Discovering Who God Is—Together
I can't tell you how often in my life I have wished that God communicated more clearly.
There have been times when I faced a decision that felt so big and important that I begged for a message from God written directly in the clouds. ("Won't you please just make the way clearer?") At times I've disagreed passionately with others about a point of belief, and even when I tried to make my point with Scripture, the other person found verses in the Bible to support their perspective, too. ("Why didn't God make this more obvious for all of us?") I have often wished that God would appear in the dreams of a certain senator or representative, like the ghosts confronting Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, to scare them into voting in the interests of justice and mercy. ("Don't you know how much power these people have?")
These longings found great company in Mallory Wickoff's fourth chapter in God Is, "God is Communicator." It's the chapter we're reading this week for the adult formation series—check out the schedule here. Mallory acknowledges all the ways we humans struggle to communicate with each other, like how we misunderstand the meaning of song lyrics or absorb precisely the opposite conclusion from what a professor meant to convey, and she asks why God would be willing to "inhabit human language." Why, she wonders, "would God take on the risks" of being misunderstood?
And her answer is simple: Love. "For love, God enters into the mess and dares to speak, dares to be heard, dares to communicate to humanity."
A few weeks ago I shared A. W. Tozer's remark that "what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." What comes in our minds when we think about God is also informed by a huge variety of influences: Scripture, art, sermons, podcasts, films, spiritual experiences, mentors, friends, nature, you name it.
Many of us who find our way to LaSalle have had to take on the hard work of deconstructing false and harmful images of God that we picked up along the way: images of a God who was exclusively male, or White, or harsh, or indifferent, or hateful. Often we picked up those images in all the same places (art, sermons, mentors), and the work of identifying what is false and letting go of it isn't easy.
I am convinced that our best chance at discovering more of the goodness of who our God is—a God of love, and power, and presence, and justice, and mercy, and, and, and—is to explore together with others. None of us has the whole picture. I need you to tell me what you've discovered about God. You need me to tell you what I've discovered about God.
Furthermore, I'm convinced that this is how God intends for it to happen! God wants us to share this joyful journey of discovery together. Together, we can create brave space for each other to name and let go of (and lament, often with tears) those false and harmful images we picked up along the way. Together, we can share our wonder and delight about who God is, like you'd share big news on Instagram. And together, we come to understand that God is bigger than any one of us, bigger than any one person's imagination or definition.
Here comes the invitation: We have an incredible chance to do this work together this spring, in our God Is discussion classes and small groups. Consider joining a small group, if you haven't already—they start on Sunday, 3/10, and you have a couple more days to sign up.
I often wish, still, that God communicated more clearly, but I'm learning that it's easier to discern God's voice when I do so with others. Come and see!