Saturday, March 3, 2007

Optimism and other thoughts...Numbers 14

There was a post at LP recently that got into the topic of positive thinking. It was a good reminder for me because my mind is often fill with negative thoughts, especially about myself and my abilities. Allowing those thoughts to fill my head undermines what I am doing and colors my thinking with grey.
In the OT, the Israelites seemed to consistently get it wrong. They had a few shining moments when they trusted God and had their confidence in Him. Take Jericho, where through obedience they did the impossible. But they immediately followed it up with Ai. And they suffered a crushing defeat because they began to believe that the victory was theirs and not God's. And then as they came to the promised land, God promised it to them, but they listened to the negative voices among them. So God basically said, "Forget it, you aren't going to have victory if you go in now." At that point they became optimistic, decided they could do it, even though God said He wasn't going to help them for another forty years, and they once again suffered defeat.
All the positive self-talk in the world wasn't going to help them if God wasn't with them. In fact, that is the root of pride, isn't it? To believe that your future lies in your own hands? That you are in control of your destiny? On the other hand, it is the sin of lack of faith to be filled with doubt when God has said go ahead.
So there are two different problems at the ends of the spectrum. At the one end we are full of pride, trusting in ourselves and at the other end, we are empty of faith, lacking trust of God. So, I'm thinking that the issue isn't positive thoughts or talk, the issue is, in whom do you have your confidence? We ought to have the most positive views in the world about God and what He can do, but being cognizant at all times that He is the reason for our confidence, not our confidence itself. It's sort of like believing that our cheering will win the game for the team, rather than cheering because we know our team has what it takes to win.
So I do think that positive self-talk is important. Too often, I fall prey to lies that fill my head. But confidence and optimism are useless if not based in truth.

Different topic. I came across a few more verses today. One I love. "Please pardon the sins of this people because of your magnificent unfailing love..." Magnificent unfailing love. What an incredible phrase. How could that not bring hope?
But it also, for me, brings up some theological questions. Not that verse, but the whole passage. God tells Moses that He IS going to destroy Israel with a plague. Period. No maybe's. Then Moses intercedes in their behalf. And then God says that He will pardon them as Moses has requested.
How do TR's deal with that? I've heard them explain it away, but it sounds just like that...that they are explaining it away. And later, Moses says, "The Lord will abandon you because you have abandoned the Lord." That sounds an awful lot like they rejected what was being offered. What happens to irrisistable grace?
It seems like there are many verses, throughout Scripture that put pinholes in the ultra reformed theology. But because the TR's have few proof texts they throw out, without putting them in context of the whole Bible, they can neatly package everything up. I think it's much more complicated than that.

And another idea I'm grappling with is the idea of God's omnipresence or immanence. It is a basic tenet of Christianity that God is everywhere and in all. But I can see that there are few complexities to that. First, in the OT at least, God dwelt in certain places, in the tabernacle, on the mountain, and I'm sure in some others I'm not thinking of right now. So was it that He dwelt in His fullness in those places, but just roamed in the others? Or was He only in those places it talks about Him being? And did that change in the NT? I'm sure it's possible that it did. In the OT the Spirit was sent and removed from people's lives. In the NT we are assured of the Spirit's presence in our lives, and indwelling, as believers. But where does that leave the unbeliever. I have always understood that God did not dwell in them. So is that at least one place that God's omnipresence does not not extend? And God cannot tolerate the presence of evil. So does the presence of evil drive God's immenance from that place? How do those two ideas coexist in harmony. What I am not talking about here is pantheism. I'm not even hinting that God's presence in something makes that thing God, any more than ice tea in my pitcher turns the pitcher into a beverage. It is simply a place where the tea resides. But are there places where God does not dwell?

3 comments:

MaryD said...

hey Paula i like reading your grapplings... but it's almost bedtime for me and i just want to know what are TR's?

Paula said...

Sorry. : ) It's short for truly reformed. Those who are extreme Calvinists.

Katrina said...

I was going to ask the same question, so thanks. :) I like reading your grapplings, too, probably because I have or do grapple with a lot of the same things (never with monkey stories, though LOL), but I'm not brave enough nor articulate enough to put mine out in cyberspace.