God’s Escapable Nearness

This morning, Stan (at https://birdsoftheair.blogspot.com/?m=1) reminds us of the doctrinal belief that god is immutable: eternally one and therefore unchanging. 

We say this by faith, as does any one who believes in a god/in gods. And as christians we reason about the nature of god from christian scripture. We believe there is a god, and any true god is eternal, ungenerated, perfect and absolute act (with no potential that needs to be moved to action). All powerful. And one. No parts, nothing in action while “other aspects” of god are not in action. All knowing and, of course, omnipresent. Everywhere.

We say this by faith and by reasoning. But we cannot fully perceive or experience anything approaching such eternally perfect and full being.

We are creatures bound by time and space - both of which are created - and continuingly changed by living in space.

Therefore god’s changelessness is experienced by us in history as punctuated change. Even in the span of our own lives. We grow in faith and love and come to know more and draw closer to the heart of God’s love. Or, at least, we can. By the grace of the gift of the Holy Spirit and our capacities to Will the good, change is the constant of spiritual and moral growth. Obviously we never arrive at perfection.

But we shouldn’t stagnate in prideful but fragile refusal to be changed by the Spirit.

I fear that Stan and the other radical protestants around him spite themselves in a refusal to change because of their fragility in the face of an ever changing world and our call to deepen, broaden, strengthen our capacity to love it. Obviously not everything about a changing social world can be accepted. Authoritarian anti-democratic governments that break laws cannot be accepted. On the other hand even some laws themselves cannot be accepted. I have a biracial marriage that was illegal in some states just a decade and a half ago.

These changes we experience in our relationship with god can shake us up if the change demands major alterations in our own sense of self and/or community. Hence, major communal changes in our understanding of god are revelations.

It has ever been thus. And scripture reflects the experiencing of finding near to us and directing change or of finding god not so near and nothing changing.

"The LORD was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain.”

“Never again will I destroy all life by flood. And I will put a rainbow in the sky to remind me. I will see it and remember that I will never do this again.”

"Then the LORD relented and did not bring on His people the disaster He had threatened."

"If that nation, against which I have pronounced a sentence, turns away from its evil, I will relent concerning the disaster which I thought to inflict upon it."

We see it even in the apostles, who, by the insistence of the Holy Spirit, keep realizing new things about god’s love:

“The voice spoke from heaven a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.’ This happened three times, and then it was all pulled up to heaven again.”

When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Stan’s reminder of god’s immutability is true. And our call as christians is to be humble as eminently changeable, changing creatures capable of tremendous growth in the light of god’s unchanging love. We are not immutable. We’re far from perfect. But the quality of our love is ultimately limitless, too. We are on that journey.

Fortis est ut mors dilectio

Love is as strong as death

Song of Somgs 8:6

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen