Unintentional Conversation

A Teachable Moment

Then God said, “Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves. They will be masters over all life—the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, and small animals.” So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself; male and female he created them. And the Lord God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed into it the breath of life. And the man became a living soul. Genesis 1: 26-27 & 2:7

If you’re a teacher or a minister, then you know that there are times when “a teachable moment” occurs. This is a magical time, a time you don’t want to waste. It may be a moment of shared experience in a classroom or a Sunday school class, or an informal discussion, but when the light bulb of excitement turns on, your adrenaline rises and you don’t want to waste the opportunity.

Just the other day I had such an opportunity. I had made a call to a credit card company about an unwanted charge to my account. When I finally got to the correct operator, the young man was extremely helpful. Unknown to me he had typed my name into Google and saw that I was a writer and had a back ground in both religion and philosophy. When we had finished our business, he asked, “Do you have a minute?” I said, “Certainly.” He then proceeded to his next question: “Seeing that you have a background in both religion and philosophy,” he said, “do you believe in absolutes?”

Immediately my cognitive antenna went up. I became mentally aroused. I knew then that I was in “a teachable moment.” He told me that he had attended Ohio State University, but never graduated; that he believed in God; and that in discussions with his friends, he had a need to know that God is absolute and unchanging. He said I need a place to put my “foot” down and say, “This is my starting place; this is where my faith begins.”

Our discussion went something like this:

“Have you read the Genesis story of God creating earth, including all humankind?”
“Yes,” he assured me, “I have.”

“Do you remember the passage where God said, “Let us make man in our own image, to be like ourselves”? He didn’t remember this so I proceeded to read it to him—the passage above.
I asked, “And how is God defined in this passage?”

He couldn’t seem to figure it out so I said, “The writer says that we are made in the image of God. Now theologians shutter when they hear this because they have instilled in us that God is absolute and perfect in everyway. This is what you believe, right?”

The young man agreed.

“But this isn’t the message of the Old Testament,” I said, “The primary and holy name of God in the Old Testament comes from the Hebrew haya, which is the perfect tense indicating not only that God is, but that God has always been and will always be; that God is always interacting with his creation.”

I than reminded him that according to Genesis we know God because we are like Him, made in his image. I asked, “Are we absolute?” “Are we perfect in every way?” Do we have absolute power over the world?”
He answered, “No.”

“Then why do you think God is unlike us? The Bible is clear on this point that we are made in God’s image. I assume this means that we are free to make decisions, are emotional and cognitive, feel joy, love, and anger. The Bible says that God did too. Our knowledge of God is like our knowledge of our friends; it is conversational, involves close contact, dialogic, and personal.”
I went on to say to him that God both acts on the world with purpose (intention) and reactions to the world with anger and love, the same way we act and react to the world. In this sense God is not the absolute God of the theologians and pulpiteers, but a personal loving and forgiving God, one who is with us because we are made from God-stuff – I said I assume that that’s all God had before creation to make us with.

I gave the young man my telephone number and told him to call me sometime from up in Ohio and we would talk some more. He told me he was confused. I said to him that most people are confused about God because they have depersonalized God into some kind of logic premises or Aristotelian prime mover. God can be absolute if we make God the “first principle” of our faith and belief, but if we believe in an interacting, loving, and forgiving God, then God may just be more human (in the image of God) than we think or want to think.
And John wrote, So the Word became human and lived here on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness … But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”

I may disagree somewhat with this rendering for “right” is the word exousian in Greek meaning “in the sense of ability,” “capacity,” “competency,” or “mastery” (this last usage indicates authority, power, and right.

If we use “ability” or “capacity” then we can say that our faith in God is the foundation of our lives and provides us with the ability or capacity to show—through our lives—the love of God to others—always interacting within the world. Who needs absolutes? They’re so sterile and remind one of logical arguments rather than personal encounters.