Uncomfortable (S1) - Day 24

Obviously, the New Testament and the story of Jesus is not the only supernatural story in scripture. The Old Testament is full of stories that seem fabulous, and perhaps even too good to be true. There are miracles, there are plagues, and there are signs of God’s goodness, his sovereignty, and his power. 

I think we can be sure that these were the ways that those ancient writers experienced God being with them. The Bible is a story of a confronting event between God and people he called his own, and as such, there is a constant struggle between what they believed they were being told to do and what they were experiencing in their lives. They are an ancient people with an ancient understanding of the world. They were less theological in trying to understand God and were more experiential in their understanding. They believe that God was moving, was talking with them, and was showing them the ways to go. The prophets claimed God was speaking directly through them each and every time they spoke for God in the scriptures. 

These ancient people were trying to make sense of their world, just like we are often trying to make sense of the world from what we know and what we don’t know. The idea of the supernatural is really the idea that fills the gap between what we experience, what we hope to be true, and what we know is reality. 

When we take a look at the plagues, they seem pretty unreal. It seems difficult to understand why God would work that way in the world at that time. However, it does fit into their worldview much more than it fits into ours. Where would the plagues take us today? Why would they be needed? And how would they present themselves? 

The plagues visited pretty significant destruction and chaos into the Egyptian world at the time. They did not necessarily show a God who was interested in loving people. But, interestingly, in contrast to the Egyptian Gods, Yahweh seems absolutely loving toward his people. And to be sure, their understanding of God at this time was very tribal and nationalistic. 

When Jesus came, he did away with the “our” God language and God became perhaps what God always was; universal and for all of humanity.