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If we were getting ready to move, we’d establish where we were going to move, then most likely google the area, then find a realtor to help us with finding a new place to live.
Odds are, no matter how convicted we are that we should move, we would not just pack up our bags, show up at the door and force the current inhabitants out.
Why wouldn’t we?
Because we operate out of systems created by our government. There are “ways” of doing things that we can’t go around just because we want to. That would be considered illegal and we’d get into trouble.
Thousands of years ago there were “ways” of doing things. They had their own ruling systems, governments, and frankly, they did things that today we think are unimaginable and horrific. (Remember the scripture passage I read a few weeks ago about stoning people?) And honestly, it becomes very problematic to try to interpret scripture as a “literal guidebook/map” of how we are supposed to live today. If we were to do that, and do it consistently, we’d all end up in prison.
It’s hard to wrap our heads around this, but what we are reading as we read Hebrew (Old Testament) Scriptures is a group of people’s journey through life.
“It is a record of people’s experience of God’s self-revelation. It is an account of our very human experience of the divine intrusion into history. The book did not fall from heaven in a pretty package. It was written by people trying to listen to God. I believe that the Spirit was guiding the listening and writing process. We must also know that humans always see “through a glass darkly . . . and all knowledge is imperfect” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Prayer and patience surrounding such human words will keep us humble and searching for the true Living Word, the person of Jesus, which is how the Spirit best teaches (1 Corinthians 2:10,13)—through living exemplars. This is surely what it means to know “contemplatively.””
Rohr – https://cac.org/daily-meditations/what-do-we-do-with-the-bible-2019-01-06/
That’s why it is so vital to read and interpret scripture through the lens of Jesus. To weigh it all with how he lived, loved, and taught.
If we do that, we get a better understanding of God.
But – one more thing, it is important to also remember, we will never truly understand God because we cannot put human words around something that isn’t human.
As John Wesley, the founding father of Methodism put it,
To begin with the great Creator himself. How astonishingly little do we know of God! — how small a part of his nature do we know! Of his essential attributes! What conception can we form of his omnipresence? Who is able to comprehend how God is in this and every place, how he fills the immensity of space? If philosophers, by denying the existence of a vacuum, only meant that there is no place empty of God, that every point of infinite space is full of God, certainly no [one] could call it in question. But still, the fact being admitted what is omnipresence or ubiquity [Humanity] is no more able to comprehend this, than to grasp the universe.” ~ John Wesley (The Imperfection of Human Knowledge)
Grace and Peace,
Andrea
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