Have I Misread God?

(This blog is not yet done .. patience :D)

Have I Misread God? 

(A reading through the story of Hagar & Leah, and a critic on Biblical Interpretation on God's Favour and Despising)

Now when the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, He made her able to bear children, but Rachel was barren. 

Leah conceived and gave birth to a son and named him Reuben (See, a son!), for she said, “Because the Lord has seen my humiliation and suffering; now my husband will love me [since I have given him a son].” 

Then she conceived again and gave birth to a son and said, “Because the Lord heard that I am unloved, He has given me this son also.” So she named him Simeon (God hears). 

She conceived again and gave birth to a son and said, “Now this time my husband will become attached to me [as a companion], for I have given him three sons.” Therefore he was named Levi. 

Again she conceived and gave birth to a [fourth] son, and she said, “Now I will praise the Lord .” So she named him Judah; then [for a time] she stopped bearing [children].

Genesis 29:31‭-‬35 AMP

Then Sarai said to Abram, “May [the responsibility for] the wrong done to me [by the arrogant behavior of Hagar] be upon you. I gave my maid into your arms, and when she realized that she had conceived, I was despised and looked on with disrespect. May the Lord judge [who has done right] between you and me.” 

But Abram said to Sarai, “Look, your maid is entirely in your hands and subject to your authority; do as you please with her.” So Sarai treated her harshly and humiliated her, and Hagar fled from her.  

But the Angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, on the road to [Egypt by way of] Shur. 

And He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where did you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.”

The Angel of the Lord said to her, “Go back to your mistress, and submit humbly to her authority.” 

Then the Angel of the Lord said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.” 

The Angel of the Lord continued, “Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall name him Ishmael (God hears), Because the Lord has heard and paid attention to your persecution (suffering).  

Yes, I'm both acknowledging the account of verse 12, and also skipping it because there's already too many discussion & commentary on the personality of Ishmael. Knowing that we all inherit hostility in our sinful earthly nature, that's not where we're going this time.

Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are God Who Sees”; for she said, “Have I not even here [in the wilderness] remained alive after seeing Him [who sees me with understanding and compassion]?” 

Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi (Well of the Living One Who Sees Me); it is between Kadesh and Bered.

Genesis 16:5‭-‬11‭, ‬13‭-‬14 AMP

If you're familiar with the name "El Roi", some of you might be surprised that it's uttered by Hagar. Nothing less an ice breaker, this is the very first passage throughout our familiarly canonized Bible in which the word "Angel of the Lord" is mentioned.

Psalms 51:17 (KJV)  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Will Learning Theology (Or Simply Anything Else) Erode Your Faith?

 

The moment we're sure to understand is whether at your most wise & educated or in the most ignorant & less informed state, while in the climb towards wisdom you'd feel so insecure and venerable, I have pastor friends, one is a doctor of ministry, the other just obtained his PhD, they share this "imposter syndrome" notion of inadequacy which IMHO is a good thing that allows humility, a heart posture which allows more learning, understanding and wisdom.

But I don't see that illusion of mastery as to legitimize ignorance in the name of faith. That would be masking laziness, prejudices, all those dark features of chaos, the things God himself has in fact been subduing & shining upon.

The fact that almost none of us are left without invested talents, room to grow, people to meet, demands to exercise love, justice, and truth, all these in themselves display this divine paradox: denying the chance to change is the refusal of μετάνοια repentance and the denial of God's grace.

Yes, to be a believer is to embrace paradoxes. As with the recent social justice heated (and many times polarizing) discussions, the privileged v marginal, I was also reminded that human interactions are anything but simple, as we acknowledge casualties, we should avoid the naivety of dichotomizing. Evil is cosmopolitan as grace is omnipresent & immutable. 

The scholarly studies & analysis indicates that Jesus, of all people, might as well be closer to camps of the Pharisees rather than the Sadducees or any other Judaism sects of His time in terms of His unorthodox & creative hermeneutics (in which I believe coexisted in realtime parallel to His divine  omniscience and the presence of רוח קדוש The Spirit).

This in a fair maesure therefore, suggests learning will & should land you back to faith, to marvel and love of our God. Is it the same faith of the limited, the less privileged, the meek & simple? Definitely! But once you're called, you must answer, you must push forward, you must arrive back in faith as a person who's doing his part, as a person finishing the race, therefore we won't be taking God's grace for granted, but rather, in The Spirit, doing what you know of the Word, making manifesto of your worship, making it tangible, evident, appealing.

To close, parallelizing paradox & pharisaic natures, along with the fact that Nicodemus & Paul was (and in a way had still been) Pharisees, the fact that only few "camels" passed the eye of the needle, into seeing the fullest revelation of יהוה God in the person of ישוע Christ, we then come to understand that while "nature & nurture" can be tempered with, you cannot force faith the same way as you can never fathom God's grace for the most unlikely and unworthy. For God all things are possible, and in that knowledge we have the ground of confidence that He'll finish His good works in us as we do our parts.