The Company God Keeps

This is an excerpt from the book, "The Bible Jesus Read," by Philip Yancey.


You learn a lot about a person by the friends he selects, and nothing about God proves more surprising than his choice of companions, the hand-picked objects of his intimacy. Abraham pimped for his wife, Jacob cheated his brother, Moses murdered, David murdered and committted adultery both - yet all of these ended up on God's list of favorites...

God has it out with loud complainers like Job, Jeremiah, and Jonah. He engages Abraham and Moses in lengthy arguments - and sometimes lets them win! In his wrestling match with Jacob, God waits until daybreak to inflict the wound; till then, Jacob hold his own. Quite obviously, God prefers honest disagreement to dishonest submission. He takes human beings seriously, conducts dialogues with them, includes them in his plans, listens to them.

If the Old Testament's overwhelming lesson about God is that he is personal and intimate, its overwhelming lesson about human beings is that we matter. What we say, how we behave, even what we think and feel - these things have an enormous effect on God. They have, in fact, cosmic implications."