Sunday Reflection: God the Artist Engineer

I oscillate between very systematic, strictly in order readings through the bible, and then meandering back and forth between the Old and New Testaments, racing through whole books at a time, as my whimsy takes me. After meticulously reading/listening to the bible chronologically, and then the old and new paced together, this time I’m hap-hazarding my way. I’ve been through about half of the Old Testament and have paused to jump ahead to the New. In the last two weeks I’ve gone all the way from Galatians to Revelation in one fell swoop, although with many impeding distractions.

And the thing that has charmed me over the last many weeks, which actually clicked into place by reading this article about why British children’s stories are better than American ones, is the incredible artistry of the whole scope of scripture.

When I think of God I am inclined to think of him as mechanical, as the perfect engineer who will always do what is most practical and efficient. He ordered all of creation by the power of his Word, so, his word must be pretty orderly. Not being very science or mathematically minded, I imagine God’s perfect maths, his perfect ordering principle, and conclude that he must not be very understandable.

This assumption of mine is not entirely wrong. Look at the kind of engineering just the cross required. Prophecies pointing forward to the crucifixion begin in the first pages of Genesis. And they go on through ever other page. When you look at the life of Jesus, practically every word and action was foretold in one way or another. That took immense planning, knowledge, keeping each person straight and not forgetting anything. This kind of order is utterly and profoundly beyond my knowledge. I can’t even remember why I walked into a room and have to walk back out again. My mind is the most cluttery thing around.

God is the perfect engineer. Nevertheless, for me, the question remains, why would he do it? Why has God organized scripture this way? Because when you go to the bible to read about God, you will discover that it’s not always that easy to see his ordering hand.

The problem is partially cultural. The American says, Here is problem X. I will now solve it in the cleanest and most obvious and straightforward way possible. Whereas, in scripture, God says, Here is problem X, I am going to solve it very slowly. And the way that you’re going to know that I solved it is through a careful examination of the endlessly strange and wonderful pictures that I’m going to organize in actual people’s lives over the course of all human history. You’re going to walk up to the picture, glance at it, potentially be bored, wander off to another picture, and then be angry. But if you would stop and look most carefully and with great curiosity at each picture, you would suddenly be able to see, each and every time, the glory and beauty of my perfect salvation.

In other words, reading the bible should be a lot more like reading Narnia, and not nearly so much like reading an instructional manual on how to beat depression, or fix your dishwasher. And yet, I think many of us approach it as the manual and are therefore constantly frustrated to find it incomprehensible.

Moreover, the preacher, when he comes to a text, should be thinking in wondrously colored and strange images, should be trying to help the believer to come to the right distance to see the picture that is there. His task should be to unfold, word by word, verse by verse, both the incredible order, but also (and I find this part is often left out) the perfect artistry of the plan. Rather than giving everyone a manual in three points for how to be good and to make God happy, the preacher should unfold, should unveil, should explain clearly what is there.

Because if once you catch a glimpse of it, you can be transported suddenly into its immense reality, like walking through the back of the wardrobe. Instead many of us sit in among the darkness of the coats being irritated about its being so stuffy.

God isn’t practical, sadly. He’s not just giving us easy and practical ways to save ourselves. He isn’t even very preachy, although the bible is full of preaching. He is an artist with the fullness of mathematical engineering in his invisible grasp. When you open your eyes to try to discover who he is, you must be prepared to stand around and try to enjoy what you are discovering and not to rush through to solve the world’s problems yourself. And how could you, you can’t always remember why you came into the room and opened the book in the first place.