Writing About God
Every one of my stories is about God, but very few of them mention him explicitly. A character might word a frustrated prayer or wonder where God is, but aside from that God remains in the background, watching the events unfold from behind the bushes. No voices from heaven. No burning bushes. No pillars of fire.
In this regard, my model for writing about God is the book of Esther. Although it is part of the Old Testament canon, God is not mentioned a single time. However, there can be no doubt that he was involved providentially in Esther’s story. As Matthew Henry put it, “If the name of God is not here, his finger is.”
Most of us have heard more sermons than we can count in which God has been out in front and described in granular detail. When these descriptions correspond with his self-revelation in the Bible, they are helpful, but sometimes our overt explanations of the divine cloud rather than illuminate the mystery. It would be better for us not to mention him at all than for us to present a God of our own making.
As one who preaches two or more sermons a week, I think I can say that I see the value in trying to present God in all his glory, but I also believe that he ought to be discussed in more subtle ways. For example, through stories.
For one thing, God doesn't appear to us in epiphanies today. We don't live in a world where the seas dry up for armies to cross and axe heads float on top of the water. When we read our Bibles, it may seem as if the world should work that way, but if we were to examine the history, we would find that even by biblical standards, most of the time God has run the world by the laws he set in place at creation and has communicated through his word while aiding his children using the mysterious instrument of providence. Stories in which he whispers in a still small voice instead of thundering from the mountain are truer to our experience and for that reason, more helpful.
Furthermore, do we dare speak of God in overt language when he is so beyond our infinite minds? Psalm 65 begins in the ESV, “Praise is due to you, O God,” but it might be better translated, “To you silence is praise, God” (Alter). The suggestion may be that God’s greatness is beyond what language can express, so silence alone suffices for praise.
Two difficulties face us as we try to express God’s majesty. The first is the limitations of language. Poet Tony Hoagland said language “will stretch just so much and no farther…there are some holes it will not cover up.” Even a master wordsmith falters as he tries to describe an infinite God.
The second difficulty has to do with the price a worshiper pays for daring to express the bold truth about God. Mark Strand questions whether his poetry, which is far less significant and controversial in subject matter than God, is worth the sacrifice, saying, “Perhaps we should be silent, tell no one and the airs will pass, pass without knowledge of themselves, never having been termed….” It is a good question: which is better for me? Keeping my mouth shut for the sake of peace, or expressing the truth in my heart, no matter what the cost?
David decides to break the silence in praise, regardless of the consequences. First, he speaks to God, “O you who hear prayer” (v. 2). Then his tongue is loosed in fervent praise. The limits of human language are upon him, but his words beautifully honor the Creator. And by the end of the psalm, even the land is singing: “The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with corn, they shout and sing together for joy.”
My stories pale by comparison to David’s psalms, but at least they are imbued with a similar respect for the majesty of God and the inability of language to look at him directly.
We have heard the ancient tale of Medusa, whose stare turned those who looked at her directly into stone. Perseus outsmarted her by spying her reflection in the mirror of his shield. No one knows where this terror of direct vision came from, but I suspect it emerged from a dormant knowledge of the goodness and severity of God. Good stories are mirrors through which we may glimpse him. We may never see him until eternity, and even then it may be too much to expect to behold his glory, but when it comes to a being as infinite as God, a look in a dingy mirror is enough.
