Threat or Refuge?

.....the God in Whose hands we are, Who is our ultimate threat and our ultimate refuge.

I found this quote buried within Chapter 9, God’s Pursuit of Man in an online book by Paul Tillich called The Eternal Now

In this chapter he talks about how we try to flee from God…via work, via religion, via the party hearty life.

The quote jumped out at me because it was my experience for several years while trying to sort out the answers to age old unanswerable questions….the existence of suffering and the existence of a good God….the balance between absolute determinism and total volition. And truthfully, for quite a while I was extremely pissed at God. Furious…and disappointed.

When I tried to put God in the box other people told me he fit it, there were times I felt I must surely be morally superior to God.  When I took the OT stories of conquest and genocide at face value….the killing of women and children, the stonings, the animal sacrifices, the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, I really didn't care much for him. He came across as a big, egotistical bully. 

I still do not have all the answers….but I’ve worked out (or he’s worked in) an understanding of God that has taken some of the fever pitch level of frustration down a notch or two. And he continues to give me answers and peace and like minded friends (albeit cyber friends) to fellowship with.

But during the peak of my frustration, the quote fit all too well…

Even though I felt he was my ultimate threat, I also knew he was my ultimate refuge. I might not be thrilled by the way he arranged events in the big picture of history and in the history of my own little world but he alone had the words of eternal life. He was my ultimate refuge….

John 6:67-69 (ESV)

So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God."