Today's Scripture Reading (September 2, 2024): Job 22
Where is God? I get it;
he is everywhere, but according to the Bible, isn't that really his Spirit?
Doesn't the Bible teach that the Holy Spirit moves through us, convicting us of
sin? God is on his throne in heaven, and Jesus said that he was going there to
prepare a place for us. So, I return to the question I started with: where is
God?
I know, it is somewhat
an unfair question. I posed the question a few years ago to a friend who
believed the Bible must be taken literally. And he was sure that God was in
heaven, which he defined as being up. In this case, I asked my follow-up
question. Suppose I ask the same question in twelve hours: where will he be?
And the answer was the same: up, even though, in twelve hours, up will be in an
entirely different direction.
It is a caution of which
we all need to be aware. The Bible was written for people who did not have the
scientific knowledge of this world that we have now. For Job, he lived in a
three-tiered world in which heaven was up, hell was down, and we lived in the
space between these two realities. The stars were nothing more than holes in a
curtain, giving us a glimpse of the heaven that existed behind that curtain.
This was how Job thought the world worked. It was a model that made sense to
Job, even if it doesn't make sense to us, or maybe even if it doesn't make
sense to me.
But that doesn't mean
that heaven doesn't exist and that this Bible we read faithfully isn't true. It
was truth tailored for Job, and it is a truth that is still present for us. God
still exists behind the curtain; we just know that the curtain has moved.
Heaven might not be up or down. I can't answer that question. But like Job and
his friends, I am sure that heaven exists and that Jesus has gone to that place
to prepare a place for us.
Someday, this struggle
will end. I follow a Facebook page dedicated to Neil deGrasse Tyson. The page
often posts anti-religious messages or makes fun of Christianity. One response
from a follower was to a comment on the page: "There is no god, so grow
up." But one day, the page posted a message about the idea that energy can
never be destroyed; it can only change form. The idea this atheist page gave to
its readers was that when you die, the essential energy that is you does not
disappear, but it changes and goes somewhere. As I read the post, I was
speechless. Here, this atheist site that has been an antagonist to all who
believe in Jesus was saying precisely what we have always said. At some point, we
will all move behind the curtain, wherever that curtain might be. And that idea
is consistent with science, even if scientists tend to say it differently.
Tomorrow's Scripture
Reading: Job 23
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