Today's Scripture Reading (June 27, 2024): Hebrews 7
Caution: this post contains the name
of God.
Where does our idea of God come
from? It is a question with which I admit that I have struggled over the past
years. The mission field has returned to lands once the possession of
Christians, and they have brought their various gods with them. One of those
gods is Allah. I have argued with anyone who will listen that Allah is simply
the standard Arabic word for God. If you picked up an Arabic Bible, you would
see the word Allah sprinkled throughout its pages, pointing to the Jewish and
Christian God. But I have also had discussions with people who believe that
Allah is an entirely different deity from the one celebrated by Christians. And
they have a good argument. Sometimes Allah, as described by Islam, has some
significant similarities and differences from the God celebrated by
Christianity or Judaism. So, the question remains: Is Allah the same as Yahweh
or Jehovah, or are we describing different deities?
However, the answer to that question
leads us back to another question: where did this idea of God begin? Is the concept
of God just a way to explain the unexplainable, or is there something else
behind the concept?
For Judaism and Christianity, the
idea of God begins with Moses and his discussion with the unknown at the
burning bush. From there, Moses led his people out of Egypt, and God gave Moses
the Law; in the Law, we found our concept of God. We understood that our
responsibility was to sacrifice to this God to make up for our sins. We were also
to help maintain the priesthood by giving the tithe; ten percent of our income.
This is, at least partially, our God.
The author of Hebrews reminds us
that this is not the beginning of our belief in a God. Three generations before
the story of Israel in Egypt, Abraham had already believed in God and given the
tithe. Moses isn't at the beginning of belief in God but is at the point at
which this belief in God seems to have been formalized. After Moses, the idea
of the priesthood was defined by the Law. The priesthood was left to the tribe
of Levi.
As a result, the Author of Hebrews
is left to explain how Jesus could be the High Priest and yet not be from the
priestly tribe of Levi. To explain this phenomenon, he goes back before Moses
to Abraham and the idea of the priest in that day. One example was the King, Melchizedek.
Melchizedek was not of the tribe of Levi, and yet Abraham recognized him as a
priest. Melchizedek also recognized God, even before the day of the Law had
come.
This returns me to my original
question. Where does the idea of God come from? Is it possible that it comes
from God, the great "I am," or the God who exists? However, it is not
just the Christian God who is found there; it is the core of all of God's
misunderstandings as well. Our religion is just the story of us trying to come
in contact with the unreachable and the impossible to understand. Religion is
simply the tale of us reaching out for the image of God as we know it. Some of
us are closer to that image than others, but we hope our various beliefs will
help our journey toward this unreachable idea. And nothing helps more than the
incarnation, the story of God made flesh, the person of Jesus who walked among
us and showed us what God was like,
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Hebrews
8
Personal Note: Happy 65th
Anniversary to my Mom and Dad.
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