the Good Question

A man enters into a wildly unexpected encounter with the true God in a land and time full of pantheons and patron deities. They speak and presently God gives the man a mission to speak to others on His behalf. Bemused by the unusual request and the very odd circumstances he has found himself in, the man musters the courage to ask the Almighty Shaper of Worlds a question! He asks, "But—and don't get me wrong here, I know you are God, God—but... who are you? Uh, if I am to speak on your behalf, Lord, who should I say sent me? Are you Ra? Baal? Are you Dagon, Chemosh, or Anu? Who are you, if you will excuse my asking?" To this, God wisely responds, "I am who I am." "Certainly. ...But who is that, Lord?" the man sheepishly dares. "That is the question of the ages, son. You'll just have to find out. You think you will know who I am if I give you a name? You think your people's many problems will be solved if they simply switch the word-name of deity in their prayers, when their hearts are so far from me? No. A name will not help you. If I give you a name, you will think you know me. And you will not try to know me as a person if you think you already do. What you need is an invitation to know me. So, when your people ask you, 'Who is this god you speak for?', tell them, 'I asked Him the same thing, and He said, "I am who I am."' And when they ask, 'And who is that?', as you have, perhaps they will begin to seek the answer to that question themselves... and come to know me—who cannot be known in a name."

God's "I am who I am" was, above all else, an invitation to get to know him. It may have meant other things when God said it to Moses; the language experts say it may be translated more than one way. Perhaps God also meant for us to understand that He is the self-existing source of all things from "I am that I am," but I strongly suspect that those metaphysical determinations about the nature of God's existence and essence were secondary (though nonetheless present) to the more immediate question, "Who is God?" Much more is involved in that question than the problem of God's makeup as deity. That is better asked by "How is God?". "Who is God?", on the other hand, has more to do with God's identity, which is a question of person, not merely of substance.

What good is a name, if you don't know the person? "I am who I am" is as much an invitation as it is anything else. Who is God? He is who He is. Who is that? I guess, you'll have to find out. And there is no other way to that knowledge than by relationship, through experience, as has been true for every other person you know.

Juliet: Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

Romeo: I take thee at thy word.
Call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz'd;
Henceforth I never will be Romeo.
...
By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am.

(William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet", Act II, Scene II)

So, for every practical purpose, God doesn't love you for a reason. He loves you. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

He loves you, and not for any action or ability or quality that you can manipulate, formulate, postulate, propagate, or create. If there is indeed a reason we can know, it has more to do with your origin and the core makeup of your soul than anything you can quantify. And in that reason, even if it be solely a reflection of God's character and nature and nothing else, He loves you uniquely, but still not more or less than any other person—just as a father would love his children, and just as the God-figure in The Shack said "I'm especially fond of that one" and then said it of every one.

Your Father—the Source of your life—adores you and He'd have you crawl onto His lap and tug at His beard, if only you knew Him like that. A tragedy! To be loved so richly and think yourself a pauper! And then to deny His displays of affection, His attempts toward your good—to deny that you own whole galaxies worth of tenderhearted love in your Father's eyes and go on eating meat from dumpsters and cursing life! Ah, good thing it is He doesn't love for a reason!

Oh, but don't be condemned! There is no fear in love! Love doesn't carry forward last month's negative balance! If you remain dispirited because He loves you richly and you love Him poorly, you forget He doesn't love you for a reason! His love is completely without respect to your merit. Love, of this kind, is also called "grace" and forgiveness is a grace. And if it is a grace, then it cannot be earned; it is given. It doesn't need to be asked for—only, we usually need to ask for it before we will trust that we have it. God doesn't need reconciled to us. We need reconciled to Him.

Trust from the place you are. You cannot manufacture trust. God will win you to it. You will trust Him more when you know more how He loves you, and that comes when you know Him more, the way He really is. Your trust is exactly proportional to how convinced you are of His love, which itself is exactly proportional to how well you know Him. Be patient (but be passionate); He is patient. And He will win you to it.

Seek Him. Look everywhere for Him. —Except, that makes it sound like He is hiding. But He isn't. He is at times subtle, but usually it only seems that way because our senses are dulled to the ways He speaks to us and reveals Himself to us. One day He may woo you to Him by a pinecone or the reflection of light on a door handle just as He might on another day by a sermon or a book or a prayer. He speaks to us in people's scars and the stories they tell over dinners and late-night games of cards. He reveals Himself in epiphanies and gradual increments so intangible that months or years may pass before you even realize a significant change has occurred.

But know child: He is your Father—yes, your Papa and Daddy, more loving, affectionate, wise, and strong than any mud-and-clay parent could be. You are His darling. Hop into His lap. Cry, laugh, or complain, and nuzzle close, curl up into His arms and rest. He'll hold you, wipe your brow, and whisper you songs.

You may be an adult in relation to people of Earth. But in the same way you cannot be more than a small child to Him. So while it may seem very childish to talk like this about your relationship with "Papa," that is precisely why it is true. You are a child. So, you must in a sense be childish. After all, He is your Father and what else is there left for you to be?

He demonstrates a fascinating flair for helping us balance our understanding of Him and our glorious inadequacy to do so.

I say it is glorious because it is this very inadequacy (and His depth by contrast) that creates the opportunity for discovery. My finiteness and His infiniteness create the potential for adventure in our relationship with each other. If He were finite, then the ocean could be mapped. I could find an end and the story would conclude, or continue in purposeless boredom.

But instead I delight in exploring His inexhaustible reaches, and He delights in giving me my delight. He shares Himself with me, and I share myself with Him—the difference being that His gift to me continually comes, and mine is but a drop. But this does not mean that the relationship is one-sided! No.

Because He is infinite, our relationship together is infinite. It is an interminable and inexhaustible, intimate connection, because relationship is about responding to each other, and when one gives without end the other receives without end. And, as anyone who has loved the purest kind of love can attest, giving is a kind of receiving. Together we share an infinite source of joy, which is our relationship with each other—I in Him, and He in me in Him, unending.

First, He says, "You can know me." Then, He says, "But I am more than you can fully know. There will always be more." And I say, "So exciting!"

And so, it is in our relationship with Him that we find both our fulfillment and thirst!

In the very nature of being—that is, God—it must be hard (and divine history shows how hard) to create that which shall be not himself, yet like himself. The problem is to separate from himself that which must yet be ever and always and utterly dependent on him, and to separate it sufficiently that it shall have the existence of a free individual. Only so shall it be able to turn and regard him—choose him, and say, "I will arise and go to my Father." Only so shall it develop in itself the highest divine of which it is capable—the will able to side with the good against the evil, the will to be one with the life whence it has come and in which it still is....

Hence the final end of the separation is not individuality. That is but a means to it. The final end is oneness—an impossibility without the prior separation. For there can be no unity, no delight of love, no harmony, no good in being, where there is but one. Two at least are needed for oneness. And the greater the number of individuals, the greater, the lovelier, the richer, the diviner is the possible unity. [George MacDonald, in his essay "Life" from "Unspoken Sermons, Second Series" as edited in "Your Life in Christ" by George MacDonald, ed. Michael Phillips]