Immanent and Transcendent
God is immanent and transcendent. Immanent in that he is present every hour of
every day. Transcendent in that trying
to sum him up is like trying to catch Niagara Falls in a teacup. If we believe one or the other, and not both,
we will have a false sense of God. (Losing
this balance is the root of most of the major heresy’s in the long history of
Christianity.)
He is immanent in that he is ever present and
available. When someone in Alcoholics
Anonymous prays earnestly, “Higher Power, help me not to take this drink.” He expects God to remove the urge for him,
just for that minute, and hopefully for the next hour. And you know what? God does. It is why 12 step programs work. He is an ever-present help in times of
trouble.
He is also immanent in nature. Have you ever really looked at a tree? Ever really thought about it? It is a collection of dust that became a seed
so perfectly designed that it, as big as a grain of rice, would one day grow
and fill the sky with its branches for birds and shade for us. It is intricate and at
St. Augustine asks, "Does God proclaim himself in the wonders
of creation? No. All things proclaim him, all things speak. Their beauty is the
voice by which they announce God, by which they sing, 'It is you who made
myself beautiful, not me but you." If you look for him in nature, you
will soon find him at every turn. He is
as close as the air you breathe. After all, he came to dwell among us in the
form of a man - and nothing separates us from Jesus. Not even time.
But he is transcendent as well. Something I too often forget, and we as
moderns often have no frame of reference for the fear of God that we hear about
in ancient psalms. After all, did he not
shape the universe, bringing it inconceivably and instantly out of nothing – scientists believe it was a
point of singularity that contained all things - and splashed the heavens with
stars that begat planets that begat weather, water and ultimately
self-sustaining, perfectly created Life?
Life that could grow to the point of being capable of appreciation for
that act? Did he not create weather and
the behemoth of the sea by his designs?
Where is our sense of awe and trembling that we as guilty sinners
hopelessly lost in our lost-ness could approach him?
He is there in this tension. In the tension that we feel between these two things. When I take them, try to hold them together
my your mind, I am all but struck down by the presence of God so thick
in my prayer room that I have to catch my breath. If we can keep these things in mind, we will find him everywhere he is.
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