I don't have answers, but I do know the direction God has been taking me.
I think about vulnerability, and relationship, and protective devices, and I wonder how they apply to God. I think that part of our struggle is that God chooses not to defend his own honor; instead he chooses to be vulnerable. He sits silently, waiting for those who would, to come to him, see him as he truly is, and love him. That is only starting to make sense to me as I am forced to do the same: to sit in silence, choosing not to voice my arguments of self-defence, and wait for people to see me and defend me themselves.
Relationship, likewise, shows part of God. In a relationship, each party is given the power to hurt the other. We see what it is like in human relationships when somebody chooses to put up walls/control mechanisms/emotional distance. It's not healthy. Of course, there's no need to go around giving everybody in the world unlimited power to hurt you - barriers are healthy, and from God - but each of us has a few imperatives, the things that we really must do. If we choose to abandon those imperatives out of fear of what people can do to us, then we are clearly in the wrong.
I don't understand what God's imperatives are, but it seems like it must be that he has chosen not to protect himself like he had the power to. I think that our capacity for evil has something to do with this; he must choose not to exercise the ability to control us and thus protect himself. He chooses to not control us so that he may freely act out one of his own imperatives.
Not that any of this really gives a "why," but it gives me comforting clues as to "who." |