Not ashamed to be called their God

I remember the day I walked out of astronomy class, a frazzled, bewildered eighteen-year-old who wasn’t sure if I should be weeping or laughing. I had just learned about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and the worst part of it was that I sorta understood it. After all these years, I learned that Almighty Time was not constant. It made me want to cry.

Being a character in someone else’s epic is like that. One always assumes certain constants: one’s past, for example. No matter what happens, whether I get a PhD or become a homeless beggar, whether or not the Resurrection occurred or will occur, I can say assuredly that I was born in Illinois and spent nine years growing up in Georgia, at the very least. Once an event happens, it is sealed in the great book of History, etched in the stone tablet of the past.

So last night I was shocked to suddenly realize that God re-writes his own history. I’ve never noticed how weird Hebrews 11 is. From the beginning, it’s a weird way to tell the stories.

• “And through [Abel’s] faith, though he died, he still speaks.” That might make sense if we had any recording whatsoever of his words. How can he still be speaking to us if he never did? Even to say that his sacrifice “speaks” to us on a figurative level, we would need to see some way that it demonstrated faith more than Cain’s similar sacrifice did. Of all things Abel might still be doing, speaking to us is not one of them.
• “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.” Gosh, that must be a different Sarah than the one I’m thinking of, the one who laughed at the messengers’ news and said, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”
• “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents…” The NIV changes the passive voice to the active, because the passive construction in the original text makes no sense. The author makes it sound like he is commending Moses for being hidden as a helpless infant.
• Aside from this detail-quibbles, there is the glaringly obvious truth that these various men and women of faith were all flawed, some of them glaringly so, especially Jephthah whose only act of faith was to commit one of God’s big pet peeves of child sacrifice.
  

But it’s God’s story, and somehow that gives him the right to re-write even the parts that have already happened. Just like when David steps on the throne and immediately composes a lament for the former king who spent the second half of his reign hunting him down like a villain—Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided; they were swifter than eagles; they were stronger than lions. You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel—God claims his authority as the final interpreter of these various frail and fumbling characters. Once David calls Saul lovely, who can argue? Once God says that Sarah believed, who am I to bring up the technicality that she didn’t?

How different would God’s interpretation of my story be than my own? Are there places where I have declared myself a hyper-sensitive, manipulative, codependent, narcissistic coward, of which God will nevertheless one day declare, “By faith she conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, was made strong out of weakness”? It seems an unfair plot-twist if he changes the story, doesn’t it?

But if I’m only a character, not the writer, I certainly can’t be the critic. O, would that I had the faith to let him interpret my own story!

…Then again, even if I don’t seem to have that faith, he can always go rewriting things to say that I did.