The Diversity and Mystery of God

How to listen, empathize, and love well (Pt. II)

This is the second essay in a series on creating space for doubts and engaging doubters. I recommend that you read the first essay and then come back to this one.

In the first essay, I discussed listening well and appreciating God’s “bigness.” Here, I focus on how emphasizing diversity and embracing mystery can help us in our faith journeys.

Emphasize Diversity

Whether we ourselves doubt or doubters confide in us, we need to foreground the diversity of Christian tradition and thought.

Modern Christian pastors, authors, and influencers have communicated to Christ-followers that they must believe specific doctrine to “be right with God.”

If you believe in the right things, then you’ll be saved from eternal damnation. Believe the wrong things, and you’ll suffer eternal conscious torment. No pressure!

Question those things you’re supposed to believe, explore alternative ideas, or, worst of all, express different beliefs out loud, and you’ll be quickly cast out of the Christian club.

No wonder doubts become crises of faith.

To be clear, I’m not saying Christians should cast aside any or all doctrinal beliefs. We should believe in God’s existence, Jesus’ resurrection, and the Holy Spirit’s presence in us and our lives.

But many pastors, leaders, and everyday Christians have reduced Christianity to a checklist of beliefs. Worse, they’ve weaponized the checklist and the bible to exclude people who don’t toe the line. They’ve forgotten about love.

Just ask Jen Hatmaker. When she announced she had become LGBTQ-affirming, the Christian bookstore chain LifeWay pulled all of her books off the shelves. Prominent Christian thought-leaders attacked her with vitriol. One day, she was in the fold; the next, she wasn’t acceptable.

If Christianity were a checklist of beliefs, if someone like Jen Hatmaker ought to have been ostracized for believing differently on one point, then 2000 years of Christian history and tradition would be invalid.

We didn’t settle whether Jesus was human or divine and whether God was singular or a trinity until the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. Were the Christians who fiercely debated those doctrines in Nicaea less faithful?

Early Christians debated which books should be in the bible. The Catholics have 72. The Protestants cut that down to 66. Should they resume the wars of the Reformation period or simply excommunicate each other from the faith?

So many different denominations exist because Christians differ on specific doctrines, practices, and preferences. Which people shall we label heretics, and on what doctrinal grounds?

Today, some Christians believe the world is 6000 years old. Others believe God created through the Big Bang and the process of evolution. Which group doesn’t love God and follow Jesus?

Emphasizing the long history of diversity in Christian thought comforts me in my questioning and doubting. I can’t but imagine it would comfort any doubter. We’re neither the first nor the last doubters in church history!

Present Options

Christianity’s history of diverse beliefs also comforts doubters because it shows that it’s okay to explore different ideas about our faith. We don’t have to believe in a narrow set of views or else.

There are many different ideas about God, Jesus, the Spirit, the bible, salvation, justification, and more, because many faithful, smart people devoted much of their lives to seriously contemplating their beliefs.

Maybe you’re doubting. Maybe a doubter comes to you. Present options.

For instance, let's say that a friend shares his doubts about the theory of penal substitutionary atonement.

“I just can’t believe God would punish his own son for my sins. It doesn’t seem like a very loving, just God. And it’s not even logical. Why would God essentially kill himself to save us from himself?”

You could glibly reply, “God works in mysterious ways. Just believe!”

You might shut down the conversation. “Pray for a stronger faith, and stop questioning how God works. Who are you to question your creator anyway?”

Or you could say, “Oh, no biggie! Loads of people have felt that way over the last couple of millennia. Like them, you might prefer the theory of just plain old substitutionary atonement. Jesus took our place and saved us because we couldn’t save ourselves, not because God wanted to punish someone.”

“Wh — what? You mean I don’t have to believe in penal substitutionary atonement? I’ve got options?”

Take hell for another example.

“Why would a loving God condemn people, including those who never heard the gospel, to an eternity of conscious torture? I can’t believe in such a God.”

“Yeah, but did you know we got our idea of hell more from Dante’s Inferno than from the bible?”

“Wh — what?”

“And there are four different Hebrew and Greek words that our English Bibles translate as ‘hell,’ and none of them meant what we mean by the word ‘hell.’”

“So … there are different ideas about hell?”

“At least four of them in the bible alone, plus some differing opinions among Church Fathers and modern theologians. You’ve got options.”

“B — but today, all Christians believe the same thing, right? Didn’t the church figure out the doctrine of hell at some point?”

“If you exclude the Universalists who suspect hell is a present reality rather than a separate place (see also Tim Mackie), or who think God purifies the unsaved with a flash of fire, or who believe God never relents in trying to persuade nonbelievers and the Annihilationists who think the unsaved simply stop existing, then … maybe everyone holds the same opinion of hell?”

“My head hurts. Why are there so many options?”

“Hmm. If you can’t believe in a God who condemns people to eternal conscious torment, then would you rather not believe in God or have some options?”

All the Old Testament genocide and murder can be challenging, too.

“I just read the book of Joshua for the first time, and I feel like someone pulled the rug out from under me. If God commanded genocide — killing anyone who breathed, including babies — how is He any better than Pharaoh?

“For that matter, what kind of all-loving, merciful God sends the Angel of Death to murder all the first-born children of Egypt?”

In response to the first point, I’ve heard Christians say that God had the right to deliver the Promised Land to whoever he wished since he owns the whole earth. I sure hope God the Landlord never decides to evict me and my people!

Some also argue that the slaughtered Canaanites deserved to die. After all, they were polytheistic pagans who rejected Yahweh and might have corrupted monotheism if they had lived and intermarried with Israelites.

In The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, father-and-son biblical scholars John and Harvey Walton make a compelling argument that “herem” ought to be translated as “remove from use” rather than “destroy.”

To “herem” a people is to remove their identity as a group. To “herem” a land is to keep people from using it. Those children God commands the Israelites to “herem”? They’re gonna call themselves something else and move away.

Similarly, Christian apologist Gary Michuta and The Bible Project suggest that the conquest narrative may have been exaggerated. After all, the Canaanites supposedly wiped out in Joshua 10 still exist in Joshua 15 and the later book Judges.

Michuta then says:

… exaggerated hyperbolic accounts [were] once a popular stylized form of war rhetoric …. When we read it, it sounds like the Israelites were commanded to totally annihilate these people, when it simply was commanded of them to fight and win, even if the win was only temporary.

Similarly, Old Testament scholar Pete Enns — cohost of The Bible for Normal People podcast and author of several books — posits that the ten plagues of Egypt might serve the theological purpose of demonstrating Yahweh’s dominance over the Egyptian pantheon, including the self-divinized Pharaoh.

So, you’ve got options. Maybe God’s a landlord you don’t want to upset? Perhaps He didn’t trust the Israelites not to worship more Golden Calves? Or did we mistranslate and misunderstand the bible (again)?

My point isn’t to give the answer because, frankly, this isn’t my area of expertise, I doubt the answer exists, and if it does, I’m too human to figure it out for certain.

My point is that it’s okay to seek out different ideas when you encounter challenging scriptures, doctrines, or practices. The different ideas exist for valid reasons.

Encourage Embracing Mystery

Awareness of our diverse belief options can help us embrace the element of mystery ever-present in our faith.

So many belief options would not exist unless faithful, smart people had wrestled with challenges to their faith and discovered compelling support for those options in scripture, prayer, the Spirit’s guidance, and church tradition.

Who’s right? Ultimately, who knows?

We can examine the bible in its original Hebrew and Greek, study the writings of first- and second-century Christians, learn about the cultural and social contexts of the early church, examine the archeological and historical records, wrestle with complex theology and philosophy from Origen to St. Augustine to C.S. Lewis, and pray until we’re hoarse.

But at the end of the day, we’re all just making our best-educated guesses. To me, substitutionary atonement best fits the God I see revealed in Jesus, and Jesus is the clearest revelation of God. Still, I’m not exactly privy to God’s archives where the Angel of Meeting Minutes recorded the decision.

No matter how much evidence we gather, no matter how thorough and well-reasoned our analysis, so many of our beliefs will remain at least somewhat mysterious.

We must learn to become comfortable with the many mysteries of the life of faith. We must move away from black-and-white, dualistic thinking, and the myopic view that Christians must subscribe to a narrow set of beliefs, doctrines, and practices (or else).

Listening well, emphasizing the diversity of belief, and embracing mystery can help others develop that much-needed comfort, too.

Writer tackling faith, politics, relationships, writing, media, & other impolite topics. College Teacher. Podcaster. My newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/yy7znuy8