The Water Bottle
When I was studying in Costa Rica one of the most formative moments was a simple metaphor our Professor Javier demonstrated for us in one of our first sessions there. He set a plastic water bottle on a table in the middle of the circle of us.
“I want you to imagine this water bottle is God... everything God is, what God does, how God interacts with the world...”
Okayyyyy, I thought, that feels a little odd, where is this going? Something about God quenching our thirst?
“Every one of you sees this water bottle from a different angle, a different perspective. This half of the room might see mostly the nutrition label, this half the logo. Some of you can see certain words, others can see other parts of the words. The water bottle hasn’t changed, it is the same and is one thing, but each of you sees different parts of it. This semester I want you to remember that different perspectives of God are not bad or wrong, they may just be a different angle someone is seeing God from. Hopefully, at the end of our time you see a little more of the “water bottle” than you did when you got here.”
He could not have been more spot on! That semester completely transformed my faith and perspective. My abilities to think critically and leave room for nuance and ambiguity stretched far past their previous shape. And by the end I saw more of God than I had when I landed in the San Jose airport.
Since then, I have held the tension of firmly believing that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and recognizing that my own interpretation and other’s perspectives are not. I have been learning what to hold loosely and what to cling to like a life preserver.
At times, it can feel overwhelming, the awareness that there is so much of God that I don’t understand, to recognize that I have yet to unlearn some preconceived, false notions of God. It can be intimidating to recognize my own lack of clarity, how my personality or history can distort my perception of the truth. How just like I look back five years ago and see how my beliefs have shifted, I will look back five years from now and see how I’ve changed.
There is a prideful, insecure part of my humanity that wants to believe that what I see and believe and think now is completely TRUE and what I will ALWAYS believe. But that is just not the nature of being a human trying to wrap one’s brain and heart around the divine.
The more I study and grow and seek, the more I see that the narrative of Scripture speaks to the ever-increasing freedom and revelation God offers to us. We don’t just receive a download of who God is - God invites us into a living, growing relationship in which we increasingly experience who God is, how God works, and how we are invited to participate in what God is doing in the world. That means that sometimes, oftentimes, it is important to reconsider what we may have gotten wrong.
I praise God that we are free to wrestle, to question, to reconsider, to hear other points of view, to respect and to show grace to each other in the same way Christ has for us. The Lord himself welcomes my questions and promises that He will show up to those who look for Him - so who am I not to welcome my own questions, or other’s?
The “water bottle” may not change or move, but my position and perspective (hopefully) will. And as I do, I will see more of God. As I do, my heart can only swell with gratitude at the bigness and wholeness and intense goodness of God that I am just scratching the surface of understanding.
