I can’t remember if I’ve said it before, but God, my Master is really weird. I mean that in the strangest sense of the word. People have used weird to refer to ugly and disgusting things, but they are not unimaginable, not really weird. But my Master does not just twist the obtainable things into new stuff, but actually takes stuff unimagined and makes stuff unimaginable beyond the initial unimaginable stuff with which He started. He is really weird.
I stress this because I worked very hard against a trend of my upbringing. It is one that I saw everywhere, I caught it rather than was directly taught it. If you ask most believers if they have this trend I suspect they would deny it in words, but evidence might show in their actions. For a very long time I interpreted Scripture from the perspective of already knowing my Master. The alternative is to interpret Scripture in order to know my Master, and is preferable in the extreme.
What I mean by interpreting Scripture from the perspective of already knowing my Master is that I assumed God was such-and-such a way and had such-and-such a character or character qualities. And I am not referring to the “Omni’s” of His character, but personality. And this character was not only derived from my early understanding of authority, but was influenced by that. My perspective or understanding of the character of my Master was more influenced by the stories I was told and read as a child. God is good, God is great, God is powerful, and loving. But none of the stories I read really defined what “good”, “great”, “powerful”, and “loving” really meant. I had to look at society and culture to find those definitions. And, just so you know, society and culture have the wrong definitions for those terms, regardless of the culture and society. Some may get closer than others, but none get it completely right.
So I had “built” God, my Master, in an image I received from my culture and family. Then, while in the US Army, I began to actually read the Bible. The stories were no longer from children’s books and Bible story books. They were from the Scriptures. There were stories which never made it into those books, stories which were vastly different from those books, and there was this Character in all of them Who was very different from the character in those books. I assure you that my Master is really weird. If you want a case in point, take the passage from today’s entry in MUFHH, Genesis 22:2. The promised son for whom Abraham had waited literally over a decade was to be the demanded sacrifice, whole burnt offering demanded by Abraham’s Master. That is a weird Master. Think of just the “mixed message” in all of this. “I love you and will provide you a son in your old age from you and the wife you love. But then kill him once you have had a chance to bond with him.” This is one of those things which those who do not know my Master make them not want to get know my Master. What cruelty! For another instance, why put two trees in a garden, and then punish all of humanity when they eat from the wrong one? That is so cruel! What did God expect to happen? Of course they would eat from the wrong one eventually!
So, this has a tremendous effect on my understanding of holiness. Being odd for God as He is odd means being weird in scary ways. Jesus says He came to save the whole world, yet the Father commands the Hebrews entering the promised land to completely destroy the first city devoting everyone and everything in it to Him. How exactly is that “loving the whole world?” Things like this are what give people the impression that the “God of the Old Testament” is different from the “God of the New Testament.” People accuse my Master of having a dual personality or being bi-polar, or a variety of other mental disorders. And they have a case, or would, if my Master were human, and not the One capable of creating this universe. But He is the One capable of creating this universe. He claims to be loving, even in the Hebrew Scriptures. So it must be that I am the one not really understanding love. He claims to be powerful, so it must be me who does not understand power. He claims to be good, so it might just be me who does not really understand “good”. He claims to be great, so perhaps I don’t have a “great” understanding of that word.
Part of my submission to my Master is accepting His definition for things. And that is scary because His definitions run contrary to the society and culture in which I live. I will be looked at like a freak, like I’m weird, like I’m odd. So, holiness is not as easy as it might first seem. It is not the exalted position servants of my Master might assume at first. And part of the problem is not having some slick unassailable argument for the definitions which run so contrary to our society and culture. My only fall back for a definition is what I read and how I understand the character of my Master from the Scriptures. I can point to those examples, but they are not easy to understand (see the reasons in the previous paragraphs).
The truth I have had to receive in exchange for my early assumptions is that my Master is weird in scary ways, does scary seemingly mean things, and is not safe in the way a kitten is safe, but actually dangerous in the way an enormous tiger is dangerous (lions are always used, but tigers are even more frightening, and larger than lions). So, I wait, worship, and walk before One scary weird Master. This Master loves me, which I don’t understand and can’t really explain only show. This Master has my back, which is even more meaningful when the One protecting me is so frighteningly powerful. And this Master is the One I serve, which brings me into very close contact with Him. How can I not tremble at that? Even the protectors of His throne are shockingly frightening. He is truly terrible, and I enter into another day of service to Him.
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