My 4-year-old came home from preschool singing, “He’s got the whooooooole world, in his hands!” His 7-year-old brother replied: “The whole world? Really?”
Young and old, there is no shortage of skeptics. Questions about the identity or existence of God might take the song from our lips, if not the wind from our sails.
But rather than seek to undermine faith, I can ask questions out of a desire, in the words of my favorite hymn, that God would “tune my heart to sing thy grace.”
Who is God, really? I begin with the claim that God is love (1 John 4:16). As the Brief Statement of Faith notes, there are biblical metaphors for this divine love: God is like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home.
Human likeness is not the only image of comparison with God in Scripture. God is like a rock, a refuge, a fortress, a pillar of fire, a burning bush. God is both a still small voice (1 Kings 19:11) and a roaring lion (Hosea 11:10).
All of this is who God is? Really? Aren’t these metaphors conflicting? Yes, they are! But I think the point is to prevent us from limiting who God is to only one image. Theologian Karl Rahner referred to the divine as the Infinite Incomprehensibility. We must use metaphors because we cannot speak the truth of God directly. Emily Dickinson referred to this idea as “slant truth” and explained: The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind.
Thinking of dazzling appearances, perhaps the most famous definition of “who God is” was given to Moses. Standing there barefoot and awed before the burning bush, Moses heard the voice of God, “I am who I am.” I love the ancient rabbinical interpretation that every bush in the wilderness was burning with the presence of the Lord Almighty, but Moses finally stopped to look at one!
If the truth is slant, then attentiveness is a spiritual discipline. Poet Jane Kenyon echoed the ancient story of God in the burning bush by imagining the divine speaking to her: I am the one whose love / overcomes you, already with you / when you think to call my name.
Does God still speak to us? Really?
One of my favorite authors, Charlotte Matthews, keeps a “God exists” list: a running record of tiny things that – in my moments of skepticism – I’m tempted to believe are mere happenstances, coincidences or quirks. But Charlotte believes God speaks through such things as a heart-shaped leaf stuck to her car’s windshield or a keychain flashing I LOVE YOU left on the ground outside a convenience store.
I love the fact that Charlotte’s list only gets longer. She never erases anything. Like the different images for God in the Bible, the point is not to harmonize or smooth out the contradictions, but to slow down and pay attention, praying “Come, thou fount of every blessing.”
Let me end with my poem that Charlotte inspired.
Slant Rhymes
Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Emily Dickinson
The light slants through the autumn trees.
From the stroller my daughter asks
for a leaf. A big one, Daddy.
I reach toward a burnt orange, and she
receives this gift with a bright laugh,
kicking her shoes, her head thrown back.
When asked for proofs that God exists,
slant truths make the top of my list.
