Today at theStory we talked about naming God. The thing that stole most of the discussion was “what dangers, if any, are there in misnaming God.” So this post will sort of be my answer to that questions and trying to flesh it out.

First what I think is important to realize is that the question already assumes that we can misname God. There is right and wrong terms that we can attribute to God. I do understand and agree with the underlying assumption that we can misname God. I don’t think God is whatever we want him to be or whatever we call him.

Are their dangers in misnaming him? I don’t think there is danger in misnaming God. I think that misnaming God is part of what it means to be human and part of the process of discovering who God is. One lady spoke up in church today and said that for a while she thought that God was a jerk and she called him that and that it took getting to that point with God before she could call him something else. With that said, I don’t think God is afraid of what we can call him. He won’t be upset if I swear at him or call him the Almighty Smiter (reference to Bruce Almighty). I think God understands that in our limited human knowledge and struggle to understand who God is, it is inevitable that we will at time land on wrong understandings of him. So while they are inaccurate, I think that they are necessary to discovering who he really is.

John spoke up and reminded us that it was extremely important to remember though that the point needs to be progress and growing in our relationship with God. If we were to misname/name God and then stop because we think we have figured it out then that becomes an issue. No one can grasp or fully comprehend God they are always going to be going through the names to try to put a finger on it. The one who says that they are right and others are wrong, is the one that limits God to his own understanding. Growth is the key, and if misnaming happens in the midst of it then it is ok.

It also comes up that the Scriptures are our only accurate understanding of who God is and that all of our experience needs to be matched up against them to see if they are validated or not. It really puts a damper in the whole naming God thing because really none of the names we give him hold any weight unless they are found or alluded to in the Scriptures. This means that the Scriptures have a perfect and finished view of who God is and there is nothing that the last two thousands years or so has done to add to the image of God. I realize many hold that view, but it just seems to cancel out any importance of the lives of people who have interacted with God over the last twenty centuries. A experience that someone has with God today can hold as much weight and be used to strengthen someone just as much as any story told in the Bible.

This being said; I think that the Bible gives us a direction to head in to find out who God is but not a set of sold answers. Relationships, experience and worship all add to this foundation to help us be shaped into discovering God in all sorts of places. There is no danger in misnaming God if it is in the context of relationship and searching. Because of this, I think God can be named and misnamed over and over again because I believe that as long as we are heading in the direction that Jesus’ story is going that we can’t go wrong in journeying with him, whether we land at wrong rest stops along the way.

The movie called Ugly Lights that I'm working on with some friends is finished. You can see that Darryl and Joe (the two guys I planted theStory with) are actors in it. We sent it to the DVD printers this week and are now getting ready for our premiere.
It is going to be May 20, 22 and 23 at Imperial Theatre here in Sarnia at 7:30. Tickets are only $10.00 and there will be some live music from the soundtrack that night also. Come on out and enjoy it. You can also preorder DVD's that come complete with the soundtrack with all local music here and its only $15.00

Buy your Tickets Here

This is the message that I spoke on Sunday. It was heavily discussion based once we jumped into comparing the Enuma Elish with Genesis, but here are most of the things that came up and what I had prepared.

There are plenty of different names for God and we've gone through a few of them already over the past few weeks. We are sticking exclusively to Genesis, so in a way we are very limited because we are trying not to leave Genesis. So far this month we talked about God as our provider, God as one who sees us, God as Lord of all of heaven and earth last week with Darryl. John helped set us up for these topics by reminding us that we all have differing perspectives on life and how we look at God and that all perspectives, whether they lead to correct conclusions or not or if you accept it or not, deserve to be validated and valued because they come from humans who our God’s creation. As we saw from the experiment last Sunday, we all would call God something different. None of these were wrong, they were just different. However, what is important is that we all allow each other's opinions , right or wrong, and perspectives be added to the mix, because through these discussions and the coming together of community is how we can have a fuller understanding of who God is.

We haven't talked about the beginning of Genesis in almost 8 months, so I thought I would go back into it a little bit and extract some things that we haven't talked about much yet. For a minute I need everyone to imagine that they are outside, and their hands our filthy and they are building a city with their bare hands. We are going back thousands of years ago and you are in slavery. Your freedom is gone. You don't feel like you get to make any decisions on your own. Your life and your children's lives are already predetermined. They will work hard to make other people groups more comfortable in their big houses. Then you are freed by this guy, and you end up wandering around in a desert for 40 years. Life didn't get much better, even though freedom was the word that everyone was talking about; whatever that means.
However, from your understanding of how the world works, your life so far sort of makes sense. Here is the story that you would have known. Your parents told you and their parents told them, and it gave you some sort of meaning to all this mess and tried to make sense of the world, your slavery and your thoughts. This is a summary of that story:

Before the creation of the heaven and the earth, nothing existed except water. This primal generative element was identified with Apsu, the male personification of the primeval sweetwater ocean, and with his female associate Tiamat, the primordial saltwater ocean, represented as a ferocious monster. From the commingling of the two waters were born the divine offspring. These, in turn, gave birth to a second generation of gods and the process was repeated successively. Then came a time when the young gods, through their unremitting and noisy revelry, disturbed the peace of the Tiamat and Apsu. The latter decided to destroy all the gods, but the evil design was thwarted by the quick action of the all-wise Ea, the earth-water God.

Tiamat now planned revenge and organized her forces for the attack on the gods. The latter, for their part, requested Marduk to lead them into battle. He acceded provided that he be granted sovereignty over the universe. To this condition the assembly of the gods readily agreed and Marduk, invested with the insignia of royalty, thereupon became their champion and took up the cudgels against Tiamat and her helpers. After a fierce battle in which he defeated the enemy forces and slew Tiamat, Marduk sliced the carcass of the monster in two and created of one half the firmament of heaven and of the other the foundation of the earth.

The work of creation having thus begun, Marduk then established heavenly luminaries, each in its place. The gods complained to Marduk that, each having now been assigned his or her fixed place and function in the cosmos, there would be no relief from unending toil. Accordingly Marduk decided to create man to free the gods from menial labor and this he proceeded to do, fashioning a human being out of the blood of Kingu, Tiamat's second husband and captain of her army. The gods showed their gratitude to Marduk by building for him a great shrine in the city of Babylon, "the gate of God." The epic ends with a description of a testimonial banquet by the gods at which they recite an adulatory hymn of praise to Marduk that confirms his kinship for all eternity.

Borrowed from Nahum Sarna from Understanding Genesis

Growing up we have heard tons of stories of how the world came to be. That one was called the Enuma Elish and was probably the most prominent one that we would have heard. Another one called the Ennead is about a God who was so lonely so he masturbated and his semen turned into the waters and his breath turned into the earth and he was floating around trying to give some sort of meaning to the madness that existed around him. These stories weren't the most uplifting stories for us, an entire race in slavery. They don't give us any hope. In fact they kind of bring reason to why we are slaves and why they live their entire lives serving some other purpose that doesn't really involve them. Then another story starts floating around. This one seems to make a lot more sense and it refutes so much of what doesn't seem right about the Enuma Elish and the Ennead. This story gives us some hope. Let's read this story.

Read Genesis 1

Genesis was written and started circulating when Israel was in exile. Brueggemann explains it this way.

“Genesis is likely dated to the sixth century B.C. and addressed to exiles. It served as a refutation of Babylonian theological claims. The Babylonian gods seemed to control the future. Against such claims, it is here asserted that Yahweh is still God, one who watches over his creation and will bring it into well-being."

Walter Brueggemann from Genesis

Creation stories or creation myths in these days were not just random stories that were fun to right. They were a reality that these cultures lived out every day. These stories gave meaning and purpose to those that ready them. They were a way for these cultures to express their ideas of who God was and who we were in relation to that. This is the context that Genesis 1 arose out of. Brueggemann has this to add about what Genesis is doing.

“Genesis makes a theological claim that a world has been spoken which transforms reality. The word of God which shapes creation is an action which alters reality. The claim made is not a historical claim but a theological one about the character of God who is bound to his world and about the world which is bound to God.”

Walter Brueggemannfrom Genesis

“Genesis is not an abstract statement about the origin of the universe. Rather, it is a theological and pastoral statement addressed to a real historical problem. The problem is to find a ground for faith in this God when the experience of sixth century Babylon seems to deny the rule of God. This liturgy cuts underneath the Babylonian experience and grounds the rule of the God of Israel in a more fundamental claim, that of creation. The use of this text is not for general ruminations about the world. It continues to be a ground for faith in this God when more immediate historical experience is against it.”

Walter Brueggemann from Genesis

Genesis is responding to problems and bad theology of its time. The way it’s written, who its written to and why it’s written all help bring a better understanding of Genesis to us and how we should read it.

Discussion:
If you were an Israelite in bondage and after reading only the first chapter of Genesis, what would be some of the stuff that would give you hope? What would be some of the differences between the story of Genesis 1 and the Enuma Elish that would stand out to you?

Here are some major differences that I think make Genesis unique to its world.

Genesis has only one God, other stories have a bunch of them (monotheism vs polytheism)
With multiple gods comes multiple proper ways to live and multiple versions of justice. You end up having a large amount of different moral codes and humans don’t know what is right or wrong anymore. Genesis has one God who stands above everything and calls everything to be. There is no conflicts with this God, he just is.

"The Bible presumes that God operates by an order which man can comprehend, and that a universal moral law had been decreed for society. Thus, the idea embedded in Genesis of one universal Creator has profound ethical implications. It means that the same universal sovereign will that brought the world into existence continues to exert itself thereafter making absolute, not relative, demands upon man."

Nahum Sarna

Creation is good, and God is pleased
God takes pleasure in everything that he had created, he loves his artistry. This puts creation has something to be valued and respected as opposed to something that evolved out of chaotic wars and unrest. There is a purpose and a direction for God’s creation and God is pleased when it is fulfilled. God is pleased before humans could even do anything, because they could ever earn favour.

"The world created by God and acknowledged as "good" is the one in which history begins and the one that will reach its goal by fulfilling the divine purpose for which it was created...the emphasis in the narrative of creation in Genesis 1 is upon the complete correspondance between divine intention and the universe, which was suitable to fulfill the purpose for which it was brought into being."

William Dumbrell in Search for Order

We are created in God's image
In Genesis, man is central and the climax of creation. In the other stories man is sort of this afterthought or accident. This brings a lot of value to humanity and who they are in relation to God.

"The creation of nothing else (than man) in the cosmoginc process is preceded by a divine declaration of intention and purpose, "Let us make man" (Gen 1:26). Man, in fact, is the pinnacle of creation and the entire story has a human-centerd orientation. This situation contrasts strongly with the story of the creation of man in Enuma Elish. There he is almost incidental, fashioned as a kind of afterthought as a menial of the gods to provide them with nourishment and generally to satisfy their physical needs."

Nahum Sarna

"In both Egypt and Mesopotmia, the notion of humankind as the image of the deity is well attested. In Egypt the pharaoh was regarded as the image and the incarnation of the creation God."
William Dumbrell

A few other thoughts to bring up

There is no struggle between God and nature (god created the monsters as opposed to them being restrained or destroyed)

There is always something outside the gods, Genesis assumes God was always there

Chaos to order (not the other way around)

Can't understand creation-creator outside of sex

Moral indifference of the gods, God in Genesis has a moral standard

Genesis starts a process and does not end there, other epics just do creation

There is purpose in creation

"In place of fortuitous concatenation of events, history has become purposeful and society has achieved direction. A strong streak of optimism has displaced the acute awareness of insecurity...This basic belief in the essential goodness of the universe was, of course, destined to exert a powerful influence upon the direction of the religion of Israel and to affect the outlook on life of the people. It found its expression in the concept of the covenant relationship between God and His people and ultimately achieved its most glorious manifestation in the notion of Messianism--two uniquely Israelite contribution to religion. The God of Israel, being a deity whose will is absolute and incontestable and whose word is eternal, was able to give assurances that human strivings were decidedly not in vain."

Nahum Sarna

If Genesis tells us one thing, let it remind us that there is a purpose in God’s creation. There is a direction that it’s heading. There is light at the end of the tunnel. In the first chapter the creator is able to rest because his creation is good. He is pleased with his portfolio. For the first time these Israelites are starting to think that maybe there is something worthwhile in them. They are created in God’s image and not just here to settle a bet or spend myself for all these gods. I have a job to participate with him in the creation by recreating and being good. I have a role, and a purpose. God thinks I am good.

We all know that things didn’t stay ‘good.’ So Genesis tries to deal with the problem that not all is good anymore. So we get a story like the fall. In fact the rest of the Bible has humanity and God dealing with this problem, that creation is no longer good. It tries to deal with why that is the case, what we are doing about it, and most importantly what God is doing about it because it’s his creation that is no longer acting like his creation.

We move on past Genesis 1 and into the next 10 chapters which we have spent a lot of time in during the first few months of this series. We see stories of humanity failing to live up to God's purpose and God continually giving them chance after chance to get there. The pattern is the same from the fall, to the flood, to Babel...God gives purpose, humans fail, God gives a chance all over again. We can see through these stories that when God creates something, he continues to care about what it does. God is patient and he will wait for us. Part of being his creation is having the freedom to choose to be as God created us or to be more like we’d prefer. This is not by coercive call of obedience but by an evocative call of inclusion on God’s plans. God has a purpose and he will not leave the world alone until it is accomplished

Our creator continues to care about his creation today. God’s creation isn’t done, because he has yet to say ‘it is good’ for the final time. So let Genesis be an encouragement to us also today. We know that the world’s stories may tell us that happiness, money or sex is what we were created for exclusively. However, we also know that God is the one who created us, and he created us to be good and to be like him. He will not rest until it is so with all of creation.

Let’s pray.

God of heaven and earth. God who sees us. God who hears our cry.
We thank-you for creating us and creating this world.
We know you are not done, and that this world is far from the good that you intended.
Thank-you for being a God who does not give up and who pursues his purposes till completion.
We are hard up now because it feels at times like you are not around, like creation is getting worse.
Sometimes it feels like we are getting worse and less in tune with you.

Give us comfort and peace in knowing that one day you will redeem all of creation.
Give us comfort and peace in knowing that one day these problems will disappear.
Give us comfort and peace in knowing that you care more than we do and are passionately pursuing your purpose in us and throughout all your creation.
May we be your creation, and may you look at our lives and say it is good.
May we be good to your creation, and good to each other
May we long for the image of God in our lives in everything we do.

God of heaven and earth. God who sees us. God who hears our cry.
Teach us to create and redeem along side of you.
Teach us to see your creation behind everything, good and bad
God of heaven and earth. God who sees us. God who hears our cry.
Have mercy on us.
Amen.

One of the flags that new churches wave right now is that of tolerance. We love to tolerate other people’s beliefs and perspectives. We find value in everyone and where they are coming from. I wrote a few posts on my ideas of seeing everyone’s perspective as truth (read them before you assume.) There ends up being one major flaw in most people’s approach to this kind of tolerance.

Let’s say there is a group of us in a room and one person ends up being really rude and distasteful to someone else because of what they believe. This group of people however has a very strong tolerance policy. People are allowed to question without penalty, and everyone’s perspective has equal opportunity to be known and join in the conversation. However, there is one person who just doesn’t get it. He rags on someone telling them their ideas are too liberal and that their beliefs are unfounded. He has absolutely no tolerance for the people around him and their opinions.

Usually what ends up happening is that we drive people like that out. There is no place for those that are intolerant towards others. We shut them down, make them feel out of place and mostly talk about them behind their backs in disbelief. We end up disliking them quite a bit and are in awe at how rude to everyone they are. We have very little tolerance for those that are intolerant.

It fascinates me to watch a group of people be transformed from their core beliefs by one person who doesn’t believe it. One intolerant human being has the capacity to make a room full of people who claim tolerance extremely intolerant. This is unfortunate. The key to tolerance is not tolerating those with crazy beliefs and wild ideas but to tolerate those who refuse to play by your rules. Tolerance is at its strongest when facing intolerant behaviour. Tolerance is defeated when we are intolerant to those that are intolerant.

This is a true test of this kind of characteristic I believe. Are we as people able to uphold our positive beliefs of tolerance in the face of intolerance? Can we tolerate intolerance? This is I think the true proof of a community of people who truly want to embrace and love the other. I hope we can do it. I truly hope we can learn to accept those that refuse to accept our rules of acceptance.

We sang these songs at theStory the past few weeks.
Sometimes its a breath of fresh air to sing something that isn't Hillsongs and something with a little more creativity like they had when they wrote hymns. It was fun to see how some people responded to this first one.

Jesus by Page France | MP3

I will sing a song to you
And you will shake the ground for me
And the birds and bees and old fruit trees
Will spit out songs like gushing streams

And Jesus will come through the ground so dirty
With worms in his hair and a hand so sturdy
To call us his magic we call him worthy
Jesus came up through the ground do dirty

I will sing a song for to you
And you will stomp your feet for me
And the bears and bees and banana trees
Will play kazoos and tambourines

And Jesus will dance while we drink his wine
With soldiers and thieves and a sword in his side
And we will be joy and we will be right
Jesus will dance while we drink his wine

Jesus will come through the ground so dirty
With worms in his hair and a hand so sturdy
To call us his magic we call him worthy
Jesus came up through the ground so dirty
Jesus came up through the ground so dirty
Jesus came up through the ground so dirty
Jesus came up through the ground so dirty

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Thrice - Come all you Weary | MP3

Come all you weary with your heavy loads
Lay down your burdens find rest for your souls
Cause my yoke is easy and my burden is kind
I’ll take yours upon me and you can take mine

Come all you weary, move through the earth,
You've been spurned at fine restaurants and kicked out of church;
I’ve got a couple of loaves, so sit down at my feet,
lend me your ears and we'll break bread and eat

Come all you weary
Come gather round near me
Find rest for your souls

Come all you weary, crippled you lay
I’ll help you along you can lay down your canes
We’ve got a long way to go but we’ll travel as friends
The lights growing bright further up, further in

Come all you weary
Come gather round near me
Find rest for your souls

Rest for your souls

Come all you weary
Come gather round near me
Come all you weary
Come gather round near me
Find rest for your souls
Rest for your souls
Rest for your souls

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Braddigan - City on a Hill | MP3

Will you come quick upon the hill
We''ll break some bread and we'll all take our fill
We have the greatest reason of all
We'll build a city or we'll fall

Haven't you heard that we are free?
Haven't you traced the steps back from Calvary?
We have the greatest reason of all
We'll build a city or we'll fall
We'll build a city without walls

So bring all your hammers, your nails, and your tools
Bring all you can spare and what you might use
And now loose your grip; we'll not need our hands today
We'll build a city as we pray

So bring all your hammers, your nails, and your tools
Bring all you can spare and what you might use
And now loose your grip; we'll not need our hands today
We'll build a city as we pray