Dear Pneuma,

Today, my thought turned upside down.  I was hearing God's story, and I heard a reality I had not actually heard before-God is a "screw-up."  God gets it wrong: all over the place; all the time.  If I use Scripture as God revealed to us, I really can't escape this idea.

First, God created, and "it was good."  Somehow, people moved away from God, and Eden fell to Cain's anger, and ages and ages of pain passed, until God decided to try again.  This time, Gods' goodness was the rainbow, the olive branch,  and the dove.  

Time passed, and the world moved away from God.  God spoke to Abraham and said, "Maybe if you move away from all of these other people, and focus on your own family, we can get something really marvelous going," so Abraham moved to Nevada (or someplace pretty similar) and it worked; for a while. 

Then, times in the desert got tough, people moved to Egypt, and after a few generations, people had forgotten that the earth belonged to God, and that "it was good."   They got caught up in class distinctions, religious definitions, slavery and few other "not so  good" things.  God had Moses lead the Children of Israel back out of the "big, bad city," possibly hoping that fresh country air would clear out the cobwebs and get people feeling right in no time. 

God decided to live among us for a time.  God stayed with the people, hoping, by being visibly present, that they would remember.  Instead, God scared the living daylights out of folks and they told Moses: "You talk to It."  He did, but then he was gone, and God tried speaking to the people through  wise women and priestly men, but the people said, "Please give us Kings.  You are too much, God.  You are too much."

So God tried again.  How many failures is this now?  How many false starts and "do-overs?" Is it five?  Is it six?  The next time God tried to make good, we got Kings-Saul, David, Solomon-and life was good for a while, if our Bible is to be believed, and yet . . .yet. 

So follow God's failures through the words and prayers of the Bible, through the wars, the plagues, the exiles, the losses and destructions, and eventually you arrive at Jesus.  So, what if Jesus is not a culminated effort, not the fruition of creation's purpose, but yet another attempt by our God to be with us, to be in us, to love us and share the wisdom and joy in a creation that was meant to be good?

I know readers, that believe the Bible shows us how pitiful and stupid people are.  I know readers that believe the Christian faith is meant to teach us how unworthy, unimportant, and altogether screwed up we humans are, but:

What if the God of the Christian faith is not Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omni-Perfect?  What does it mean if God, as revealed through reason, tradition, scripture, and experience, is the "screw up?"

It means that God always tries again.  

What does it mean to worship a Being that never gives up?  What does it mean to worship a Being that, not succeeding at first, tries and tries again?  What does it mean to see Jesus, not as the "Perfect Human Being," but instead, as another Hope of God, proof of the Faith God has in us, that some day, we may just figure it all out: that Eden never fell.  What if Jesus is not the last, but simply another in a long line of attempts by God to say "I love you.  I love you all?"

Thinking new thoughts,

Cobalt Dreams