A test of your relationship with God

Do you have the kind of relationship with God that is like a married couple, including fights and spats? That’s the biblical, Jewish picture of a person who really knows God. 

At a certain point in life when I was dealing with some major disappointments, I came to the conclusion that it would be better to yell all my frustrations at God than go through a separation and live apart from him. That’s why I love this quote from Lois Tverberg and her quote of Peter Kreeft so much. Trust me, you’ll want to read to the bottom of this discussion of Job. 

“Job’s friends were making the mistake that Western Christians do today when we don’t have a Hebraic understanding of the ‘knowledge of God’—da’at Elohim. A Westerner opens the Bible and wants to prove God’s existence and construct a theology to explain God’s nature. We would call that ‘knowledge of God.’ But in Hebrew, to ‘know’ someone was to be familiar with him through experience and relationship, as a wife knows her husband...

“While Job’s friends had a theoretical knowledge of God, Job knew God in this latter, Hebraic sense of the word. Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft writes: 

“Job sticks to God, retains intimacy, passion and care, while the three friends are satisfied with correctness of words, ‘dead orthodoxy.’ Job’s words do not accurately reflect God as Job’s friends’ do, but Job himself is in true relationship with God, as the three friends are not: a relationship of heart and soul, life-or-death passion… Job stays married to God and throws dishes at him; the three friends have a polite non-marriage, with separate bedrooms and separate vacations.” (Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus, 160-161)


Trying to figure out what you should and shouldn’t say to God — that introduces unnecessary layers of complexity. 

Simply saying what’s on your mind and in your heart — that’s the simple relationship God wants with you. 

Maybe it’s time for you to throw some dishes!

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