Materials
What We Believe
#1
God The Father, Maker of Heaven and Earth
Genesis 1
by R. Todd Bouldin
It was between the First and Second World Wars that William Butler
Yeats wrote his famous poem “Second Coming”:
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Those were prophetic words in the early part of the 20th century as
totalitarianism emerged in the West, but not much has changed. The
circumstances have changed, but we still are worried about the center
holding in the first part of the 21st century. We question whether
there really is a center anymore – is there any story or
narrative that holds everything else together so that it all makes
sense?
Most in our postmodern age have given up on the idea of a center at
all. As bombs explode around the world and our lives grow increasingly
chaotic, we have grown accustomed to anarchy. Life seems more vulnerable,
but so do our beliefs. All the convictions that we have held for generations
seem up for questioning, what philosophers call deconstruction. Within
the Churches of Christ, some feel that the church is changing around
them faster than they can absorb, and the fear is that if the church
changes something, that it will eventually believe nothing. For others
in our tradition, they reject some of the teachings and practices
of our past but they are not sure what our identity should be in the
future. We are still looking for a center.
Finding a center of belief and meaning can be an exhausting enterprise,
so we often grow discouraged and just decide to tend to our own garden
and let the big questions go unresolved. Some have turned to spiritualities
which largely amount to nothing more than the expression of the self,
so that we self-construct our lives. But the Bible claims that there
is a different story that wants to construct you. For the next few
weeks, we are going to return to that Story in attempt to see if we
can find a Center which holds.
Prayer
Author Lloyd Douglas tells the story of visiting a sick old music
teacher who was blind and homebound. When Douglas asked him how he
was faring, the old musician hit a tuning fork and said, “That
is middle C. It was middle C yesterday. It will be middle C tomorrow.
It will be middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs
sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but that is
still a middle C.”
We are all searching for middle C. The Bible gives us our middle C
right from, well, the beginning, “In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1) In the beginning, God.
To believe in God, is different than stating, “I believe God
might exist,” or “I can see how believing in God might
be useful to some people.” To believe in God is a radical statement
that reorients all of life. It is to say that all of my trust, self-understanding
and view of the world are based in the existence, person and work
of God.
To say that you believe in God is say “I do not believe in my
hard work, or my financial planning, or in my health, or in my ability
to avoid disease or hurt. I do not believe in my choices, or the choices
of those who have power over me. I do not believe that the expression
of my self is the ultimate good. I believe in God. He is how I
begin to understand my world, my purpose and my self.”
So saying that you believe in God is more than just an intellectual
statement of belief. It is to say that your view of everything is
shaped by this one truth: that you believe in God.
God is first of all holy and mysterious, far beyond our comprehension
or knowledge. Yet, this God has revealed His heart and His character
to us through His creation, His relationship with Israel, and supremely
in the person of Jesus Christ. Today I would like for us to focus
on two aspects of God’s person as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures
and the New Testament: God as Creator, and God as Father.
The first words of Scripture are: “In the beginning God created.”
(Genesis 1:1) Any spiritual search begins with the question about
our universe and its origins. I look around me and ask, “Where
did this come from? Who made it? Where did I come from?” Genesis
1 answers the question decisively: God is the maker of heaven
and earth. The beauty and majesty of the earth, the order and
design of the universe, reflect the beauty, order and intelligence
of its Creator. This is not merely a scientific claim. It is also
an existential claim that I do not make my own life. Life comes as
the creative and gracious gift of God. To believe that God is Creator
is also to affirm that the earth belongs to God and exists for God’s
glory. Everything in the earth is not meant to resource my needs but
it first of all is the artistic work of a creative God. As Robert
Webber recently said in a lecture at Pepperdine, the earth is “the
theater of God’s glory.” That is why Christians should
be at the forefront of those concerned for the health and care of
our planet. It is the handiwork of God.
We cannot prove that God is the maker of heaven and earth. We certainly
cannot explain how God has made all that has life. But whether you
believe that God created life has the power to shape the rest of life
decisively. Most every atrocity in history and in our own lives has
begun with the denial of this claim. Without this belief that God
designed, ordered and gave meaning to our lives and universe, we live
in a chaotic world in which nothing has meaning or sense. This is
why belief matters. What you trust will determine how you will
live. One of the most fundamental differences in how people live
is the difference between believing that life is working itself out
with purpose and to a good end, or that life is a series of random
events going nowhere in particular. In my opinion, how you answer
the question of God as Creator will determine whether you will live
life with joy and purpose, or despair and boredom.
In his treatise On the Incarnation the early church father
Athanasius reminded us that God created all things ex nihilo,
or out of nothing. Even the dust of the ground from which humanity
was formed was created from nothing. God made all that is. So when
we attempt to derive our identity from something other than God, we
just return ourselves to nothingness. That is exactly why we feel
so empty when we try to create our identity from our jobs, our race,
our sexuality, our families, or our relationships. We speak often
of “making a living” as if we can make life, or “making
love” as if we can make love. But to believe that God is the
Maker of Heaven and Earth is to receive life and love from the Creator
who makes all things and in whom all things hold together. That is
our most fundamental identity, and believing in this is the only way
that your life will hold together too. Otherwise it’s just an
exercise in nothingness.
In the words of New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson, to
believe in God as the maker of heaven and earth is to affirm “that
there is a mystery at the heart of the world, a mystery that does
not yield to direct examination, that refuses to be measured or manipulated,
yet suggests its presence in every single thing we can feel and taste
and see and hear and smell in the world . . . the world is full even
though it looks empty.” (The Creed: What Christians Believe
and Why It Matters)
If the world or your life looks empty, or if you doubt whether there
really is a purpose for all of life, or you are exhausted from trying
to find a core set of beliefs, then start with this one conviction
upon which all others rest: that God is the Maker of heaven and earth.
This is to say that God is the center around which you can base
your life and begin to view your world.
If we only knew of God as our Creator, we might trust God but be afraid
of God’s awesome and creative power. But we also know from Jesus
Christ that God is not only our Creator but our loving Father.
We learn much about ourselves when we know God as our Creator; but
to believe that God is our Father tells us even more about ourselves.
It is to say that we are begotten of God, that we in our most essential
identity are the children of God, and therefore made up of God DNA
like holiness, life, goodness and creativity. But more importantly,
it tells us who God is. God who is Father declares that God is present
and available and reliable, and according to Jesus, He is a Father
who longs to embrace us and welcome us home (Luke 15). Paul said in
Romans 8:12-15, we can call God “Abba” or Daddy. To call
God “Daddy” is not to do so lightly, as I’ve heard
in some prayers that seem to take God less seriously than we do our
own fathers. To call God “Daddy” is to accept our
Creator’s invitation into an intimate, personal and dependable
relationship with Him as our Father who will protect, heal, correct
and welcome us until His image is restored in us again.
Once we connect with this Truth that God is our Maker and our Father,
we so want to see God. Philip had been following Jesus for quite some
time because he wanted to know his Maker, and he sensed that Jesus
might be able to lead him on the journey. Philip said to Jesus, “Lord,
show us The Father and we will be satisfied.” (John 14:8-11).
Just show me God. Enough of this talk about beliefs and doctrines.
I just want to see God. In response Jesus said something shocking,
“Whoever has seen Me has seen The Father. I am in The Father
and The Father is in Me. Believe in Me.”
The answer to our quest for something other than faith in God
whom we can’t see is faith in Christ whom we have seen.
The Son is the incarnation of God – God in the flesh –
among us. John declares that we are unable to know The Father apart
from His self-disclosure in The Son. Yes, we can learn about God in
creation and in the Scriptures, but you can only know this Creator
personally and relationally by knowing Jesus Christ, God
made flesh. That is why, in his prologue to the Gospel, John returns
to the first words of Scripture, “In the beginning . . .
was The Word, The Word was with God, and The Word was God. . . . And
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
(John 1:1, 14)
This is what we believe. We do not believe in theological speculations
about God. We believe in God who is a mystery, God who is our Creator,
God who is our Father. But we believe that this God has shown us His
heart and His purposes. That purpose is to restore the goodness of
His creation again through the person of Jesus, this Jesus who is
revealed as God with us. That Truth centers the universe and will
make sense of your life. To be a Christian is to believe and trust
that the world has a Maker, that can you count on the Creator to hold
your life in His hands, and that God’s purposes for you are
being worked out in your life as your essential goodness is being
restored again through Jesus Christ. In fact, as Augustine reminded
us, to love and enjoy this God forever is life. God is our Father,
and God is the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
That is middle C.
August 7, 2005
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