Theology matters! How we think about God makes a difference. It shapes the conclusions we reach about how the world works and what our role in the world looks like. Theology matters.

Case in point -- the text from Isaiah which you heard just a few moments ago. It begins with a marvelous insight into the powerful, redemptive nature of God’s relationship with Israel. In the midst of a period of their history when life was in turmoil, Isaiah seeks to speak for God when he writes, “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” (Isaiah 43:1) Do not fear! The relationship is so close that God has called them by name -- an act which carries with it deep and intimate implications. Isaiah is experiencing a dramatically hopeful insight into who God is and what that means for a people who are suffering. This is good news. It needs to be shouted from the rooftops!

Unfortunately, even as Isaiah is experiencing this powerful insight, he also brings with him a whole set of baggage about who God is and how God relates to the world. And even this powerful insight is not able to completely overcome the limitations of that baggage. So, right in the middle of this marvelous proclamation about God’s redemptive love for Israel, we find the declaration, “I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.” (Isaiah 43:3-4) There it is -- the idea that God must somehow be appeased. God runs the world based on some sort of cosmic balance sheet. There is only so much of God’s love and grace to go around, so if Israel is going to receive an abundance, then someone else is going to have to pay. Others will be sacrificed for the benefit of God’s beloved Israel. “I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.”

This certainly doesn’t arise out of Isaiah’s insight about the abundance of God’s love for Israel. He brings it with him as he receives the insight. It shapes how the insight is interpreted.

At this point someone might say, “What’s the big deal? So Isaiah’s theology is a bit suspect. Just because he thinks God is going to do bad things to other people on Israel’s behalf doesn’t mean that God is actually like that. Why get all worked up over someone else’s bad theology? Well, it might be possible to make such a case if this were just some Joe Ordinary off the street, but Isaiah is in a position of authority. People are listening to him. People are taking him seriously. And it isn’t simply that someone else might end up with Isaiah’s narrow view of God. The real problem comes because our own behavior is often shaped by our understanding of who God is. If God can punish other people to promote our well-being, then it is a fairly small step to begin believing that it is appropriate for we who are God’s faithful followers to do the job on God’s behalf. And that is a slippery slope indeed. Over the years people have taken it upon themselves to kill the enemies of God -- witches in Salem, infidels in Jerusalem, Protestants or Catholics (depending on which side of the aisle you found yourself), homosexuals. And in each and every case, these acts of violence were committed because people genuinely believed that it was what God wanted.

At the Roger Williams Symposium at WSU last November, John Dominic Crossan offered the idea that it is important to ask “What is the character of the God we believe in?” What is God like? How does God act? What does God want? Does what we are saying about God in this particular moment match up with what we understand to be the core values of God? The answers matter because they help to shape our lives and our living. If we aren’t careful we can find ourselves in some very questionable neighborhoods without even noticing. I’m sure that it seemed perfectly reasonable to Isaiah to speak about God making Egypt and Ethiopia expendable because of Israel. Not because that is where he intended to end up, but because he started out with an understanding of God that said, among other things, that the balance sheet must always be balanced.

But if we begin with a different premise, then when a new insight about God comes along it might be easier for us to hear it. If God’s basic character centers around loving other (which was the insight Isaiah was having), and not around maintaining the balance sheet (which was where Isaiah started from), then we are less likely to resist when it begins to dawn on us that perhaps God’s love also extends to “them” as well as to “us” -- whoever “them” might be at any given moment. And if we truly believe that God is, at the heart of things, about love, then it is worth checking out, at least from time to time, how other things we believe about God measure up to that standard. Would a loving God really want us to....? How could that be true if God really is loving?

Growing in our faith is not an easy thing. It means paying attention. It means asking questions. It means being attentive to what we believe and why. What is the character of your God? And what kind of life does that lead you to?