Bothering God

In Exodus 32, God is more than a little miffed. He is door-slamming, wall-punching, foot-stomping furious. His eyes are red and bulging. The veins in His forehead are a blood-pressure point away from bursting. And though there are no textual hints about the tone He uses when He speaks, I bet His voice is deep, tense and terrifying.

“Go down,” he says to Moses, “because your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have become corrupt.” Your people? Whom you brought? It sounds like God is finished with Israel. They are no longer “My people.” He is no longer “their God.” He is ready to open up a 50 gallon drum of wrath and pour it out on Israel. What he is about to do to them will make what He did to Egypt in the Ten Plagues look like a trip to Disney World.

It. Is. On.

What lit the fuse to God’s anger? Just the fact that the people managed to violate about half the commandments before the dust from chiseling them into the stone tablets had settled. While Moses was up on the mountain, they grew impatient and asked Aaron to make them some gods who could go before them. Aaron folded like a metal chair in a church basement and quickly fashioned a gaudy golden cow. The next day, they got up early for idol church, had a big covered dish lunch, then rose up to “indulge in revelry.”

So God told Moses, “Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.”

But Moses didn’t leave God alone. He bothered Him. First of all, Moses said, they are not my people; they are your people. You brought them out of Egypt. Second, Moses told God that the optics on this would be really bad. The Egyptians would never let Him hear the end of it. Finally, Moses reminded God about that promise He had made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And God doesn’t go back on promises.

Something remarkable happens then. The thing itself is astonishing but the fact that it is recorded in the Bible is, perhaps, even more so. Then the Lord relented and did not bring on His people the disaster He had threatened. Moses bothered God and God changed His mind.

Let that sink in. God made a decision. Moses disagreed with God’s decision and explained why. And the Lord relented. God changed His mind.

Some people think the future is closed. Like God has this giant super (natural) computer in Heaven. It holds the programming for the future and it is up and running. It cannot be accessed, hacked or modified. The program is immutable, fixed and permanent. Some people call that determinism. Some call it predestination. I call it discouraging.

This story and others like it (e.g. Acts 12:1-19) suggest the future is more open-ended than we imagine. God shares a relationship of integrity with the world. I mean, the relationship we have with God is real, not simulated. He did not just key in a program. We are not just going through a set of predetermined motions. The future – God’s and ours – is not completely decided. The future – God’s and ours – is at stake.

That means that when we pray, we are participating with God in shaping tomorrow. We are, as Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 3:9, “God’s fellow workers.” Or maybe we are co-creators with God, collaboratively programming the future. The French philosopher Pascal said, “God instituted prayer in order to allow his creatures the dignity of causality.”

Does that mean that every time we bother God, God will change his mind? Of course not. Jesus bothered God for a way to save humanity that didn’t involve a cross. And God said, “No.”

Does that mean that God is not sovereign? Heavens no! But it does mean that the Sovereign God has determined that He will listen when we pray. That He will sometimes change his mind. That He is willing to limit himself in order to have a relationship with us that is honest, participatory and risky.

So let’s take Him up on it. Tell Him what you think, what you hope for, what you fear. If you feel He’s already made His decision, ask him to reconsider. He might. Or He might not. I don’t know how He will respond. But I know He won’t be bothered.