A journey of three days
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Though technically I should be writing only for paid subscribers in April (as I do every-other month), I have decided, in view of Eastertide timing, to share with all this month—not that I anticipate hordes of people to be clamouring for a read. :-)
At any rate, if paid subscribers feel somewhat disgruntled at the lack of exclusivity, I refer them, with a good-natured wink, to the spirit of the parable in Matthew 20:1–16.
Next missive forthcoming on the 6th of May!
Protesting providence
I think it is impossible to over-interpret God’s goodness.
Lately I have been registering that my functional doctrine of providence is impoverished. By that, I mean that I am deficient in perceiving and expecting the gracious activity of God in the particularity of lived experience. In fact, all of us walk around with an ‘impoverished functional doctrine of providence’ (apologies for that unwieldy phrase) to some degree, in the sense that each of us face instinctual resistance to the audacious claim that God is good. Fully. Unfailingly. Inexhaustibly. That the fundamental reality cohering the whole cosmos is its good Creator. That the Father’s goodness is expressed in every single vicissitude of the lives of his children.
‘Surely,’ we protest, ‘I may be in danger of over-spiritualising if I think that the flowering trees or the timely email communicate God’s care for me? Can God really be said to be thoroughly good to me, for me in the midst of this demoralising ailment or that throbbing loss? Even if I tasted his goodness today, what if it falters tomorrow? What about God’s goodness showing up in her hard life?’
So our objections multiply faster than rabbits. In a way, that we should object to God’s goodness is unsurprising—foolish and devastating as it is—for the primal error of humanity was falling (catch the pun as the cue to go read Genesis 3) for the devious insinuation that God was holding out on humans. The serpent fed them the lie that God’s setting limits for them really betrayed the limits of his goodness. They ate the lie that lurking within the God who had made humans to be like him and with him in paradise was really an insecure selfishness (as if God could be threatened by what his own hands had made!). The faulty conclusion represented by the bite-marks in the forbidden fruit was that humans should rely on their own eyes and appetites over God’s word, looking out for themselves since God could not be counted on for their best interests.
When we face an epistemological gap (i.e., something we do not understand—like why not eat from that good-looking tree?), we seem to be so much quicker to interpret conditions and circumstances to be reflective of divine malice than divine benevolence. What if, instead of becoming cynically suspicious of the Creator and resenting our creaturely limits, we became trustingly curious? What if we were earnestly desirous of the kind of eyesight that allows us to see divine goodness bursting from every budding tree branch in spring and shining through every time God firmly says, ‘No, dear one’?
Lessons from the wilderness
One way that the Lord has started to breathe fresh wonder into my functional doctrine of providence has been my meditation on the wilderness journey of the Israelites. Trekking my way through the Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) in Hebrew, I have lately been joining Israel in their forty years of wending through the wasteland between rescue from Egypt and inheritance in Canaan. According to early Christian conceptualisation of the life of faith, believers in Jesus are much like those Israelites, journeying between rescue and inheritance. The wilderness patterns of divine provision and guidance, along with the human penchant for rebellion, are therefore instructive for us on our own journey home. (See esp. 1 Cor 10:1–22; Heb 4:1–13.)
And indeed, what I observe in Israel is sadly not far from my own fickle heart. Having just watched God display his resounding supremacy over all powers in heaven and on earth as he snatched them out of captivity, the people were nonetheless overwhelmed by the wilderness into which he had led them. They looked around and concluded that the odds of survival were low for a vast company of families meandering through a barren wasteland. So they accused God (often via Moses) of bringing them to a ‘bad, evil’ (Heb רע) place and plotting to kill them at the hands of enemies or the desert itself. By that appraisal, even slavery looked more appealing, so they grumbled about how much better life was back in Egypt. And so with destructively selective memory, they misremembered the horrors of slavery and forgot God’s deeds of redemption. In their perennial wish to return to Egypt, the people revealed that they preferred the illusion of security under an enslaving master to the reality of vulnerability under a saving Master. (See Exod 16–17; Num 11–14, 16, 20–21.)
Where was God in all of this? How was his providential hand at work among his people? Yes, he most certainly responded to rebellion with acts of judgment in order to protect and purify their allegiance to him. He also never failed to appear and speak to them when they cried out to him in crisis. God never neglected one day of forty years to nourish his people with bread from his own boundless heavenly bakery. God could bring water from a rock whenever his people were thirsty and told him so. God kept their feet fit for the many miles traversed. God even supernaturally sustained their clothing quality! He carried them step by step, like a man tenderly carries his own son, kicking and screaming as this ‘son’ (Israel) was. (See Deut 1:29–33; 8:1–10.)
God’s visible presence in the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night never left the people, and his presence charted and choreographed their every movement. Let us note, however, that at no point did God sit Israel down in front of a divine spreadsheet of proposed dates, routes, and campsites to review his comprehensive plan for their approval. Rather, they learned where to go at precisely the right time simply by keeping their eyes on the cloud over the tabernacle. For eyes transfixed on his presence, his direction could not be missed. I was also recently moved at how kind it was of the Lord to put fire in the cloud at night; even when his presence might have been obscured by darkness, he wanted it to remain blazingly unmistakeable to his people that he had not left them for one moment. (See Num 9:15–23.)
Speaking of God’s presence, the other week I lingered on the following verse:
“So they set out from the mountain of the LORD, a journey of three days. And the ark of the covenant of the LORD was setting out before them, a journey of three days, to spy out a resting place for them.” (Num 10:33, translation mine)
I noticed a few things. For one, the verb translated ‘spy out’ (Heb תור) is the same one used for the activity of the twelve spies sent to investigate the promised land three chapters later. Also the length of the initial stage of travel from Mount Sinai is given: three days (the only other place where Numbers identifies a temporal length of travel is when recalling a three-day journey right after Israel crossed the sea, Num 33:8). And it is abnormal within the wilderness narratives to specify that the ‘ark of the covenant of the LORD’ is setting out and that it is going before the people. Elsewhere one might get the impression that the ark would travel in the middle of the procession of the twelve tribes with the rest of the articles of the tabernacle (Num 4:5–15; 10:11–28). So what is up with this curious comment that the ark goes three days ahead?
It may strike some as exegetically imaginative (though probably not far-fetched for Bible reading in the early church!), but all sorts of typology bells started ringing in my mind. Think of it: the ark, the symbolic ‘seat’ of the presence of God and sign of his covenant commitment to his people—right after that covenant has been sealed at Sinai—goes three days ahead of them so that they know where to rest. How could I not think of Jesus, the incarnate presence of God, who would forge a new covenant with God’s people, sealed by his own shed blood, and then journey three days ahead of them from death into resurrection life, pioneering the way to their eternal rest? Ultimately our confidence in the Spirit of God who goes with us on the wilderness way is grounded in the historical reality that the Son of God has already gone before us, for us. The resting place is ready.
It should seem ludicrous to walk around heralding God’s goodness in a world beset by suffering, hatred, and decay. Unless, of course, another ostensibly ludicrous claim is true: that the eternal Son of God entered that suffering, absorbed that hatred, and did not see decay, rising to give his own quickening life to those who realise they are dying and ask him to make them alive in him. Then the insensible assertion would be to say that God is not good. This is why I am trying to come to grips with the fact that it must be impossible to over-interpret God’s goodness.
Walking into the wilderness can look and feel like certain, imminent death. And it is a kind of death to die to a familiar slavery, leaving Egypt forever behind, and to die to the myth of limitlessness, admitting our inability to face the wilderness alone.
But then again, is it really death at all if the living God is there? Is it really death at all when the God who summons water from rocks and rains bread from heaven is in our company? The wilderness turns out to be not a death trap but a soul-deep catechesis in trust, meant to train God’s people to direct their cries to him alone, to fix their gaze on his glory appearing among them, to orient their corporate life around hallowing his presence in their midst.
Friends, going to work on our functional doctrine of providence is not an advanced or heroic thing to do. It is just praying our eyes and hearts into alignment with reality. One can look at the desert and see impending death—or one can peer around at the scattered rocks with dancing eyes, eager to discover from which one streams of living water will next come rushing . . .