Having thought, no doubt rather superficially given the space I have allowed myself, about God's interventions in judgment, past and future, and in the wonderful intervention which the birth in Bethlehem represents, I move on to the more mundane. How does God intervene in our day-to-day lives? Assuming we believe He does at all.
In olden, pre-scientific, times it was easy to believe in a God who dealt in thunderbolts, in a God who might be moved to strike one dead. Now, with our scientific understanding, we do not believe in such a God. Actually many folk do not carry their scientific rigour all that far, and will happily subscribe to horoscopes, alien spaceships, lucky numbers, and all sorts of paranormal nonsense. But nobody who lives in a community based on scientific knowledge believes in a God who intervenes by striking people down with a thunderbolt.
So does God intervene at all, and if so how?
In the denomination whose services I attend, there are set prayers at most services, some inherited from a time long since past, with a turn of phrase that sounds quite like Shakespeare. Every Sunday we pray for the monarch of our country, and those who exercise political power, wishing God's blessing on them. What actually do we think God will do as a result of this praying, or would fail to do if we all stopped praying these prayers? I doubt if many of the hundreds of thousands who recite these prayers have asked this question. And we all, regardless of denomination, will continually pray to God to bring peace to this world, to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, give health to the sick, and comfort to the bereaved.
I repeat the question: what do we think God will do in response to such a prayer, or would omit to do if we failed to make the prayer?
Our answer, if we have one at all, will depend on how we answer the main question, about the way God intervenes in our day-to-day lives.
I am not saying I have the answer. In fact, I wish I had not thought of the question. But I did, and I cannot pretend otherwise. What follows is but a groping after an answer, knowing it will be imperfect and incomplete, but daring to hope it will not be misleading.
Let us begin with 'guiding principles', observing patterns from the record of Scripture, and hoping to make sense of these patterns. The first pattern to notice is that God's interventions do not contradict the natural laws of cause and effect that we can observe by the scientific method.
Here is a simple example: the leader of the embattled Israelites, Gideon, is facing a far superior foe; God does not zap this enemy army with a miraculous 'killer ray'; rather, He directs Gideon to choose a very small force of dedicated men, to attack by stealth, with cunningly contrived psychological terror, causing the enemy to panic in the night and set upon each other. Unless Gideon had followed the given instructions perfectly, the outcome might have been otherwise. This example is chosen because Gideon is mentioned as one of many who 'by faith ... conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, ... put foreign armies to flight ...' (Heb. ch 11, vv32-38). This passage makes it clear that 'faith' is the following of instructions, however improbable they might seem, because the source is recognised to be from God.
A further example is that of Noah: he lived miles from the sea, and probably had never seen a boat or a barge; he got a lesson in boatbuilding; the dimensions he was instructed to build to are proportionally exactly what today's barges use for maximum stability and carrying capacity. 'By faith Noah, being warned by God of things not yet seen, took heed and constructed an ark ... ' (Heb. ch 11 v7), no doubt to the great amusement and ridicule of his neighbours. God's intervention was to give an instruction, and then to look for the response of faith to that instruction. The ark (barge) was built by Noah, with instructions as precise as he needed, right down to waterproofing techniques he would never be able to devise by trial and error; they had to be right first time.
Which thought brings me to another significant point: God sometimes uses intermediaries for the passing of these instructions. God has created physical beings (flesh and blood) and spiritual beings (ethereal); and the spiritual beings are called 'messengers'. Unfortunately we consider them so special that instead of translating the Greek word for messenger (angelos) we transliterate it: 'angel'. But it might have been more useful to talk of 'the messenger of the Lord' rather than 'the angel of the Lord'.
Instructions are messages, and hence the need for messengers.
This is the essential way God works, massively simplified of course. He invites men and women to listen to His voice, and to do the things instructed. The prophets of old were those used to proclaim a message from God to a whole community of people.
And then God spoke through His Son, and from this time forward there is a new covenant or dispensation. God's people are the extension of the incarnation, His sons and daughters here on this planet, with a gospel (good news) to proclaim and tasks to perform.
So if I pray to God for the hungry to be fed, I am really praying that the men and women able to supply those needs will be truly obedient to His call that such hungry people have food taken to them, and the means to grow their own food provided. If I pray for peace (say in Northern Ireland) I am praying that all God's people will hear His call to abandon enmity and hatred, and to open their hearts to all members of whatever side of the political divide they belong to. This is how God intervenes in day-to-day events: through those who hear His voice and 'by faith feed the hungry, bring hatred to an end ... etc.'
Praying for others can be pretty dangerous: it may be me that God sends to be the answer of that prayer; if I want to be 'safe' from that outcome, I had better stop praying.
A closing thought: some of the paragraphs (sentences?) here really need whole chapters, even whole books, to do them justice. But with a 'meditation' one can dare simply to suggest lines of thinking, and invite the reader to do the hard work.
No comments:
Post a Comment