{"id":69085,"date":"2020-01-25T15:29:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T13:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=69085"},"modified":"2023-08-21T16:17:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T13:17:00","slug":"parental-god-in-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/parental-god-in-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"Parental God-In-Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[529,384,428],"acf":{"old_id":"69085","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":68344,"related_cahpter":"402","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"You can\u2019t expect your children to worship you, even if you\u2019re God","content":"

If God is a parent, and the Jewish people are God\u2019s children, then I read Jeremiah 2 as a lesson: you can\u2019t expect your children to worship you, even if you\u2019re God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Babies are originally quite helpless, and therefore blameless. But they eventually grow, and start thinking for themselves: they develop agency. If we are not careful, we feel righteously justified in our anger when they do not act as we wish.<\/span><\/p>\n

Or, in God\u2019s case, when they do not worship us.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Jeremiah chapter 2, the very fact of human agency seems to anger God, who longs for the helpless baby days, when the Israelites were newly freed slaves with no self-determination. The metaphor used in Jeremiah is of a newlywed rather than a baby, but the two share a disturbingly similar guilelessness and dependency. \u201c\u2018I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me \/ and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown\u201d (2:2-3).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And, whipping into a froth, God continues, sounding like an overbearing Jewish mother, berating her adult children: \u201cWhat fault did your ancestors find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves\u201d (2:5).<\/span><\/p>\n

I will just come out and say it: God has a lot to learn here. Putting aside the incessant metaphors of wanton, misbehaving women \u2013 another area in which the God of Jeremiah could use some growth \u2013 there is the basic character flaw of trying to control others. The Israelite people are growing out of their childlike relationship to God, and rather than rejoicing, God is wild with rage.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the sort of thing that annoys people about the Biblical God. And given passages like this, I find it fascinating that we are still in conversation with this God after all these years.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the case of my particular family, our trajectory manifests the little painting my mom has hanging in her bathroom: \u201cFamilies are for growing up in, growing away from, and returning to.\u201d My family left their relationship with God, probably in part because of passages like this. Who would want to keep a conversation going with a domineering, inflexible deity who has no power but plenty of complaints?<\/span><\/p>\n

But then I came back. And so did God. And being a parent has made me much more compassionate about God\u2019s foibles and weaknesses. I think that God and I are both learning \u2013 on the job \u2013 how to love well.<\/span><\/p>\n

The God I see here is made in our image, just as we are said to be made in God\u2019s. An imperfect God, whose imperfect creatures are in a mirrored process: the slow, uneven story of growth. Over a lifetime, over centuries, over millennia. A parent-God, a God-in-progress, Being what God Will Be. A God who has as much to learn from us, as we do from God.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":69086,"id":69086,"title":"jer2-disobedience","filename":"jer2-disobedience.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/jer2-disobedience.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/parental-god-in-progress\/jer2-disobedience\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"jer2-disobedience","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":69085,"date":"2020-01-25 13:29:19","modified":"2020-01-25 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