Whittle Away

We are not in the habit of whittling, probably. For art and function, we don’t often need a pocket knife and a block of wood. I have a friend who whittles, mostly forms of birds. I have one of Ken’s cardinals and one of his pelicans. The rest of us mostly whittle ideas down to the form we need to make them work for us. Alas, we do this also with faith, theology, and spirituality. We could be accused of idol-making if we too drastically whittle God down to the shape and size comfortable for us.

Seventy years ago, Anglican priest, author, and Bible translator J. B. Phillips wrote the book, Your God is Too Small. He wraps up his introduction like this:

It is the purpose of this book to attempt two things: first to expose the inadequate conceptions of God which still linger unconsciously in many minds, and which prevent our catching a glimpse of the true God; and secondly to suggest ways in which we can find the real God for ourselves. If it is true that there is Someone in charge of the whole mystery of life and death, we can hardly expect to escape a sense of futility and frustration until we begin to see what God is like, and what God’s purposes are.

For the person of faith, this task is never complete. We must be willing perpetually to discard what we find too small or inadequate to link with God. The Christian finds that Jesus is never finished teaching us. In John 16:13-14 we hear Jesus’s promise, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but will speak only what he hears; and he will make known to you what is to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and make it known to you.”

In a passage from Luke, we learn how Jesus had to redirect some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection. They came to present a life scenario that exposed how the resurrection presents obstacles to key elements of their experience. They are rooted in the teaching of the Law of Moses. Their whole stock is in the promise of how life for their people and their families will stay strong by making sure that the sons in a family have offspring. They cite the Torah-based practice of levirate marriage (Gen. 38:8 and Deut. 25:5-10). If a brother dies without offspring, his widow will have children with one of his brothers. Presumably, this ensures, in a sense, the deceased brother’s posterity. This is an aspect of securing the continuance of life. Jesus must redirect them to understand that God has life to promise that is beyond their imagination. The Sadducees think they have handed Jesus an unsolvable puzzle asking him which brother will be husband to the woman in the resurrection. He responds.

Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive." (20:34-38)

We find that the party of Sadducees and Jesus is speaking from radically different perspectives. First, the Sadducees assert that his notion of resurrection does not fit into their sense of reality, a world of order informed by the Torah of Moses, supplying guidance in matters of death, life, family, and marriage. Then Jesus says in effect, “Guess what: your sense of reality is never going to fit with the realm of the resurrection.” He informs them that their hypothetical questions about marriage situations have no application to the age of the resurrection.

All people of faith, to one degree or another, are caught trying to force the way they see life and reality into the mysterious categories of the divine. We make God in our image. It seems to help as we think and speak about God. It is a whittling project, and it leaves us way off base many times. It leaves us with a very small god. We are stubborn about coming to the truth that God has some surprises for us: things that have never occurred to us. Jesus is teaching that there are two ages—two worlds—this age with marriage and all the things familiar to us, and that age with only life, only children of God, children of the resurrection. In that world, there is no marriage, no birthing of children, no death, and no stressing out about the survival of a family and a people. All are alive in God—who is God of the living.

Jesus is never done teaching us. We don’t have to carve a version of God from only what we see and know now, remaining stuck with that. At our best, we are receptive to God showing us things in an expanding way day by day. God is not small; indeed, God is infinite. Jesus has life to give, and it is bigger than we know. Jesus promised (John 10:10) … he came that we may have life and may have it in all its fullness—abundantly. Imagine, a life of infinite abundance!