Out
of the Whirlwind
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the December 10, 2016 Sabbath School Lesson
“The
Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will not leave the guilty
unpunished. His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and clouds are the dust
of his feet.” Nahum 1:3, NIV
Perhaps the greatest enigma for mankind is determining
who is God. At times, it seems as though there are as many different ideas of
who and what God is as there are people. Is it possible for God to be truly
represented by such a panoply of representations? One might logically argue
that if God is infinite in all His forms then all of those characterizations
might well be included in such an endless sea of possibilities. But as much as
that enigma intrigues us, the far greater puzzle is what about the vastness
beyond what we claim as our understanding of God? Do we feel we know enough
about God from the vantage point we now hold that what lies beyond is of little
concern, or do we, when faced with that limitless expanse, feel threatened,
intimidated, or even humbled by what exists outside our understanding? Will we
respond with self-deprecation and repentance as did Job?[i]
In spite of our ignorance about God, we have fought wars
over what we thought God to be, and the echoes of those ancient wars still
reverberate in our churches to the present and likely on into the future. For
instance the controversy about the divine nature of Christ that raged between
the Monophysites and the Nestorians and came to a head at the Council of
Chalcedon in the mid-5th century still exists in the disparate views
of the Eastern and Western churches. This controversy hinged on whether the
divine and human natures could be combined in Christ or must remain separate.
While none of this is essential to receiving the grace of Christ, such battles
between Lilliput and Blefuscu have left many an egg shattered on the
battlefield of theological pride. While it is understandable that men would
willingly die than forsake the grace proffered from that splintery cross on
Golgotha two thousand years ago, that some would willingly die over an at best
flawed understanding of the divine nature defies reason. How can any be so
certain that their concrete definition of the ineffable is exact?
Today, we see many of these same sentiments exhibited
over other issues that also had their origins in antiquity. There are the anti-Trinitarians
versus the Trinitarians. This may in some ways be a rebranding of that old
Monophysite/Nestorian squabble. The challenge is whether God can be three
beings, or is He only one? While there may be ample biblical evidence that He
is both, we have trouble wrapping our limited minds around such an idea. John Wesley
famously tried to explain it as three candles, yet one inseparable light.[ii] However, because that illustration
dealt with the finite structure of candles it may have fallen short as a metaphor.
But Wesley was not too far off in spite of the limitations of science in his
day. Light can be a key to greater understanding of the duality of nature and
by inference its plurality as well. This is because light, in its fluidity, can
be demonstrated to be both waves and particles. Both are attributes of light,
yet we tend to think of the fluid motion and continuity of waves as essentially
different from particulate matter. Perhaps our understanding of nature is too
much either/or, black or white to allow us to achieve a true understanding of
even the most basic principles of who and what God is.
Let us leave behind the simple physics of the properties
of light for a moment and look at biology. We also tend to look at biological
science as essentially a clearly defined space where black is black and white
is white, but even the relatively limited area of procreation reveals a
perplexing variety of methods for continuing a species. In addition to the
heterosexual couplings of male and female that bring forth the next generation,
we also have those creatures that challenge our heterosexual fundamentalism. Worms,
some snails, some echinoderms (i.e. Starfish), and certain fish are capable of
being both male and female within each animal.[iii] Some are serially so,
switching from one gender to another in sequence, while others carry both
genders at the same time and can thus self-fertilize their young. How can this
be in a creation brought into being by the words of the same God who said that anything
outside of heterosexuality was an abomination?[iv] Perhaps we do not know
the answer to that any more than we can explain the Trinity. How sad it is when
we persecute and murder others based on such a limited perspective.
Perhaps no one understands God as well as a physicist
working in the realm of sub-atomic particles. Quarks in what is called superposition
can exist in several states at once until they interact with something else. Erwin
Schrödinger, who thought the idea ridiculous, set up a thought experiment with
his now famous cat to illustrate how silly the whole idea was.[v] Instead, his experiment
became a teaching tool for illustrating that something can exist in multiple
states at the same time and place with the perceived state dependent upon
observation or interaction. This of course begs the question, “If the very
foundations of the universe were created to exist in multiple states at the
same time, why would this not be possible for God?” Can God be Father, Son and
Holy Spirit who interfaces with us in the state that the moment requires? Can
He be the Father who rules over His creation, and at the same time be the Son
who extends compassion and grace to all, and finally at the same time be the
Holy Spirit that gives understanding and wisdom to mankind? Physics says it is
not impossible for one God to be simultaneously in several states. But can our
minds, created by such a Being, come to terms with that possibility?
One might wonder how we can fathom and accept a bush
that burns but is not consumed.[vi] Why can a bush that exists in two states at once be accepted
on faith but a God who is One,[vii] but exists in three
states cannot? Perhaps like Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu, we are so
filled with what we are positive God must be we cannot find the way to discover
what He actually is. We blithely say that He is almighty, omniscient,
omnipresent, eternal, and all seeing without realizing what all of that means.
While all of these attributes operate in perfect harmony with who God is, we
cannot fathom even what omnipresence in an infinite space means. Simple
equations dealing with Distance, Rate of Travel, and Time become meaningless.
What is the point of travel at the speed of light if you are already everywhere
and every when. We get confused by questions like “Can God create a rock so big
He cannot move it?” But such questions reveal how infantile our understanding
is, and how limited is our ability to go beyond the hedge into the next yard
and discover what is there. Perhaps our world is built far too much on a
critical world view based on an incomplete understanding of everything, and
instead, we should move through that world with a sense of wonder and awe,
fully aware that so much of it is beyond our understanding even if we had a
million years to study it.
The whirlwind that confronted Job may have been his “burning bush.” It may have
been a metaphor for the chaos in his understanding that was obscuring his view
of God. Seeking justice and vindication, he may have needed to understand that
they were both irrelevant in the overall scheme. They may be only two states of
an infinite number of states and possibilities. Because of his lack of
understanding, not only was his view of the problem chaotic and confusing, but
he also lacked the ability to bring order to that chaos. In the end, it was his
lack of ability in the face of God’s very profound and actualized ability that
brought Job to a humble understanding of his inadequacy. If even Job, righteous
as he was, could not penetrate that shroud of understanding, how much more so was
it for his friends?
We sometimes like to look back at Job with too much
arrogance, believing that with all the years of history and educational achievement
since then, we must surely have a better grasp on Job’s story than the ancients
did. But if the only thing we learn from Job is a sense of commonality in
suffering, we may have chosen to penetrate no deeper into that whirlwind than
did Job’s three friends. We might do well to ask ourselves if everything that
could be known about God could really be contained in only the sixty-six books
of the Bible. Is the Bible the end, or only the beginning of our faith? In Jesus’
incarnation the Word became flesh;[viii] what might it become
for us that we have yet to discover?
