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> What Are You Asking? -January 2006
 


Tom Ehrich
Tom Ehrich

 
   

What are You asking?

Pastor, Author and Speaker Tom Ehrich responds to
your questions about God, faith and
living spiritually

Send us your questions


 

JANUARY 2006



I am questioning, "Is there really a God at all?" As I look at the world around me, all I see are problems, people suffering, killings, and so on. If there is a God, why are these things happening? If God is so great and mighty and loving, should he not protect the young and innocent who have done nothing at all to him or anyone else? So I ask, "God, if you are there, why are our innocent babies suffering? Where were you when I was being abused? What did I do to you at such a tender age of 5 that you allowed me to suffer the way I did?”

You are asking three important and difficult questions. I won't try to make them seem easy.

In the end, the existence of God is a matter of faith, not of proofs. When we see, for example, extraordinary kindness, like the love of a parent, we name that as being of “God.” We could name it something else, and many do exactly that. But to persons of faith, it only makes sense to name love, life, hope, goodness and justice as being of God.

What about suffering, despair and injustice? Those also exist. Faith doesn't blame them on God, but on humanity's fundamental waywardness, which God allows but doesn't reward. You might want to read Rabbi Harold Kushner's excellent book on this topic, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Suffering doesn't happen because God is punishing someone. Suffering just happens.

As to where God was when you were being abused, I believe that God was weeping with you. One of the fundamental attributes of God is that God suffers. He suffers along with us. Why doesn't God fix it? Sometimes God seems to intervene, sometimes God doesn't. The why of that is a mystery. My best understanding is that goodness must be chosen, not compelled.

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What nationality were Adam and Eve? How did the other nationalities come about? Also, in the Bible it says that it took Jesus five hours to die on the cross. However, I heard that scientifically it takes three days to die on the cross. Could you explain this to me?

The Bible doesn't ascribe any particular nationality or ethnicity to Adam and Eve. The name “Adam” simply means “human” and is a play on the Hebrew word meaning “ground.” “Eve” probably means “living.” The first suggestion of nations (not in our modern sense of nation, by the way) comes in Genesis 10, when the three sons of Noah are seen as originators of the first tribes. Similar stories are told about the sons of Abraham. From an historical perspective, by the time the Israelites came to their first self-awareness, at the time of the Exodus, tribes and nations were well advanced.

As for the time it took Jesus to die, the Gospel of Mark says that he was crucified at nine in the morning and that he died at three in the afternoon, for a total duration of six hours. The usual explanation for this relatively short time is that he was in a severely weakened condition because he had been scourged and beaten prior to crucifixion.

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How do I know that the Bible is true?

It depends on what you mean by “true.” If you mean objective fact, scientifically or historically verifiable, in the same category of definiteness as 2 +2 = 4, or ocean water is salty, then you don't know that the Bible is “true.” These are stories, not historical records and objective biographies. They were told long ago by a large number of writers, nearly all unknown, as a way of talking about the God whom they knew and worshiped.

A rough analogy might be the way a family of five talks about a trip to Grandma's for Christmas dinner. Same trip, but five different perspectives on it, each person noticing different things and interpreting events differently. Each has a piece of the “truth,” but no matter how fervently each might defend his or her perspective, none has all of the truth.

Ancient Israel's self-understanding began with the Exodus. The Israelites wrote a prehistory, a book of origins, to explain how they got to Egypt and what it meant. That prehistory offers several perspectives: Adam and Eve sinned, their sons sinned, the entire tribe sinned, the sons of Jacob sold their brother Joseph into slavery, a famine came. In each perspective, they described a piece of Yahweh, their God. They weren't writing science or history. They were explaining their existence. A different people might tell an entirely different story, as indeed many did.

A later event, exile in Babylon, elicited a similar array of perspectives on what went wrong.

In the Christian era, we receive four different accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus, as well as several others that weren't approved for the official canon. Each tells the story differently. Some common details, but mostly disparate details, suggest that each author was writing for a certain audience and to answer certain questions. Thus, in Luke the angel speaks to Mary, in Matthew the angel speaks to Joseph, and Mark and John know nothing of angels and birth in Bethlehem. Each view of the birth adds another element of “truth”—not verifiable fact, but meaning, a glimpse of God.

Fundamentalism attempts to get around this reality by declaring God as the author of Scripture. But that is little more than one party in an argument shouting louder and claiming to be right.

The “truth” that Scripture offers, then, is a kaleidoscope of images and insights into the God who is beyond complete knowing. To a faithful Hebrew writing in the time of David, it made sense to think of God as one who walked in a garden with the first man and woman, and of the human condition as grounded in ego and laziness. We can learn from that perspective. It can open our eyes to the “truth” of God's presence in our own day and of the human condition.

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How do you understand Jesus’ servanthood through Filial, Ministerial, and Paschal?

I don't. Those terms mean little to me. Jesus seemed to understand his servanthood as flowing from the prophet Isaiah's image of the suffering servant. See Isaiah 42. The prophet saw the nation Israel as this “servant” whom God upholds, who brings forth justice and doesn't grow faint when people fight back. Jesus saw himself as that servant, called by God “as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,” and to declare “new things.” He called his disciples also to be suffering servants, giving up their lives for God's people.

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I just want answers to the following questions: What are the rules in religion? Which rules are more important to follow? Is faith alone enough to be part of a religion?

The Old Testament contains over 800 laws and commandments, some large and some small, all designed to help the Hebrew people live faithfully and successfully in the Promised Land of Canaan. In addition, the prophets articulated expectations that don't take the form of rules but clearly were meant to guide human behavior.

The Ten Commandments were intended as an overarching framework, as was the call to justice. Thus, a holy people would have one God, worship him only, would not engage in murder, adultery, theft, false witness, dishonoring of parents, and would observe the sabbath. The prophet Micah put it this way: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Jesus, in turn, contravened or redirected many of the laws of Torah, such as the “law of retaliation” and rules on observing sabbath. In his teaching, two commandments stood above all others: love God, and love your neighbor.

It is never enough to prowl Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) to find individual statutes for addressing critical issues. For one thing, from a Christian perspective, Torah has been superseded by the teachings and ministry of Jesus. For another, the prophetic witness in the Old Testament offers better guidance for some modern issues than does a specific rule designed to help a nomadic people cross Sinai. Finally, the laws governing Israel's early years are grounded in conditions and assumptions that no longer apply to us, such as patriarchal norms governing the roles of women.

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What is faith?

I think of faith as our response to God's love and presence in our lives. It isn't something we are talked into, or shamed into, or bludgeoned into, but is rather an intuitive response to a being whom we cannot prove, and yet we know; whom we cannot see face to face, and yet we believe to be real; who is larger than anything we can imagine, and yet is able to walk alongside us, speak to us, care for us, know us by name, worry about us, believe in us; who is before time and will be after time, and yet is present here and now in this time.

Many call that being God; the ancient Hebrews used several names: Yahweh, El, Adonai. It is my belief that other religions, like Islam, point to the same God even as they use other language. Christian tradition speaks of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three manifestations of a single being.

Scripture reveals God to us, in the stories, remembrances and experiences of people long ago. Scripture doesn't say everything to be known about God. Scripture is more a compass than a complete compilation. Faith communities, such as your local church, reveal God to us – imperfectly, of course, because they are human institutions, and yet they are capable of grace and mercy that could only come from God. Our own lives reveal God to us—never the entirety of God, and yet tangible enough to invite us into intimacy with God.

Faith leads inexorably to response on our part, such as prayer, worship, servanthood and amendment of life. Faith makes us new, and we, in turn, work with God to make creation new.

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Today is my birthday, I turned 20. I feel incredibly depressed…I'm young I suppose, but I have a lot of responsibilities. I have two kids, a husband, and a full-time job at a shelter for immigrant kids. I love them all. Somehow I feel like I have been wasting my life, like I'm nothing special. I feel like I am being ungrateful, but I can't help it. I feel that God has put this adventurous spirit in me and…one day twenty years from now, I'm gonna wake up and be nothing special, a nobody or nothing important. That scares me to death…I feel like my dreams are too big! I want to be important, successful, I want it all. I want God to help me with this adventurous, ambitious spirit that doesn’t let me sleep at night. What do I do?

You are asking good questions, healthy and normal for someone who is 20 years old. That can be an awkward age: still a child in some ways, and yet feeling quite adult; not yet launched in career and other adult capacities, and yet dreaming of making a difference. Add to that the responsibilities you carry as a wife and mother. I'm not surprised you feel overwhelmed, perhaps wondering if life is passing you by, perhaps feeling boxed in by your responsibilities.

Assuming that you and your husband have a healthy and open marriage, I encourage you, first, to share these feelings with him. You seem to be looking for room to blossom. A healthy marriage can provide plenty of room for growth. So can motherhood. Your children will benefit from your being as energetic and dream-pursuing as you can be.

Second, I encourage you to pay special attention now to your education. If you haven't had the opportunity to go to college, this would be an excellent time to start. To have a good shot at attaining your dreams, you will need a college education. Colleges are flexible with students who are married and parents. It might take longer than four years, but you will find learning to be a great adventure.

Third, I encourage you to be patient with yourself. You have many years to realize your dreams. You don't need to do it all right now or even in the next twenty years.

Fourth, I believe God will help you. This would be a good time to join a church or to become more involved in a church you already attend. You will find other people in similar situations. You will find outlets for your energy.


To learn more about Tom Ehrich’s writings, visit www.onajourney.org.
 


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