Rules do not teach us how to live.

They serve a valuable purpose—they define parameters, they keep our wandering and far-reaching brokenness in check. 

But they do not teach us how to live.

Life would be easier if there was some step-by-step manual of how do live. Imagine it: someone could make a fortune convincing people there was a plan about…

…who to marry and how to make it last…

…how to find the perfect job and make good money…

…how to enjoy every second of life and convince others you’re a good person…

Oh wait, Barnes & Noble just called. Right. They said there were some books under the “Christian living” section I might want to look into…

Unfortunately, I think we find it easy and accessible to approach the Bible the same way we approach rules. 

We want it to tell us how to live.

“Just tell us the answers! What are the steps?”

We like steps because we like to be conquerors.

We like rules because we like to be masters.

But what if life is about something different than conquering, mastering, and besting?

It seems to me that the Bible is primarily concerned with teaching us how God lives. 

Our calling is to pursue the God-life as we are learning it and interacting with it.

Then, we are to make decisions out of that pursuit, not based on a set of rules.  

If you were born a slave and raised a slave, what life would you know other than slavery?

Would you understand life outside of the rhythms, rules, and suppressed freedom of slavery?

How could you?

If every day of life was slavery, from sun up to sun down, and if every person you knew only knew the same life—more than just your body and time would be enslaved.

Your imagination would be enslaved. 

Your thoughts would only know how to entertain the hope of a slave. Just getting by, one more day, both loathing and depending upon your master. 

This is the predicament of the people of Israel in the early chapters of the book of Exodus. 

Life had gotten hard, they were completely broken and cried out to God.

He rescued them.

Now what?

They still only understood life in one way: as slaves. 

What happens next is an extraordinary, complex, and difficult journey spanning hundreds of years.

God doesn’t wave a magic wand or twitch an I-dream-of-Genie nose and make the people amazingly obedient, faithful, and righteous.

He purposefully and painfully enters into the long, long, long process of reshaping the imagination of this large, abandoned group of people.

No longer shall their future be illuminated by the dim hope of a slave.

Their path will now be illuminated by Another.

They will be pushed and prodded to imagine a different future, a different way of life, and then to mold their very existence around moving towards that future. 

God’s future for humanity is now their future.

Their daily existence is projecting them towards God’s future for humanity. 

They way the work together, as a community-nation, is to reflect their newly illumined path.

They are now marred by the glorious infection of redemption.

It is changing everything.

I posted it on Facebook and Twitter yesterday, but it’ll stay up a little longer here. In August I’m going to be reading Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger by Ronald J. Sider and tweeting/blogging about it, as well as welcoming feedback and conversation when available. Feel free to buy it and play along. If you’re going to order a cheap copy off of Amazon, I recommend buying it ASAP so that you get it in time!

There’s something powerful about absurdity. Something impossible, unexpected, or unlikely. This, at its core, is the story of Abraham. 

As such, it is the story of us.

Think about it. An unfertile, childless, wandering Middle Eastern sheepherder named “Abram.”

His name loosely translates into “father of many.” Which basically means that he was a walking punchline. 

His family worshiped at the polytheistic altars of their home nations. And then, out of nowhere, God speaks to him.

Allow me to set it up a little further. This comes on the heels of the Prologue, the first 11 chapters of Genesis that give the foundation for how we got here and why the world is the way it is. It is an epic, disastrous move from “good creation” to really, really broken.

This conversation with Abram is the beginning of a great reversal. In our story, it is where we believe God steps in and starts to change everything. It is God relentlessly pursuing reconciliation with sinful Adams and Eves. 

Also, note that in the Hebrew Bible, “The Lord” or “God” is not defined until the Exodus. What god did Abram think he was interacting with? I’d contend that it’s intentionally ambiguous, and that’s the point. 

The point is that a wandering, childless man was given this commandment:

Go from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Now, I could spend a lot of time talking about the different dynamics of this passage and what they mean. But there’s really just one I’d focus on.

A childless old man and his barren old wife are going to be…. the parents of a great nation.

How absurd. 

And not only that, but the absurd trust of this barren man is intended to start unraveling the mistrust which started in the Garden of Eden. 

God intentionally chooses a small, wandering nomadic group of sheepherders led by a childless man to start a nation that will be the reflection and representation of Him in the world. 

Absurdity.

And when absurdity defines the beginning of your story, you better cling to absurdity.