chump and bump

Someone raised a topic at homegroup the other night that has my mind rolling up its sleeves. I know it's probably got some high brow theological title, this topic, but the best I could do was chump and bump, at least for now, until one of you can enlighten me. Okay, let me explain...and please bear with me...I am trying to work this one out of my intuition into words that make sense.

We often seem to be confused about something in our lives that is of rather huge importance: the "stance" of God towards us humans. We spend an exorbitant amount of time striving to impress, persuade, dissuade, humour, please, awe, and dazzle our Creator (though most of this is more about us and our anxieties than it is about Him). But here's my question, is he so in need of our bedazzling, our religious effort? How much of what we do changes anything fundamental about him as he looks at us? What is the manner in which he knows or perceives us?

I jump to the beginning of the Great Book. God's first acts, as we know him described to us, are creative. Creativity, by my definition, is a generous act, and generally benevolent (though creativity isn't necessarily incorruptible obviously). In God's case, we count on his absolute holiness, so we consider his creative acts as pure, perfect, and good. He started out with creating and blessing and saying "good" was the proper descriptor for men and women as he created them. We like all this: those lovely, dreamy days before we gave God the finger in the garden. And we can believe that what he said was true: we were wonderfully, gloriously "good". But that part, I just mentioned, about us dissing God did, in fact, bring darkness upon our souls and into our hearts. Hold that thought....

Race through Old Testament Messianic prophecy now, and pull yourself to a halt after it's fulfillment....Jesus has lived, died, and has risen from the dead. Jesus is the Consolation of Israel, Immanuel, the Revelation of God Himself among us. His first witnesses and those who follow after them take on the huge task of helping us understand what that means. They preach, teach, leave family, friends, vocations to get the message out, and they row and contend and struggle about what Jesus and his greatest Act meant. Did it really mean that Jesus had done something magnificent, so magnificent that it restored us, in God's eyes, to those early glory days of being "good". Where God Himself would smile and say, That's a wrap! We got it this time! Now THAT's what I had in mind. Or was it simply an adjudication: passport stamped, justified and heaven-bound. Or was it something, so wholly about God and His Son being true to their nature that it sort of overwhelms the whole issue of sin and actually reveals the sheer grandeur and terrifying might of an awesome, loving God?

What I mean is: is it more about God showing us who He is and his tender act of reaching toward us, or is it about the issue of sin and venality. You see, that seems a critical question to me. Because if you say it was more about God dealing with sin, then sin suddenly gets a promotion: it is Sin. If this act was more about God, vulnerably yet all powerfully, revealing Himself to us, telling us about His Person, then He remains exactly where he always has been: on His throne, but now visible and accessible through His Son.

If we take the capital S Sin route (doctrine of original sin, right?), I think we extrapolate and end up going with all the theology that's been based on verses like the one in Psalms when David says "I was conceived in sin" : we started out as chumps and chumps we do remain. And if one is a chump, a chump has to work very hard in life to get anywhere with God, because having started out bad, it's a perpetual battle to hack back through the jungle of the Garden to find, and point at, Adam and Eve's Hollywood Stars in the paving stones of Eden: See, we were GOOD once, and GOOD again we will be! This is an overgrown Garden and you have a very dull machete: translation....endless toil.

Now, if we go with that idea about God showing up and bedazzling US, I think the theological outcome is bump-ness. In Britain, before a baby is born it's often referred to as bump. Used in its best sense, I've heard it said in endearing, tender tones. For me, it embodies the openhearted warmth, joy, and expectation that many parents have as they await their baby's arrival. Their hearts are set on bump and though they know sleepless nights and self-sacrifice will follow, their hearts are purely FOR this child whom they do not yet know. The "posture" of the heart is, YES, You are good. Before you have arrived, before you have done right or wrong, you are good.

So, I ponder scripture and what I personally know of God, and what I arrive at is this: in the heart of God, we were conceived, and we ARE good. Not just because Jesus died for us and restored us to relationship with the Father. I know, I know...we all know the verses...while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, and so I am stating the obvious, right? Well, no. I don't actually think this is all that obvious to us. We primarily (from what I have lived and seen) see ourselves in relationship to God through what we do rather than Who He is and what that means about His disposition toward us. God is love. In Him there is no darkness at all. That means no cursing us under His breath and wishing He could wrap us around a tree (my parents' favourite threat!) when we are bad. He is not so inclined. And I think we are called to bank not so much on our badness --- and all the implications of our badness -- as His Goodness.

Hold His Goodness and your own bumpness right there...in your heart...let it sink in, and what does it say to you? Life is not about forever attempting to extricate ourselves from our badness (and failing miserably at it I might add) but about living into a fullness that is the breadth and depth of the universe - a thrilling, jolting, screaming glory of a ride into the heart of a good and holy God that is forever FOR us.

Yeah....