Yawning at Tigers

Photo source: zoomiami.org

I just love, love, love this new book I am reading, so I'd like to share about it with you for a few moments today!

It is entitled Yawning at Tigers: You Can't Tame God, So Stop Trying by Drew Dyck.

It is a challenging book for me--not in its format or style--but in its content.

You see, it does not focus on God's love and mercy or His intimacy with us.  Instead, it focuses on God's otherness, His holiness, and, dare I say, His wrath.

His is not a message we God-followers hear or discuss much in our Americanized Christianity, where God is often domesticated and safe.  But, if we are honest, it is a message that squares perfectly with what we read from the pages of Scripture.  I am on my third re-reading of the book of Ezekiel (not quite sure why God has me going there again!) and this is the God I find within its chapters--one of white-hot holiness, who judges sin and must stand apart from it.  God asks Ezekiel to do crazy things--performing street-theater style antics of cutting his hair, cooking over burning excrement, forgoing grieving over his wife--to express to the exiles their need for repentance and reconciliation with God.  Do I understand that I, too, serve this same God...or is my view of God anesthetized?  Have I made Him more into an image I am comfortable with and feel I can understand (and therefore, control)?

In his book, Drew quotes preaching professor John Koessler who wrote of the tendency for preachers to "normalize the outrageous in Scripture."  Ezekiel is definitely one of those books that I seek to "normalize" to reflect my own understanding of God, but it can't be done and stay true to its revelation as God's own words.

Of course, Ezekiel is not the only book that speaks to God's strange ways.  I am reminded of several places within the Old Testament and New Testaments when ordinary people encounter angelic beings or are given a glimpse of the glory of God--folks Isaiah, John, and Paul--and their response is always to fall prostrate on the ground in fear.  The Israelites quaked with fear so much so that they begged Moses to ascend Mt.Sinai and speak to God on their behalf: "Do not have God speak to us or we will die" (Exodus 20:19).  Isaiah's response to seeing God's glory fill the temple was severe distress and despair, saying, "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:5).  You see, when we discover God as He truly is--holy and other--then we perceive our sin for what it truly is, and grace is made all that more amazing.  What we shortchange ourselves when we fail to take in God's mystery and majesty!

I love one powerful metaphor for God that Drew uses, which he was taught from a Jewish guide on a tour of the Holy Land.  In short, his guide likened God to plutonium, a dangerous entity whose very presence causes people to perish.  And, after some consideration, I can see God like this too: people did perish in the Bible because of their careless ways around God and those things He deemed to be holy--Uzzah and Ananias and Sapphira come to mind right away (see 2 Samuel 6 and Acts 5).  In fact, people either perished or needed to be cleansed in the presence of God.  We see this again in Isaiah, when the seraphim touched the burning coal to his unclean lips saying: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for" (Isaiah 6:7).

I will close with a quote from the book: "Only when we gain a proper understanding of God's identity can we begin to appreciate the implications of his love."  So what about you, dear friend?  Will you take the time to mine ALL of Scripture to see God as He really is?  Or will you be content to avoid certain passages of Scripture and fashion yourself a lesser god to worship, made according to what you deem to be acceptable in a deity?  I don't know about you, but I don't want to make any more excuses for God and explain Him away to make Him more palatable for me and for our world!!  His grace is truly amazing and I want ALL of God to inform my daily life and transform me from within!

Together, let's gaze at His majesty and His holiness in awe and wonder, joining in with the heavenly chorus, "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" (see Revelation 4:8)