GOD: INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE BOX?

The senior pastor at my church is a terrific preacher. He can take any enigmatic biblical text and make it come alive with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He also preaches with passion and energy, and with honesty about himself and his own spiritual condition. So, when it comes to a place where I and the pastor may disagree, if ever so slightly, on the interpretation of a text, I do so humbly.

Before going on, I confess that we Baptists can be a disagreeable lot. Perhaps our disposition is tied to our doctrine of priesthood of the believer in that we listen to our preachers and yet we also have a responsibility to listen to what God’s Spirit is telling us through our consciences. We may have free pulpits but we also have free pews.

Our pastor is currently preaching a sermon series on the Book of Romans in the Christian New Testament. Recently, in his sermon on Romans 4:16 and following, he stated that God is “outside the box” when it comes to God’s supernatural power. Since I am more of an “inside the box” kind of guy, my ears perked up. Permit me to “unpack the box” to give some context to my argument here.

In an earlier essay that was first published in my blog and later in Reflections, I wrote-  

          “The United States Marine Corps is known for its creativity and flexibility. For example, potential Marine officers at Officer Candidate School must face a grueling and often revealing exercise called the Reaction Course. Officer candidates are split into teams of four and taken to an area which resembles a children’s playground. There is rope, a barrel, a high wall, and two wooden poles present. The instructor presents each team with a scenario- one of the team has been severely wounded and the other team members must take him/her over a gully represented by the wall. The team has 15 minutes to accomplish the task.

The officer candidates are involved in a creative process called “think inside the box.” That is the opposite of what we are usually taught by teachers and consultants as we are told to think outside the box to be truly creative. While thinking outside the box is seen as the method to break through the stodgy traditional ways of problem solving and can indeed be very seductive, it is in reality a subversion of the creative process if it is seen as the only method to solve problems or even as the primary method. To think that we can pluck ideas from nothingness is to believe in magic, not creativity. Ideas we need to solve our problems are new combinations of existing ideas already in the box. To gain new insights we need to practice identifying, breaking, and creating patterns among the high quality “stuff” we currently possess.

Thinking inside the box is to make greedy, grateful use of limits (Imagination First). When I was an elementary school principal and needed to solve a problem one of the first questions I asked was, “What are my limits or constraints to solving this problem?” Knowing my limits presented me with what I called my “area of maneuver.” Acknowledging our limitations can be incredible prompts to imagination as limits beget inventiveness.”

Yet, how can an all-knowing and all-powerful God possess limits to divine knowledge and power? Paradoxically, God can choose limits, In the majestic and poetic prologue to the Gospel of John, the writer John declares, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (1:14a, CSB). Or, as wonderfully paraphrased, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” (The Message)

The Apostle Paul continues the inside the box thinking in his Letter to the Philippians in which he declared,

          “Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus,

          who, existing in the form of God,

          did not consider equality with God

          as something to be exploited.

          Instead he emptied himself

          by assuming the form of a servant,

          taking on the likeness of humanity.

          And when he had come as a man,

          he humbled himself by becoming obedient

          to the point of death- even to death on a cross”

          {2:5-8, CSB)

 

Indeed, Jesus became like us. He hungered and thirst and had all the other human limitations. By having a human body Jesus was inside a box of sorts. And yet in all things, Jesus remained obedient to God the Father. He suffered the pains of death and yet, He rose from the grave. In doing so, He was outside the box.

 

Army West Point is having a wonderful football season. With ten wins and one loss (to Notre Dame), the Black Knights with a victory over arch-rival Navy will perhaps have their greatest season ever, even greater than the teams in the 1940s. In those years Army’s backfield possessed two amazing running backs who both won the Heisman Trophy in succeeding years- Felix “Doc” Blanchard (Mr. Inside) and Glenn Davis (Mr. Outside). Blanchard’s specialty was to run up the middle and Davis’s was to run sweeps. They formed one of the most powerful tandems of offense ever in college football.

Blanchard and Davis were indeed talented, and Army needed both to win football games. While their gridiron talents pale in comparison to the divine talents of God the Father and God the Son, they nevertheless illustrate the need for teamwork even among the Trinity.  Now we come to the chicken or egg question. Which comes first- the power or the limits? I will use another athletic illustration. An Olympic javelin thrower must have the power to throw the javelin but must put limits on himself/herself to put in the hours, the diet, and the overall training regimen to direct that power to throw for the distance to be successful. So, power before limitations.

On a personal note, my wife and I within the past year suffered the grief of losing our lovely and talented adult daughter to brain cancer. Nevertheless, through my faith in Christ and my study of the biblical texts and of secular history, I know that we will see our daughter again in the Resurrection. Her passing along with my advanced years and ailments had led me to a renewed interest in the Resurrection, Heaven, and New Jerusalem. Only a Divine Being with power and love outside the box of the human experience could prepare such an eternity for His followers. And only a Divine Being with power and love could place himself inside the box of human limits could communicate with us finites about the joys of following Him.

Finally, perhaps my pastor and I are both right about the box. It is where we place emphasis at any particular time at any particular place during any particular situation. Our God is both outside and inside the box simultaneously being where He needs to be to lead us to a saving knowledge of Him through Jesus Christ our Lord.