Grizzly God

Nineteen years ago I was a summer youth intern at a church in Anchorage, Alaska. Near the end of that wonderful summer they took all the youth leaders to Denali. The only way to tour the park is by bus or by foot. We took a bus.

We saw caribou (known on the other hemisphere as reindeer), dall sheep, and mountains. Including THE mountain, which was lucky, because only a third of visitors actually get to see Mt. Denali, which usually hides behind dense clouds. The tour bus driver explained how large Denali National Park is and how long it would take to fully explore it. The park is nearly the size of the country we live in! And if you did manage to explore every acre, you still wouldn’t have experienced the park in its various changes of clothing and mood – the snowmelt of spring, the eternal light of summer, the deepening colors of fall, and the northern lights of winter, among other glories.

The bus driver at Denali repeatedly informed us that we could get off the bus and walk at any time. It’s a great way to see the park, he said. Any other bus would pick us up. A few minutes later the bus driver said, “Over on your right you see a grizzly bear making its way down the hill.”

And a little farther, “And there is a grizzly foraging for berries on our left.”

And a little farther, “There is a grizzly bear just off the road. What a treat.” Still he repeated, “You can get off the bus anytime you like.” Nobody got off the bus.

Around the time of this tour of Denali National Park, I read A.W. Tozer’s classic book on spirituality The Pursuit of God. Tozer writes, “Now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor end.” Those words set my heart on fire; I hungered to explore those “infinite riches of the Godhead.” Like exploring Denali, there would be no end to exploring and enjoying God. If you did contemplate every square inch of Denali in every season of the year, you would then realize that’s the smallest taste of the beauties to explore across the earth. With God the delights are even more boundless. But many people seem uninterested in getting off the bus. Perhaps for similar reasons.

A character in David James Duncan’s novel The Brothers K has a dream about a bus giving tours of the kingdom of heaven. The passengers are allowed to look, and they can get off the bus to look about, but they cannot actually enjoy the kingdom. It’s just a tour. This is the author’s criticism of church, of “organized religion.” Certainly some churches, including the Seventh Day Adventist church that the author grew up with, can curb people’s enjoyment of the kingdom of God by the rules they lay on people. On the other hand, I wonder if people even want to get off the bus. You might, after all, get mauled by a grizzly bear. I mean, God is not just verdant hillsides. The Bible describes God as a “consuming fire.” Sometimes the prophets, who we would think of as God’s favorites, were terrified of God. Isaiah saw God and swiftly concluded that his existence was about to be obliterated: “Woe is me!”

God is holy. We are not. Because of this vast difference between God and humans, pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards said that humans are naturally hostile to God. God’s holiness makes him a threat to us. Add to that the fact that God is powerful, eternal, all-knowing, and unchanging, and we naturally “entertain very low and contemptible thoughts of God” (You can find Edwards’s complete sermon here).

As one example of this enmity towards God, consider Martin Luther. Before he was a reformer, he was an aggressively pious Catholic monk who gave himself fully to ascetic practices. But even after agonizing sessions with his confessor, his conscience felt no relief. Writing later, Luther confessed the biggest thing of all: “I hated the righteous God.” All that work of devotion only led him to feelings of hostility and hatred towards God. The righteous and holy God was a constant threat to the conscience of this extremely religious man.

Hating God even while trying to serve him was about the only option Luther had. He lived in a religious society, where belief in God was universal. Today, in a very secular society, instead of saying “I hate God,” people say instead, “I don’t believe in God.” Darwin, Freud, the Big Bang and secular society in general have made atheism as an intellectual option.

The statements of some of the “New Atheists” reveal their contempt for the God they do not believe in. Richard Dawkins wrote that “The God of the Old Testament is arguably one of the most unpleasant character in all of fiction.” To Dawkins, the God of the Bible would be worse than meeting a grizzly bear. Therefore, he doesn’t exist. I read and enjoyed the book Why Does the World Exist, by Jim Holt, a man raised Catholic who later turned to atheism. The book is his search for an explanation of the existence of the universe apart from God. It becomes clear that, despite the inability of either science or philosophy to explain how everything came from nothing, he still prefers the possibility of a more plausible theory in the future over the idea of God. (To be clear, God is far more than a mechanism for the beginning of the Big Bang; God is the source of being itself).

Others who are not so aggressive in their atheism acknowledge some promise, beauty, or hope in the idea of God, but they would still rather not get off the bus and explore the “infinite riches of the Godhead.” Because in some ways God is like a grizzly bear, who threatens to tear us apart. God wouldn’t tear us apart physically; his threat is deeper. The one thing you cannot take to an encounter with God is pride. God threatens our opinion of ourselves.

I used a lot of this in one of my most recent sermons. I also used the testimony of Dr. Paul Lim, whose father was imprisoned in Korea because of his political activity when Paul was nine years old. He prayed at that time, “God, if you are real, bring my dad home.” His dad stayed in prison for two years. Paul angrily concluded, “God, you don’t exist.” Later, in high school in the United States, his mother started attending a Christian church. At youth group meetings, Paul sat alone for the Bible studies. He sat alone at Burger King. When they went bowling, he bowled in his own lane. Not even the youth pastor came over to bowl with him. That was his experience of church. So when a professor at Yale University stated authoritatively that though it is an interesting book, the Bible does not contain anything historically true, Paul accepted it. And then went on pursuing life as a conquest, punctuated by drunken parties on the weekends. Why did Paul Lim reject God? It wasn’t just pride, though that was part of it. And it wasn’t just the threat to his lifestyle, which he was enjoying. Paul was hurting.

How can an unholy, proud, hurting human being (isn’t this all of us?) even consider approaching the eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, holy God? Approaching God is like stepping off the bus in grizzly territory. Or, to change the metaphor, it’s like a six-year-old stepping on the field with a professional American football player. The child would be pummeled, crushed, killed. Unless. Unless the professional was the six-year-old’s dad. Then he would mask his strength, soften the tackles until they were nothing more than play, and instead of trash talk, he would laugh with his son. In other words, his strength would be softened by love.

This terrifyingly strong father who makes himself kind and gentle is what Martin Luther discovered when he reflected on the book of Romans. “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered Paradise itself.” This is what Paul Lim discovered on the last night of a “terrible” retreat for college students that his mom guilted him into attending. The lyrics of a Keith Green song (“To obey is better than sacrifice. I don’t need your money. I want your life”) suddenly broke through his anger, pride, and hurt as the voice of the God who loved him. He sobbed for the first time since he was nine years old. He went on to become a professor of theology.

This is conversion, the discovery of the fierce yet tender love of the holy God. Then the soul moves from hatred, fear, and hurt to gratitude, love and joy. The only requirement is that we ditch our pride and begin to trust. And, well, sometimes it requires a long period of searching. I can’t say I know why. Maybe God wants to test our sincerity, to purify us even before we find him. Or maybe the reward is all the sweeter for the long search. And, as Tozer says, “Now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart’s happy exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead.”

Why does the dad play football with his little son? Because he loves him, of course. In Christ, God has lowered himself and taken on the form of a human being. His dreadful power was hidden as he lived our life and died our death.  Why else does the father hide his power to play football with his son? Perhaps also because he wants his son to learn how to play. Likewise with God and his Son Jesus Christ. God wants us to learn how to play. And to play at being human means to be like God. He wants us to become holy, like he is.

Once we ditch our pride and fear in this joyful, terrifying, healing surrender, we then can get off the bus to explore and enjoy the “infinite riches of the Godhead,” grizzlies becoming an attraction rather than a terror. In the process, we will find ourselves becoming more and more who we are meant to be, more and more like Christ.

In my grief over the loss of my son I have discovered a part of God that I never wanted to know. Well, I did, but I never wanted to learn it in this way. (There really is no other way to learn it, though). I have discovered God’s hiddenness; like Mt. Denali, God seems to hide behind a dense cloud, and when we are most eager to see him. Despite this, I began to perceive something in God’s baffling willingness to let us suffer. For God was willing himself to suffer. I began to perceive a faint ray of light, the intensity of God’s love. It was a brief glimpse, but it stayed with me for many days. It was as if the full sight of God’s love, like the full sight of God’s glory (perhaps they are the same thing?) would end the life of a mere mortal; a glimpse was enough for my good.

Recently I experienced yet another mood of doubt and despair. (I am certainly still hurting). And then I smiled, thinking this was, in a strange way, yet another experience of God. Wherever I can find you, God, I am happy to know you more.

Some of these thoughts have been developing over the last 19 years, since I went to Denali and read A.W. Tozer. I wrote on one of my first blog posts that I would write about God and grizzly bears. A couple Sundays ago I preached about it. And finally today, I share my thoughts on the blog.

Before I end, one last bit from the book The Brothers K. The kid wakes up from his dream about the tour of the kingdom of heaven. His brother, finding him distressed, says, “It’s a dream buddy. It’s just a dream.” The kid who had the dream says he was right: their junky house, their little room, their town – it was all just a dream. And the kingdom of heaven, it was perfectly real.

It’s time to get off the bus.