, sitting on my pity pot like Job. One day in my devotions I read in Joel that God will restore to us all the years that the locust has eaten. If not in this life, then certainly in the life to come. I asked God what He was saying to me. The reply to my heart, "I can't be blamed for the choices your parents made."
God can't be blamed for the choices Adam and Eve made, for choices my parents made, for choices I make, for choices the rapists, murderers, liars, thieves, bitter and resentful people make. God is good. He is always good. He is very close to the brokenhearted. He never forsakes or abandons us. He proved it when He came to walk among us, to be stalked by vicious church leaders, to be homeless, to be rejected, to be born in a barn, to weep because He would draw us close as a hen but we wouldn't have any part of Him. And then to give His life for people who say there is no God or it's His fault because He doesn't force us to be good. Yet He never stops loving us. He never stops pursuing us. He buys us back though we are all like Hosea's wife Gomer.