Walking With God

In my new class on the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), we have learned that four different peoples contributed to the creation of the book of Genesis. It is interesting that the earliest peoples, the Yahwists, portrayed God as being intimate with humans—for example, walking with Adam and Eve in the garden—whereas the Elohim, who wrote after the fall of Israel to the Babylonians, saw God as being more distant and communicating through messengers, dreams, and prophets.

Meanwhile, in my Monastic History class, Sr. Judith Sutera has pointed out that humans theologize about what they experience. It makes sense that a people like the Elohim who have been defeated in war and exiled from their land would feel that God is far away from them and needs to be appeased through sacrifices.

In current times, we are blessed with the revelation that God chose to become human through the person of Jesus, as well as new insights from quantum physics about how everything in the universe is designed to be in relationship. As we theologize about that understanding, it seems that we have a God who wants to be intimate with us after all. It is we who cause alienation by trying to be like God without being willing to be human—we want knowledge and control now instead of having the humility to learn from experience, suffer weakness, and endure mistakes in order to gain wisdom, as noted by St. Irenaeus. Jesus, who was willing to be human, had a very intimate relationship with God, who he knew as Father. This connection between being human and closeness to God isn’t a coincidence. Thus we need to follow Jesus’ example and accept our humanness, with all its joys and sorrows, satisfaction and emptiness, and pain and contentment, knowing that God walks with us through it all.