This week's Men's Bible Study continued with Genesis. Our pace is slow but our discussion turns up rich thinking and reactions. This time it was the part when the twin brothers meet after years of estrangement. Esau brings 400 men along to visit Jacob, the deceiver. Jacob a.k.a. "struggles with God" (Isra-el) has a limp from his night of wrestling in the desert decades earlier. Both men have reached middle age and are blessed with descendants, chattels, and health. Their father, Isaac, lingers a little longer. And while the text of the scripture gives a certain amount of detail and character, much of God's work is non-verbal or perhaps involves words but goes beyond logic, syllogism, and narrative pace. Instead, there can be poetic overtones, and visual communication, and ambiguity (to mortal minds it appears contradictory or mutually exclusive; not to God, though) and ambivalence.
The NIV puts the desert wrestling match this way, [emphasis added]
Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel*, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome." [NIV, Gen. 32: 28]
---*NIV footnote: Israel probably means he struggles with God.
Until this morning's discussion, that episode before the reunion of the brothers seemed to be a discrete episode: wrestling until daybreak, God asking the name of Jacob before giving this new name, no sense of Jacob sharing that new name with friends and family or else keeping it secret. But talking with the others in the Bible Study group, the sense of ongoing struggle came into focus; the translated English grammatical form "struggles" allows both interpretations of the description: completed event (one who struggles ---at that moment in time) or ongoing condition (one who daily struggles without end). As such, Jacob becomes every person seeking after God to know the righteous road: Jacob is a serial sinner and (self) deceiver who nonetheless keeps coming back to God, the struggle of wrestling with the Word (living Word and scriptural word) for Jacob is unending.
In the same way that a person may say, "I am born again," and give the impression of passing a milestone or arriving at a new way of living, there is an underlying Jacob-like process going on. The person "is" now a Christian but not in a completed, "one and done," kind of way. Each new day brings temptations and opportunities for righteousness. It is a state of ongoing struggle and seeking and vigilance. Similarly, Jesus warned of false prophets: listen, yes, but always exercise discernment. Hold firmly, but let that hold be done lightly. Listen for God's will, but be careful not to confuse or conflate with your own wishes or worries. Watch for God at work around you, but do not willfully see only what suits your own sensibilities. Have faith to step into pathways unfamiliar; to break bread with strangers; to trust God's love. But let it be "trust but verify" to hold a degree of tension and vigilance always. As an embodied, lived out, religious tradition, Christianity has to be taught, learned, praised, worshiped anew each day. It is a living word to be lived out, not just studied or recited. As such, the expression, "to hold lightly," seems to sum up the way to walk in God's world. Coming into the body of believers is an important step, but it is not enough "to be" Christian. it is a continuing curve of growth and exercise; literally "be-ING" Christian, one day after another, one step after another, one prayer after another, one generation after another.
Thinking about the character of the Abrahamic religion, one distilled image is of a "charitable friend." The trinitarian or unitarian relationship between believers and the Almighty is like the company of a life-long friend to accompany the ups and downs along with way. Rather than profound truths or galactic laws, it is the abiding commitment to generous friendship that sets apart the God of Abraham from other forms of understanding the universe and creation. Cynics might reduce such longing and support to anthropomorphizing the religion, vainly attributing human structure and interests onto the higher power. Who can say, truly: a God above all others may have human-like dimensions, but concurrently may well have dimensions totally unlike that. So believers may do best to accept the human-smelling godliness, but not foreclose the myriad truths of infinity, too. Not "either - or" (false dichotomy), but "both - and" (inclusive, ambiguous). Even if struggles to know God's ways never can lead to a comprehensive, encompassing grasp, just the effort at reaching out and seeking after brings life-giving benefit to self and others. So, taking Jacob as an example, it is worth "holding lightly" one's seeking after God, who, after all never nees to seek after us since he is ever-present already, if only we pay attention.
