Today I finished Philip Yancey’s book, “Disappointment with God.” I have discovered an unexpected appreciation for Yancey. I didn’t realize he was so honest and real with his writing. I wasn’t expecting such a real-life, and sometimes, dare I say it, confused, perspective, but just another feely good Christian book.

One thing Yancey talked about was reductionism in relation to faith. He talked about how in our modern world, we are typically hostile to “faith.” I know this to be true in my own life at times, and in the lives of close friends. He mentioned that other societies took for granted the existence of a supernatural world because the phenomena of the natural world seemed to point to powers beyond our comprehension - a sunset, an eclipse, a thunderstorm. But he talked about how in this current age, we are able to break everything down, from a rainbow, to human DNA and synapses, to atoms, reflection, refraction, etc. This has definite beneficial and positive outcomes, from curing diseases, to predicting weather-related catastrophes. Not to mention flights to the moon, and the ability to view the entire world while staring at a box in our living room.

“But reductionism has also brought a curse. Looking at the beam rather than along it (Yancey’s metaphor for viewing the parts rather than what they are leading to = something beyond us), we risk reducing life to nothing more than its constituent parts. We will never again view the sunrise or moonrise with the same sense of awe and near-worship that our “primitive” ancestors - or even the sixteenth-century poets - felt. And if we reduce behavior to merely hormones and chemistry, we lose all human mystery and free will and romance. The ideals of romantic love that have inspired artists and lovers through the centuries suddenly reduce to a matter of hormonal secretions.”

“Reductionism may exert undue influence over us unless we recognize it for what it is: a way of looking. It is not a True or False concept; it is a point of view that informs us about the parts of a thing, but not the whole.”

 

Today I was reading, sitting on a bench on a hilltop, which provided an extensive view of the countryside and the horizon. I was watching a bird, slowly meandering through the sky, gliding this way and that way, lifting his wing a little bit to let the wind take him wherever it wanted. And I thought to myself, I wonder why God created humans, trees, and most animals to be limited to the ground. Why didn’t he create us with the ability to fly. And then I thought about what that would look like.

I thought about there being people everywhere at all times, never being able to look up and daydream into an open sky, never gazing at a sunset with nothing but the clouds to enrich your view, never being able to see all the stars at one time. And then I was thankful.

It’s time Kate and I came clean on what we did in Kansas City last month when we were visiting Timothy…

At least we’re honest.

I’m reading Philip Yancey’s “Disappointment With God,” and so far I’m really impressed with Yancey’s openness and honesty about real-life struggles and questions that dwell in our souls that aren’t the most popular to bring up in Christian conversations. Here are just a few of his thoughts, and I’ll add more later.

“It struck me forcefully there that our common impressions of God may be very different from the God the Bible actually portrays. What is he really like? In church and at a Christian college I had learned to think of God as an unchanging, invisible spirit who possesses such qualities as omnipotence, omniscience, and impassibility (incapable of emotion). These doctrines, which are supposed to help us understand God’s point of view, can be found in the Bible, but they are well buried. Simply reading the Bible, I encountered not a misty vapor but an actual person. A person as unique and distinctive and colorful as any person I know. God has deep emotions; he feels delight and frustration and anger. In the Prophets he weeps and moans with pain…When the Israelites commit infant sacrifice, he seems stunned by the actions which - an omniscient God is speaking here - “I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” He explains the need to punish by asking plaintively, “What else can I do?” I know, I know, the word “anthropomorphism” is supposed to explain all those humanlike characteristics. But surely the images God “borrows” from human experience point to an even stronger reality.”

“As I read through the Bible I marveled at how much God lets human beings affect him. I was unprepared for the joy and anguish - in short, the passion, - of the God of the universe. By studying “about” God, by taming him and reducing him to words and concepts that could be filed away in alphabetical order, I had lost the force of the passionate relationship God seeks above all else. The people who related to God the best - Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah - treated him with startling familiarity. They talked to God as if he were sitting in a chair beside them, as one might talk to a counselor, a boss, a parent, or a loser. They treated him like a person.”

“I had always considered just one point of view (when reading the Bible): the human point of view. I have shelves full of books presenting the dilemma of being human. Some are funny, some anguished, some sarcastic, some densely philosophical, but it all expressed the same viewpoint: “Here’s what it feels like to be a human being.”

“I tried to set aside my existential questions, my personal disappointments, and consider God’s point of view. Why does he seek contact with human beings in the first place? What is he pursuing in us, and what interferes with that pursuit? I turned to the Bible again, trying to hear God’s words as if for the first time. He speaks for himself there, and I realized that I had not often paid attention. I had been too preoccupied with my feelings to listen attentively to his feelings…I came away with a very different mental image of God. I had a strong sense that God doesn’t care so much about being analyzed. Mainly, he wants to be loved. Nearly every page of his Word rustles with this message. And I returned home knowing I must somehow explore the relationships between a passionate God - hungry for the love of his people - and the people themselves. All feelings of disappointment with God trace back to a breakdown in that relationship. Thus, I determined to look for the answer to a question I had never before considered: “What does it feel like to be God?”

I put up some of my favorite pictures, hard to choose! I hope you enjoy them…If you do happen to look at them, please comment on this site and let me know which ones you like most!

It’s just a start. Soon I’ll have some more albums up.