Arguing With God

There’s lots of arguing between God and the people in Chapter 33 of Exodus. It starts when God, frustrated by the people’s fickleness and unwillingness to stay connected relationally, has what might be called an emotional outburst. Essentially God says, “I’m done with you!”

God said, “Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”

When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments. - Exodus 33:4-5

The people get sad about God disconnecting. They probably feel some sense of rejection but also perhaps they feel a real fear at what it might mean to move forward without God.

As Brenna Rubio pointed out on Sunday, God sounds grumpy. There are a couple of things we can say about that. First, God being grumpy may or may not be how God actually was, but certainly it captures how the people experienced God. Ultimately, the Bible is what you get when God lets the people tell the story. So, from the people’s side of things, God was grumpy.

But the other thing to say is that at least the people had enough of a relationship with God to be able to attribute feelings to God. So many times we’re so distracted or unfocused, we don’t have enough of a relational connection with God for there to be much feeling in it at all!

So as you think about this situation, do you find your God being grumpy - and if so, about what? Or do you find some other emotion being what you primarily associate with God, and how does that impact you? Finally, if there’s no emotion you connect with God, why might that be?