"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above Him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.' At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 'Woe to me!' I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.' Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar." Isaiah 6:1-6
"We have turned to a God that we can use rather than to a God we must obey... He is a God for us, for our satisfaction... we transform the God of mercy into a God who is at our mercy. We imagine that He is benign, that He will acquiesce as we toy with His reality and co-opt Him in the promotion of our ventures and careers... What has been lost in all of this, of course, is God's angularity, the sharp edges that truth so often has and that He has preeminently." David Wells, God in the Wasteland
One of my favorite lines out of C.S. Lewis's book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a statement by Mr. Beaver to the Pevensie children. They are fleeing the White Witch who has cast a spell over the land of Narnia turning it into perpetual winter and who fears these sons and daughters of Adam will be the downfall of her rule in the land. Mr. Beaver mentions the one hope they have - Aslan is in the land. Aslan, the Lion, is the Christi figure of these stories. Alarmed at the thought of a lion as an ally, one of the children ask, "Is he quite safe?" Mr. Beaver indignantly replies, "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King I tell you."
The only safe lions are dead ones or those thoroughly caged in a zoo. In either case they offer no occasion for dread. Is our experience of God the same? If so we do not worship the God of the Patriarchs or the Prophets. If we would know all that God has for us in redemption we must reject the God-as-a-satisfying-product theology and seek Him as He is - wild, but good.
