Shayne Looper: He has a certain way about him
In both the Old and New Testaments, the Bible speaks about “the way of the Lord.” The biblical writers frequently urge people to walk in God’s ways. What does it mean that God has a way?
The “way of the Lord” can denote the path God takes to get somewhere or the manner God chooses to accomplish something. In either case, the way of the Lord is often very different from the way people would naturally take. As God reminds people through the prophet Isaiah, “My ways are not your ways.”
God and humans once went the same way, but the Bible makes clear that their paths have diverged. This separation is recorded early in the biblical record when the progenitors of the human race knowingly rejected God’s way and chose another. The rest of the Bible tells the story of how God brings the two come back together.
The idea that humans have left God’s way, have sinned, and are lost was once assumed my nearly everyone in the West. People understood that they were sinners who needed forgiveness and ought to follow God’s ways. That cognitive framework has largely broken down.
It has been replaced by various philosophies of self-actualization in which the problem is not sin but ignorance or social injustice. The older, biblical understanding also viewed ignorance and injustice as dangerous evils, which contribute greatly to human misery. But it took these to be the result of a more fundamental evil: humanity’s dislocation from God.
What difference does any of this make? Just this: if we see ignorance as the primary evil, we will believe that humanity’s problem can be solved through education. This belief motivated 20th-century intellectuals in their efforts to construct a better society. Those efforts have not yet proved successful.
If we believe that injustice, rooted in systemic racism or in economic inequality, is the root cause of human unhappiness, we will want to dismantle the system and build a new one. But if racism and economic inequality are themselves caused by an older and deeper evil, whatever system we build will also need to be replaced.
That older, deeper evil is humanity’s rejection of the “way of the Lord.” Until they return to it, ignorance, racism, and economic equality will continue to ravage mankind. But how will people return to God’s ways if not through education and systemic reforms?
The answer is that they cannot, at least not on their own. They need help. And that help has been, and is being, given. The means by which this help is offered is told in the biblical story of redemption.
After describing the consequences of mankind’s choice to go its own way, recorded in Genesis 3-11, Scripture recounts the steps God is taking to bring humanity back to himself and his ways. This is the story of the Bible. It begins when God chooses one person, Abraham, to be the channel through which he will bless all peoples on earth.
God chooses Abraham “so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just …” Abraham’s family (later tribe, then nation) was supposed to keep, rather than leave, God’s way, as the first humans had done.
The rest of the Old Testament tells the successes and failures, but mostly failures, of that nation “to keep the way of the Lord.” The New Testament picks up the story with Abraham’s long-awaited descendent Jesus. He not only keeps the way of the Lord but inaugurates a new non-ethnic people of God who will also walk in his ways.
God’s ways are mentioned throughout the Bible, but in Deuteronomy they are a constant theme. Chapter 10 elaborates on God’s ways, giving numerous examples: he “shows no partiality and accepts no bribes … defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien.”
We think of such things as ethical standards, but they are more: they are God’s ways. Those ways have proved too steep for us to travel, but God will help. That help comes through his son, who is known as “the Way,” and his spirit.
— Shayne Looper is a writer and speaker based in Coldwater, Michigan. Contact him at salooper57@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Shayne Looper: He has a certain way about him
