No doubt some will reply that God is not a God of disorder, incoherence, or arbitrariness, but a God of order. Of course he is.
Unfortunately the whole of the Old Testament shows us that God’s order is not that which we conceive and desire. God’s order is not organization and institution (cf. the difference between judges and kings). It is not the same in every time and place. It is not a matter of repetition and habit. On the contrary, it resides in the fact that it constantly posits something new, a new beginning. Our God is a God of beginnings. There is in him no redundancy or circularity.
Thus, if his church wants to be faithful to his revelation, it will be completely mobile, fluid, renascent, bubbling, creative, inventive, adventurous, and imaginative. It will never be perennial, and can never be organized or institutionalized. If the gates of death are not going to prevail against it, this is not because it is a good, solid, well organized fortress, but because it is alive; it is Life that is, as mobile, changing, and surprising as life. If it becomes a powerful fortified organization, it is because death has prevailed.
Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, 157
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1 Eric Haynes // May 4, 2007 at 6:07 pm
It has been pointed out to me in something I read recently that God in the Old Testament, or Jesus in the New, never accomplished the same goal the same way twice. One time Jesus heals blindness by mixing spit in mud and putting in a man’s eye, but other times he healed blindness differently. God delivered the city of Jericho by having Israel march around it and blow trumpets — and it worked!! But just because it worked didn’t mean he ever had them do it that way again. Goes back to the wildness of God…
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