I had the opportunity to listen to a radio show that featured former nun, Karen Armstrong, as she promoted her new book, A Case For God.  According to the interview, Ms. Armstrong has been able to transcend the insufficient ideas and ideals of the major world religions and to formulate a hybrid/synergistic understanding of God.  Ms. Armstrong is definitely for God, but not the “primitive” God worshipped by modern religious adherents.

It cannot be argued that Ms. Armstrong has spent considerable effort studying human concepts of God  and that her conclusions represent some of the best of modern scholarship. I am amazed that her careful study has not resulted in any novel conclusions. She makes the same basic assertions about God humans have been making throughout recorded history: God is a human formulation, an attempt to access the transcendent.

For the most part I believe she is correct.  The gods of humans tend to look like us.  The god of Israel, however, is said to create us to look like him.  This god is not supra-human, he is perfected truth; this god is both accessible and incomprehensible; finite enough to become flesh, infinite enough to simply speak all our “discoveries” into existence.

This is the god who can send his beloved covenant people into war-induced exile, who could watch women and children die horrific deaths, who caused famine so severe his people starved. This is the very same God to whom Isaiah calls the inhabitants of Jerusalem to shout praises of joy.

“Let all the people of Jerusalem shout his praise with joy! For great is the Holy One of Israel who lives among you.”” (Isaiah 12:6, NLT)

The gods of our imaginations make sense to us.  The god of Israel can judge from the holiness of his heavens and yet live in the midst of a people who have rejected him. The god of Israel confounds the wisest mind and is sensible to the simplest mind. He is truly the Nun God.