The New Game: Believe In Me Of Not

 The Shama continued:

So after reading the entire Shama how are you feeling about what you read?  

Personally, I was doing quite fine until I read the Numbers passage.  

Numbers seemed more like it was composed out of the  human mindset.  

Being killed for picking up stick rubs up hard against my belief that God is love.

However, what I am thinking is, it was/is more about the issue of taking seriously God’s request for commitment and faithful behavior on our parts.

God might have been using this stick-gatherer as an example of what happens when people do not honor what God asked.

But then I think, did it have to be so final?  I mean the person didn’t have a chance to repent.

My whole being is resisting this example.

Then I have to think about that particular context and time in history.

But still.

The truth is God was dealing with, what I will call, a most difficult problem with His human creation.   The human ego — the human need to choose its own way.

God fought that persistent battle all the way through the Old Testament storied.  

It is absolutely amazing how overwhelmingly strong the human physic is.

And by the way, God did make us with the will to be sufficient.

So here is my take — my imagination — on how God radically changed the game:

After centuries of playing the game, of request, punish, and forgive, God got extremely frustrated and tired of trying to get through to his human creation.

So God decided to make an extraordinary change in the paradigm. 

God decided come down and live among these creatures — who were made in His image.

God sent His angels to prepare the way for a new game — a new way of being.

And one Holy Night God was born in the baby Jesus.

And on that night a bright star lite up the sky, and angels announced the good news of the coming of peace and good will in all the earth.

God created a new game; a new way of dealing with the steadfast mentality of the human nature.

The new game had very few rules:

³⁶‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ ³⁷He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ ( Matt. 22)

 

And God said, believe in me or not.

            Totally your choice.