Fundamental Assumptions, pt. 2

The second of these basic assumptions is that God reveals the unknown by the known. I know, saying it that way's not too helpful, because it doesn't mean anything yet. So another way to say it is: God starts with what you know or accept to be true, and moves you from there a step at a time closer to himself.

God works within the context--cultural, temporal, spiritual--of his people, and draws what is true about that context, about his people's beliefs about their context, and uses those to move them a step at a time closer to him.

For example, in Abraham's day, there was a certain formula you followed when you made a formal agreement with someone. Basically, you symbolically called down nasty things on yourself if you broke the agreement. This was frequently in the context of someone swearing to a certain action, etc. to someone more powerful. The less powerful one, of course, is the one agreeing to the actions with dire consequences for failure.

When Abraham swore a covenant with God in Genesis 15, this would have been his expectation, too. Abraham gathered up the animals and set the stage for this amazing covenant he was entering into with God, and God with him. As gory as it is, the animals actually symbolize the consequences of breaking the covenant: death. And so Abraham had it all set, ready to swear to the death to follow God, and then falls into this weird sleep. God gives him a phenomenal set of promises, and then an invisible spectre apparently takes Abraham's path between the dismembered animals. In fact, God very symbolically and poignantly put himself in Abraham's place, swearing the covenant against his own person, and in the process making his promises inviolable.

So here God took the known (Ancient Near Eastern covenant practices) and inverted them, revealing his unknown attributes of humility, disdain for power plays, and utter trueness of nature and character. Abraham must have spent weeks playing that evening back in his head, trying to make sense of it!

Another good example is Jonah. When Jonah runs away from God in a ship, today's readers think, "Wow, what an idiot. Everyone knows you can't run away from God." But the truth is that at the time, many Israelites still considered God to be a sort of tribal deity. That sounds terrible, but read through Judges some time. God may be the Superman of tribal deities, but he's still Israel's god in the same way that the Hittites had gods and the Assyrians had their gods. Israelites were odd in that they only followed one God. I mean, really, folks! Didn't your mother ever tell you not to put all your eggs in one basket? A lot of the battles between Israel and other nations were cast in the Old Testament (see the prophets, especially the Minor ones) as battles between God and the other nation's most powerful deity. Sure, my god can kick the pants off of your god. It took a little while for Israel as a whole to come to the "God is the only true God" conviction. And now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Because Jonah jumped into a boat to take him across the Mediterranean to get away from God. After all, if your God is Israel's God, and you go live among another people, God can't get you, right? So that's a big part of the message of Jonah: God isn't just a tribal deity. His power extends over the Meditteranean and all the way to the most powerful city of the most powerful people of the time: Nineveh of the Assyrians. The double whammy in this is that the strength of a deity was directly connected to the martial prowess and victories of his people. So by that logic, the Assyrians had the strongest gods. After all, they controlled a huge empire and eventually led Israel off into slavery (not Judah, which was a separate little kingdom at the time).

God's complete sovereignty over the sea (which symbolized some of the greatest natural powers and was symbolized by some of the most powerful deities of the peoples around Israel), and the Assyrian king's repentance and submission to God's commands both hammered in the point that God is God over all places and all peoples, no matter how powerful, fierce, and frightening they are. God demonstrated the unknown--that he is the Only True God--by inverting and exploiting the known--the common belief in tribal deities. Whether you're an Israelite or an utter pagan, the story of Jonah was a loud and clear message of God's complete sovereignty over everything and everyone. Pretty profound stuff.

And this post's already too long, but I wanted to get in a couple of good illustrations I've been thinking about. You'll see this pattern repeated over and over again in the Old Testament, and then it amps up a notch to cycle through the New Testament, too.

And I guess I'll have to save the NT for another post.