Spiritual Hiccups - A Troubled Marriage

Today's reading from Malachi is probably not the best example, but it is one among many where God's relationship with Israel is described in terms of marriage.  And looking at a number of such readings, what strikes me is how God goes through the whole gamut of emotions we might expect of someone who loves a spouse dearly but discovers that the spouse is unfaithful.

Faced with Israel's repeated unfaithfulness, God's anger can boil up and issue in promises to destroy.  But then God can plead with Israel to come back, can speak of wooing Israel once again.  God's relationship with Israel is depicted as the source of endless emotional turmoil for Yahweh.  The decision to enter a covenant with them has complicated God's life in countless ways.


Christians - at least Western ones - often seem troubled by such a view of God.  Our understandings of divinity are much more influenced by Greek, philosophical thinking.  Parts of the New Testament itself have a bit more Greek, Western influence.  But of course all of that comes after Jesus, who is quite at home in the world of the Old Testament prophets, the very folks who spoke of God's inner turmoil.

And besides, what is Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane if not a manifestation of inner turmoil, a poignant picture of how complicated God's life is because of us.

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