The Character of God as Father Pt 1

I am writing this with Father’s Day having just passed us by. And for many people who grew up with abuse, it’s the worst day of the year — a day filled with anger, bitterness, regret and confusion. Being a father is the greatest privilege on earth, apart from the privilege being grafted in to God’s Nation of Israel, but it is also the gravest responsibility on earth.

The privilege and responsibility are tied up in the same cause. Simply put, our God has revealed Himself first and foremost as our Father, and therefore each father on earth has the sacred duty of representing the character of God in his own home, with his own children. Whether he is a good man or not, kind or abusive, reasonable or unreasonable, accepting or rejecting, with each and every day he is solidifying how his children define the word “father.” They will carry those perceptions into their adult lives, into their own parenting (even if it is just in their utter rejection of how their father did it), and most tragically into their relationship with the Creator.

Over my life I have known hundreds of people who cling desperately to Yeshua (Jesus) but who want no part of the Father — not out of rebellion, but out of an unhealthy form of fear brought on by years of having their hopes, their spirits, and their definition of the word father twisted and crushed. They get to the point where they cannot even fathom that it is possible to have a father absolutely unlike the one they had. To people who grew up with a Charles Ingalls or a Cliff Huxtable for a dad, accepting God the Father is a no brainer — but to people who grew up in day to day abuse or outright abandonment, another father is the last thing they want, or are even able to accept.

And I don’t want anyone to accept God the Father before they can see who He really is, because if you accept God the Father with that twisted and unholy definition, it isn’t our Heavenly Father anyway. I want to prove, step by step, starting with Yeshua, His Son, who came from Him and went back to Him, that He is different, that He is a good Father. If you have accepted that Yeshua is good and merciful and love and grace personified, then I am not going to ask much of you, I am only going to ask you to trust His own words.

Mark 10:18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

Here, we see a principle established that would not be doubted by any first century Jew. God is good, and only God, which means that to be considered good, one must have no evil within them whatsoever. This is our first difference between the character of earthly fathers and our divine Father in Heaven. It is a common misconception that Yeshua was the first to equate God with being our Father, but the first was actually Moses.

Deut 32:6 Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?

God has been our Father since the beginning, calling Israel His son. So this was not a new revelation Yeshua was bringing, but instead bringing new light to an eternal truth. He intensified that light when He made the claim,

John 10:30 I and my Father are one.

The word He would have used, is the Hebrew word echad, it means one, united. In Ex 24:3, it was the word used to reflect the “one” voice the nation of Israel spoke in to agree to the covenant at Sinai. Echad, in this case, means agreement, voices speaking as one in unity.

I am going to take certain things for granted. One, I am going to assume that we all believe that Yeshua never lied, or broke any commandment, because if He did He would have been disqualified from being Messiah as per I John 3:4, which states that sin is transgression of the law, the Torah, the Word of God. So whatever Yeshua says is bedrock truth, nothing anyone says can come into disagreement with His words and still be truth.

So when Yeshua says that He and the Father are one, echad, united, in agreement and in absolute unity, it means that Yeshua is fully in approval of everything that God the Father has ever thought or done and vice versa. There is nothing the Father would do that Yeshua would not do Himself, or that he would disagree with or disapprove of. The Father is absolutely good, Yeshua is absolutely without sin — therefore anything we feel towards Yeshua, anything we believe about Him, must also be believed about the Father.

I want that to sink in.

I want you to start to see that we have believed lies about God the Father because of the failings of our human fathers, and it is my fervent desire to rehabilitate our Father’s reputation, because He is grossly hated and slandered because of flawed human ideas about what being a father means. Many people have fathers who have ruined the meaning of the word, but lets wash it off a little and search the scriptures and see what a Father is supposed to be like. And its okay if you get angry during the process, its a grueling ordeal to retrain our thoughts and our definitions — especially when we don’t want to, when we want a safe distance between us and any father figure. I get it, I really do, I totally understand. But I am on the other side now, and I want you to join me there, I want you to get to know what you deserved to have all along — a knowledge of the Father that Yeshua preached.

The kind of father every little girl and every little boy came into this world needing and deserving.

Your earthly father might have done great evil, he made a choice to do evil for whatever reason. He chose to hit, or drink, or molest, or abandon, or reject – he chose to not act like a father. He chose to not act like a father, he chose to misrepresent what it is to have a father. Maybe you have never considered that before, maybe you didn’t have a father at all, not a real father. Maybe there was a male in the house, maybe he brought home money, or not — but maybe he just mostly lived as a single guy who was interested in having sex but not interested in having the responsibility. But it was the responsibility that was rejected, not you, if you never read anything I write ever again, if you never believe anything I say otherwise, I pray you can wrap your mind around that.

Copyright Holly Steele Trudgeon, reproduction without permission is prohibited

Everything I Ever Learned About Unity I Learned From Pagans

Photograph by Darlene Dine

2/8/15 – I am revisiting this blogpost that I wrote about honor and shame months before I knew about the honor/shame dynamic of scripture. The SCA operated according to honor principles – and that was why there was unity and peace among very different people. I am not rewriting it, but sharing it again. Until we become more focused on giving honor to our King and each other, than we are with demanding that others honor us, there will be no unity. The people of the SCA understood that – nothing was more important that bringing honor to the association and living in peace with one another in a non-faith setting.
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Sometimes God shares truths so painful that there is very little possibility of sleep afterwards, indeed there is very little possibility of doing anything except repenting and absorbing the devastating implications of the revelation. And no, this isn’t new revelation, something that only I see in the scriptures — this wasn’t anything from scripture at all, and yet it is also the whole of scripture.

For many years now I have been having recurring dreams of an organisation I used to belong to, but that I no longer had the garments to participate in. I would always wake up confused, and the last of these dreams was just a few weeks ago. I would pray for illumination, but none would come — none came because I wasn’t ready, willing, or able to hear it and I guess that changed last night.

Twenty years ago, when I lived in the California Bay Area, I joined an organisation called The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and to put it simply, we were a group of reinactors devoted to the celebration of the culture of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance. We were rich and poor, liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, brilliant and average, distinguished and ordinary, artists, athletes and servants, every color, every religion — and we had a unity I have never, ever seen rivaled. We had unity, not because we were alike but because we saw our common passion and goal as the only thing that mattered. In every way, we were set apart from the world towards the furtherance of that goal.

The campsite and garb (clothing) of one was Byzantine, and the next was Elizabethan — or perhaps a couple would walk around where one was Italian Renaissance and the other was dressed in a simple T-tunic, and it never occurred to those in full Elizabethan splendor to notice or care. There was a suspension of ego, one that allowed us to appreciate where everyone was at and ignore the variations. The people who were good at costuming didn’t complain about those who weren’t, but would help anyone and everyone learn to do it better — if that’s what they wanted. Those whose focus was martial combat weren’t always the best dressed, but those who were the best dressed enjoyed watching them fight. Those who served, served. I never saw such a group of “Martha’s” in my life; it was their passion, and a recognized form of contribution – every bit as much as the arts and the fighting. But it went beyond that, they were dedicated to chivalry and having an excellent reputation in the community. There were state parks and private landowners who would prefer that we use their campgrounds for our events than local church groups, because we were committed to being good neighbors. If a site was not in pristine condition when we arrived, it was when we left. Everyone, from the greatest to the least, was dedicated to the society and to the people in it. When someone wasn’t, the peerage quickly stepped in.

A fighter who cheated would never be knighted, and in fact would be taken aside and spoken to and if necessary, purposefully removed from tournaments by better fighters and ostracized. An artist who refused to teach and share and was prideful would never be given a peerage. A servant who couldn’t be worked with wasn’t given events to run and would never gain a peerage either. We knew, without anything ever being said, that the unity of the organisation was about how we treated each other and not about who was the best fighter, who had the flashiest embroidered garments, or who could throw the best feasts. It came down to community based chivalry — something I have been longing for so badly since becoming a believer that it even infiltrates my dreams.

If a woman showed up alone and was setting up her tent, she wasn’t alone for long. She’s be swarmed by men, if they were available. Not men looking for anything in return, men looking for a chance to be of service to a lady. They would often show up anonymous, help, and be on their way to help someone else get set up for the weekend.

And people tell me — “But my church is just like that.” But I challenge that line of thought, because I have never seen a church gather with another church, a church who dresses and does things radically differently, where there was still unity without judgment, where there was no consciousness of the differences.

When Kingdoms and Principalities would get together for wars in the SCA, there was no animosity; there was still that shared feeling of community. Oh there were always a few old biddies a bit cranky about this or that, but we still shared that common goal and ignored the small stuff. Generally, we often didn’t even know who won the wars nor did we care. We didn’t come together to win, we came together to celebrate on the same day, doing the same thing, towards the common goal.

Someone in the SCA would rather die than work weekends, and if they ever did get a job that required it, they moved mountains to get one that didn’t. They didn’t spend their vacations at Disneyland, they spent their vacations making long weekends or sometimes whole weeks so we could gather for feasts and battles and tournaments – just to be together, doing the same thing in different ways but in the ways that truly mattered most, those ways were generally the same.

Our expendable income went towards the SCA, way more than 10% in most cases. We were avid readers of history, we cared so very deeply about knowing and learning and sharing that common passion. I could walk into any house today and tell you if the person is in the SCA, but I couldn’t walk into any house and tell you if someone is a believer.

The SCA understood discipleship, and it was an expected form of service. Artisans took apprentices, Knights took squires and Pelicans (the SCA version of Martha) took proteges. It was simply something one was expected to do, to share and train up the people who wanted to be able to do what you could do. Character mattered; no matter how talented you were, character mattered more.

And a great many of them were pagans who had never cracked open a Bible in their lives. And they were loving and humble enough to let the small stuff, the differences, go by unnoticed. I never experienced such a feeling of belonging before, and such a feeling of safety. Despite hundreds and hundreds of people camped together, and sometimes thousands, I never heard of any crime — no assaults, no thefts. It was unthinkable. It was as though we were brothers and sisters, even when we did not know each other’s names. I spent last night crying, because I had not allowed myself to think about how desperately I missed that kind of unity, and frankly that kind of humble maturity — because when I became a believer, the church drove it out of me. And come to find out, the church drove it out of all of us.

There is no suspension of ego within the Body of Messiah. In general, if someone wears a head covering then everyone has to wear one, and vice versa. If this pastor believes in pre-trib rapture, or hell, or whatever, then everyone else has to — or there will be no unity. No grace offered, no looking past the small doctrines, no concept of being unified by a common passion. No true acknowledgment of the biggest issues at all.

What is the common passion we are supposed to have? In the SCA it was a passion for the culture of Medieval Europe, a very large umbrella that covered a great many topics. But the passion of the Body is supposed to be eternal — the scriptures and Messiah. If our passion was Yeshua (Jesus) and the Scriptures, we could indeed be unified but that isn’t really our passion.

Our passion is being right, it’s being agreed with and not challenged. Our passion is for conquest, for converting everyone else to think exactly the way we do. Our passion is uniformity under our own banner, and division from everyone else — it is contempt and distrust and judgement over differences of opinion, and oftentimes an utter lack of patience for the learning curve. But people aren’t called to be set-apart unto agreement with me or you, according to our timetables; we are instead called to be set apart, holy, unto faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob through belief in His Messiah, who was crucified for us. If our focus was truly upon Him, the living and eternal Word, then we could see doctrinal opinions the way that people in the SCA see costuming that is radically different than their own.

Right now, we are so concerned that people agree with us that we brand everyone who doesn’t in very uncharitable terms, as though we ourselves are the plumb line. We make assumptions as to why they disagree or do not understand, and what their real motivations are, and what kind of people they are. In the SCA, I made Elizabethan gowns and did fancy embroidery. Some people always wore T-tunics. Some people wore them because it was the only thing they could understand how to make, other people really liked wearing them because they were comfortable. Others wore them because they wanted to spend their time focusing on being servants, putting on the grand events. They didn’t wear them because they wanted to look bad, and really they could be incredibly beautiful — they only looked bad if I developed a mindset that only Elizabethans were good and beautiful. Elizabethans were more complex, and required a larger skillset, but a person in a corset and hoops isn’t necessarily as useful as someone in a t-tunic, it’s all a matter of perspective. In the SCA, we had an entirely different perspective.

The way a person looked, to us, had more to do with what they did and with who they were, than how they were dressed. The people who were recognized, weren’t recognized for what they knew but what they did with what they knew. In many ways, the Church — be it Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, Messianic — has a less Biblical mindset than this rag tag group of people that most believers would avoid like the plague. Greek Philosophy is about thinking the right things, but a Biblical mindset it about acting on the right things. The Biblical mindset is exemplified in Jerusalem three times each year, as Jewish men from all over the world, from Orthodox to Reform, gather with one shoulder and one voice to praise the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, forgetting their differences and loving God as a spiritual nation, and celebrating together, as they did in the days when Messiah walked the earth. No they don’t do it perfectly, but they do gather together and suspend their egos towards a common passion.

It’s time to recognize the common passion. We have the Bible and we have the Messiah of Israel. And if we come together with our brothers and sisters and think of anything else first, we have broken the two greatest commandments.

Mark 12

28 And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?

29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:

30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

32 And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:

33 And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.

34 And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.

I Cor
2 For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

If we believe that Yeshua is Messiah (Jesus is Christ), then we need to start acting like it. We need to want unity, we need to want to be a body — with a head that is not our own head, but Yeshua — who doesn’t think like us, or act like us. Once we stop pretending like He does, then we can really get somewhere. It really is about a suspension of ego. Not a suspension of disbelief, but a suspension of ego.

Perhaps the time has come, when we meet a believer, to ask not what their doctrine is and then decide if we want unity, but to recognize the unity and then let the doctrine take care of itself. That’s how we did it when we were pagans, and if that doesn’t shame us — well I don’t know what would.

The Character of God as Teacher Pt 2

The scriptures were given by God to teach us about Himself, but they were also given to us to teach ourselves about ourselves because, let’s face it, it’s our end of the relationship that needs work, not His end. How He does this tells us as much about His character as does the very fact that He bothers to teach us at all. He wants our character to be excellent, like His, but the way He does it is entirely compassionate, from the beginning.

Our first example of how to do things is found in Gen 2:16-17 where God gives a commandment to the man He created.

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

God knew that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a tree that brought an unholy mixture, would make it impossible for the man to live a life separate from the mixture of the holy and the profane. This was a pure commandment, very straightforward and simple, given to a pure human being. And inspired by the guile of the serpent, it was disobeyed and there were consequences. And then we, as immature believers, criticize Eve, who was more perfect and pure than we could ever imagine and say, “Boy I would never have eaten that fruit!” And then we say, “Boy I would have never grumbled against Moses in the wilderness!” And then, after shaking our heads at every patriarch and King, we go forward to say, “I would have never rejected Messiah!”

But God knows better, and after too many years I have come to know better too. I am Eve, I am the mixed multitude in the wilderness, I am the Pharisee leaders. I am every person in the Bible who lacked faith, who lied, who murdered, who broke the commandments — and the Bible was given to me in order to show me that, because the scriptures are a revealer of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Heb 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

But it took Him time to start showing me that, and the method He used was entirely compassionate and patient.

When we read the scriptures over and over again (remember last time I talked about teaching by repetition?), the stories of the people of God become alive to us, they become real people with real histories. It is as though we are sitting on a grandfather’s lap hearing about the generations of our family, the good, the bad and the ugly — and indeed once we are grafted in to Israel through faith and obedience and belief through the blood of Yeshua (Jesus), we are the children of Israel, and the forefathers are our forefathers. This is exactly how the Bible is set up, to teach us what is and what will be through what was. They are our examples of how and how not to do things.

I Cor 10:11 Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

This isn’t a schoolhouse way of teaching, this is a family style of teaching, teaching through real life events where people made real choices which had real consequences, sometimes long-lasting consequences. It’s a loving teaching style that gives us the opportunity to search ourselves before we get into mischief. But, unless we look at it that way, and come to a point where we are willing to refrain from looking down on those people whose mistakes are recorded, and start looking for glimpses of ourselves in those mistakes, they profit us nothing. In fact, not only will they be profitless, but worse than profitless, because they will be a source of pride as we say, “Oh I would never…” In short, it is not the teaching style that is flawed, but the attitude with which we approach it.

Adam and Eve aren’t the only people to disobey a direct commandment, I’ve done it. Noah isn’t the only person to have gotten into a compromised position through losing control of his faculties, I’ve done it. Abraham and Sarah are not the only people who have presumptuously created a bad situation because they lacked the faith to wait, I’ve done it. How these things happened in my life looked entirely different, and the consequences looked different, but at it’s root, I committed the same sins. I am going to give my favorite example, and apply it to my own life and show you what He taught me. For anyone unfamiliar with what I do, I share my failures (like the Bible does) and show parallels from the scriptures to help show how nothing has changed.

So, lately the boys and I have been reading through the first five books of the Bible, and they are very typical kids. When the mixed multitude in the desert (Israelites and the foreigners who left Egypt with them in order to follow God) start grumbling and complaining against Moses and even wanting to stone him, my boys are always just astounded, “Oh my gosh these guys are idiots, God parted the Sea and made all those plagues and they are complaining?!” I tell them that we do the same thing and if we were out there in the wilderness we might be the grumblers too. But they never believe me, they haven’t reached that point of maturity where they are really able to honestly evaluate their own behavior and see the connections.

So, last night, my husband came home from work as I was patching the bedroom closet and priming it. We got to talking, and I started grumbling about his job, about how he is saving the company a lot of money but they aren’t giving him credit. You know how the good old boy network works sometimes. Now, we both know that God blesses Mark’s work, and the company is the beneficiary of it. It isn’t like Mark is doing this all on his own, God showed him how to save the company money and Mark implemented those things. God does the work and Mark gets paid for it. When I look at it from that vantage, giving God the credit and simply being grateful to be a cog in God’s machine, then I do not grumble. But when I get in the flesh, and think that Mark isn’t getting enough credit, or enough of a raise — I am not actually grumbling against the company, I am grumbling against God.

The Israelites were angry at Moses because God wasn’t giving them what they wanted on their terms. They thought they were complaining against Moses, but they were really complaining against God, because God was the only one capable of changing those circumstances. And those circumstances were there to test them, expose their character flaws, and refine them IF they repented and learned. Moses was powerless to make water in the wilderness, or provide free meat if God didn’t want them to have water and free meat. They didn’t really think Moses was being unfair, in the honesty of their hearts, they thought God was being unfair. They thought this because they chose to forget that they had been delivered from a life of slavery and hardship.

In the same way, I was angry at Mark’s work because God wasn’t giving me what I wanted (recognition for Mark) on my terms (NOW). I thought I was complaining about Mark’s work, but I was really complaining against God because God is the only one capable of changing those circumstances. And those circumstances are there to test us, expose our character flaws, and refine us IF we repent and learn. Mark’s work is powerless to give him credit or more money, if God doesn’t want us to have credit or more money. I didn’t really think that Mark’s work is being unfair, in the honesty of my heart I thought that God was being unfair. I thought this because I chose to forget that when God gave us this job we had been delivered from unemployment!

And so, last night just when I started grumbling and lassoed Mark into it, something went very wrong at work and they couldn’t fix it. They called last night to tell him and when he told me what time it had happened at, I knew what I had done and that this was discipline. I spent a lot of time repenting for it and they are getting it fixed this morning finally. But my grumbling created a lot of hassle for a lot of people. Repentance isn’t magic, repentance means that things are going to start getting better, it doesn’t mean they will be good NOW.

I strongly encourage you to allow God to teach you in this way, and I caution you to never, ever look at anyone’s sin in the Bible and say, “I would never..” because that is when we give Him an invitation to expose our true characters and prove otherwise. That He gave us these examples at all is an act of mercy, giving us the opportunity the search ourselves before we fall to those sins which are common to all men.

Walking in the Light by Darlene Dine

The Character of God as The Teacher Pt I

I know when people think of the teaching ministry of God, they think in terms of Yeshua (Jesus), but I want to start back at the beginning and explore how the very set up of the scriptures teaches us about the character qualities of God as our primary teacher.

If you have never read the Bible cover to cover, I want you to stop reading my blog and start reading God’s blog — the Bible. Nothing that I or anyone else writes about the Bible is of any importance whatsoever in comparison to God’s written words about Himself. I’m not telling you to go learn Hebrew or Greek first, I am telling you to simply go and open it up in Genesis and start reading it in whatever language it is you speak. Because if you haven’t read it, then you haven’t submitted to the greatest teacher you have available — and whatever I write might be interesting, but unverifiable. You can’t afford to trust me or anyone else, you don’t know whether I want to honor God or misrepresent Him for my own purposes. But as you read what He says about Himself, you will learn more about me and the claims I make about His character. I am not bringing new revelation to the table, there is no new revelation — everything is already written and we simply go look for it.

The Bible is set up in a beautiful way. Indeed the very way it is set up tells us how God sees us, and how God sees Himself.

God sees Himself as the Teacher, and the primary way He teaches is through repetition — and blessed be His Name, He never ever gets tired of that repetition. The very first examples of this mode of teaching are found in Genesis 1. Six times this phrase is repeated, “And the evening and the morning were the ____ day.” And within each day was a creative act, a cycle of creativity within a revolution of the earth on it’s axis. There is something, a great many things really, that He desperately wants us to grasp in this repeat of the same exact words. His repetition always underlines a concept that He believes is crucial, throughout scripture, something we cannot afford to miss. That unwillingness to cease the repetition until there is true understanding, His inability to grow bored with it, is the underlying trait of every excellent teacher — patient determination. God is a teacher who sticks with us until we have the understanding we need on the foundational issues. He repeats things over and over again, not because He thinks we are stupid, but because He believes that we are worth teaching.

Whatever concepts He strives to impart to us are as important to Him as we are, because the foundation upon which our lives are built is life to us, and it is His revealed will that He desires for us to have life in abundance. There are teachers out there who hate to teach the basics, who think it isn’t worth their time, but teaching the basics year after year to believer after believer is something God never, ever stops doing. The truth is, that He never stops teaching any of us the basics — because the basics are not really basic, and time and repetition show us their deeper meanings. Everything in the Bible is cyclical, in order that we go through the same things over and over again, so that we will learn, and have understanding, and grow to maturity. While we rush to and fro seeking esoteric knowledge, God is still there calling us to listen to Him so that He can set us on a firm foundation. As He is a patient and diligent teacher, we are called to respond by being patient and diligent students — students of His Word first, and of men second.

How does this relate to our conduct as representatives of His character? Frankly, it means that we must not despise the learner. God willingly teaches the same principles over and over again and so to be like our Master, we must be willing to do the same. Regardless of whether or not we are actual teachers, by divine calling or profession, we are all commanded to teach our own children.

Deut 6:

6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

We are commanded to teach the same things over and over and over again, because repetition is the way of the good Teacher, it is the way of a Father with his child. But more than that, repetition is how we were designed to learn. Therefore repetition shouldn’t be considered boring, or insulting, or a waste of time — repetition is compassion, it is a reflection of the character of the God who doesn’t want His people to be in darkness, ignorant, unable to serve and please Him, but to be fitted to good works in His Name. Repetition is the foundational principle of how God instructs us — and so perhaps we ought to learn to sit and listen intently and when those “boring” and “repetitive” parts of the scriptures keep popping up with the same exact wording, or something is said multiple times using slightly different language — because that is supposed to sound like an alarm in our minds. He is repeating it because He is trying to tell us something and He is afraid we will miss it if He doesn’t say it over and over again.

How we respond is everything, and He loves it when we go to Him with our questions first, “Father, what is it You are trying to tell me here?” If we keep seeking His answers, we will find them. Maybe not today, or tomorrow or even next year, but when we are ready, He will make sure that we see what He has been showing us all along.

That is the way of a Father teaching His child. That is the way of the Good Teacher.

The Creative Character of God

Bereshith bara Elohim et Hashamayim v’et Ha’arets.

(In the beginning – created – God – alef tav – the heavens – and (alef tav)- the earth)

Yesterday as I was praying about the revealed character of God, I realized that two of his most important attributes are mentioned before He is — primarily, that He was here in the beginning (bereshith), and secondly, His status as Creator. I thought about how fascinating that was, that the Hebrew word “bara” was mentioned even before God Himself, and how significant that had to be.

If I was writing my biography, I would have started it with the word “I” and then the word “was” or “am,” but God started out His biography with an expression of His eternal nature and creativity. And as I meditate on it, I see it as the ultimate expression of His revealed majesty. Unlike us, He was, is and is coming. Unlike us, He can create anything out of nothing.

Everything that is good, He created it from nothing. Every particle of energy, every drop of water, every spec of sand on the seashore, every plant, every star, every fish, every animal, and man – created from nothing. That is bara, the ultimate expression of creativity far, far beyond our comprehension.

But it goes so far beyond that — He created time, rest, the eternal plan of salvation, every shadow picture. He created every situation in the lives of the patriarchs that would serve as good and bad examples for us, He created within the minds of men the ability to write those things down, the ability to commune with the Divine consciousness of the Ruach (Spirit). He embedded the great mysteries of truth into those written words, and he created our desire to run after them.

He created us as social beings, and then defined what it is to be a social being. He set forth the obligations and privileges of being in relationship with Himself and others. He created the laws that science follows without question, the laws that water and wind will not violate, the laws that the very cells in our bodies adhere to. He created the way of the stars in the firmament, the ways of animals that we call instinct, and the ways of man that we call laws.

He is creative. Not wantonly and without purpose, not in the abstract, for He seems incapable of doing anything without eternal purpose. He is neither random nor careless, nor does He take delight in chaos the way we do. He does not create systems to fail, He creates them to be perfect. He created both form and function in absolute harmony.

What does this mean? This means, at its core, that He is trustworthy in His magnificence. And we have to try to grasp that truth. We have to look at the seeming randomness and understand that somewhere beyond our understanding is an absolute order that we are incapable of seeing. We must establish our trust upon that, that He created everything good for a purpose, and that purpose was us. We must never look at anything He created and call it bad just because we lack understanding, or just because we are using it wrong. After all, if a toddler uses a banana for a hammer and then calls it bad because it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean the banana is bad — the banana is good for food, and was never created to be a hammer. We are so very much like that toddler — basing our understanding of God’s goodness on our ability or inability to perceive and use things as intended.

What God calls good is good, and what God calls bad is bad. Our opinions, our definitions, our cultural norms do not move this. Technology does not change this, science cannot alter it. God is the creative one, He sets the standards, He alone has absolute understanding. There is a veil we must pass through in our relationship with Him, a veil created by our desire to understand things according to our own understanding but the truth is this — we will never have that kind of understanding and we have to accept that. What we must accept, in order to truly acknowledge the Lordship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is that He is the Creator and He will always possess wisdom, even when we lack it. He will always understand things we are incapable of understanding. Unless we beat down our pride and come to terms with our limitations and even embrace them as further proof of His magnificence and dominion over us, we will never be able to truly call Him Master and believe it.

He is the Creator. We have no right nor cause to question His definition of truth — because He created that too.