Itâs possible, in fact, to read the entire Christian story as a question, one that begins in Genesis, and humanity has been trying to respond to throughout history. Itâs the primal question found in the heart of Eden, the question that God has and continues to have for usâand itâs found in Genesis 3.
WHERE ARE YOU?
A bit of background: in the garden, Adam and Eve are part of a grand creation that the Lord God has put into play. As God is creating the stars, the heavens, the earth, the waters, the beasts of the field, the growing grass, and everything else that comes about in Godâs creation spree, one idea keeps resounding: in Hebrew, itâs the word tov, which means âgood.â The creation is tov. The water: tov, good. Heavens: tov, good. Human beings: yeah, weâre tov too, good. Goodness permeates Godâs action in all of creationâpours into it and out of it, pumps through it. As human beings and part of that creation, you and I are thoroughly tov-ed, repositories of goodness that God has simply peppered creation with from the very beginning.
Then the man and the woman enter the picture in this garden and come to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Though they are aware of Godâs presence, they start to desire a thing that they are told is not for them: the fruit of that tree. Then, rather than consulting with the living God who is fully present with them, they turn to themselves, choosing to listen to the craftiness of the serpent instead, who twists Godâs words of reality, bending them beyond recognition, to such a degree that Adam and Eve make a decision that causes them to trip, to fall, to cascade into a place where they do not want to be. Itâs at this point that Adam and Eve realize theyâve broken relationship with God, as we hear in Genesis 3:10 with the fateful words, âI was afraid.â They are exposed, naked. They want to clothe themselves, to cover up their newfound shame. And at this exact moment, God speaks a question to them, the first audible question to humanity in the entire Scripture: âWhere are you?â (v. 9). And in many respects, I would say that this is the question for humanity, all of us across the generations. Every question we have fits into that grand one: âWhere are you?â
The Hebrew word ayekah requires three words in English, âWhere are you?â Itâs like a supernova of light that God is giving them, a dense and compact burst of meaning, in order to show them something bigger than they could have comprehended at that moment because of their fall. Grace and the call to reconciled relationship are bigger than shame and loss. But doesnât God know where they are? So much ink has been spilled over the centuries by theologians and laypeople alike trying to grapple with why God asks this question. Does God have to play hide-and-seek? Really? The all-knowing, all-powerful God of the universe canât find two people in a garden that he made? Doesnât it seem kind of strange for God Almighty to say in essence, âCome out, come out, wherever you areâ?
But the passage isnât set up because God is somehow ignorant and has no idea where they are. Itâs a rhetorical question, one that God is asking in order to create a space for Adam and Eve to admit that they have run away. Itâs like a parent who sees that a child has stolen a cookie from the jar. Fifteen seconds ago there was a single cookie left in the jar, but now thereâs noneâjust a child standing beside an empty cookie jar wearing a chocolatey chin and an angelic expression, trying to hide crumb-covered fingers. When the parent asks, âDid you take the cookie?â itâs not because nobody knows what happened. Instead, the question is intended to give a space for forgiveness and repentance, to allow the child to be reconciled with the parent with dignity and agency. The same is true in the garden: âWhere are you?â isnât a blame game. Itâs a loving opportunity for forgiveness, a bridge that God is building with this question to make a way to come back to a right, fully human state.
WHERE: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
As we look further, we can see that the bridge God is building with this simple Hebrew word ayekah has several parts. Letâs look at this first part: Where?
Where is the place from which we will ask questions that matter. Where helps us understand the place in which we find ourselves by probing it for information and insight. Real estate agents will tell you that the first three rules of buying or selling a house are âlocation, location, and location.â A propertyâs surroundings are key when buying land, and location is also crucial when we talk about spiritual relationships. Where you areâyour context, your station in life, and yes, your physical communityâwill affect how you understand who you are in Godâs eyes and in the eyes of your community. What we say about where we are also matters, and so do the choices we make toward where we are going.
I had a friend in college who had a reputation for being very truthful in the way he responded to invitations. Akin to Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory or the Candor faction in the Divergent book series, there are those personality types who prioritize an idealized form of truthfulness above all else. If someone invited him to a party or to someoneâs house, his response would almost uniformly be, âIâll be there as long as something better doesnât come along.â He meant it as kind of a joke, but in truth he actually lived that way. He was always willing to say, âWell, I canât really make it because . . .â When an invitation to a better party would come along, thatâs where heâd end up going. Okay, I used to think, he gets points for honesty. Maybe not so much for commitment, but honestyâyeah, okay. My buddyâs approach to commitment taught me about the kinds of questions he was asking with his life: seeking always to have an exit strategy and never having to commit fully to anything, as though he were always dangling his feet in the ocean from a pier but never swimming out into the surf.
When we tell people where weâre going to be, or where we imagine ourselves being, it comes with the crucial dimension of whether we actually end up in that place or not, or whether we even intended to go in the first place. I got an email late one night a few years ago from a student who said she couldnât be in class the next day because she was sick. These things happen, so I emailed back and said I really hoped she felt better and that I understood that she had to miss a session.
Now, hereâs the thing about having a professor who also happens to be on social mediaâlater the next day, this same student started posting pictures from a nearby ski area with her snowboard, having a great day out on the slopes with friends. The next time we were in class together, I just happened to have my laptop, and it was as simple as saying, âHey, I want to show you somethingâ and turning my laptop around toward her. âLooks like you had a great day on the slopes, didnât you?â I asked. We had a good relationship and had a good laugh together. I told her, âNext time the snow is that good, be sure to invite the whole class!â But I also reminded her that while I am pro-fun and pro-fellowship with friends, Iâm also pro-truth. It was a moment of clearing away falsehood from the relationship between us, asking, âWhere are you?â (or really, âWhere were you?â), and hopefully giving my student a chance to reposition the physical and spiritual GPS locator to be more in keeping with Godâs intent for her and for our relationship. Similarly, âWhere are you?â is Godâs way of inviting us to be restored to the fullness that God intends for our lives, just as Adam and Eve were experiencing in the garden.
RELATIONSHIP, RELATIONSHIP, RELATIONSHIP
In Godâs economy, the move from falsehood to truth is key to understanding that while our physical location does matter, we also need to align our spiritual locator as well. It is vitally important to know that God understands location not so much as place as personhood. Itâs relationship, relationship, and relationshipâwhat we might call the where of God. Where we are in relation to God is the location of everything. Where are you in your relationship with God?
Two crucial Hebrew words dealing with where show up in the Old Testament: poh and hineni. Poh refers to a physical sense of hereâas in, we are here, in this particular place, weeping and waiting for justice. But what God wants to do is to take Godâs people to a different understanding of where they areânot to dismiss the location of suffering or the cries for justice, but to focus as well on the relationship of God with the people present in such a place. And so the word hineni shows up, meaning, âhere I am.â Where âI am hereâ is a statement of geographic location, âhere I amâ is a statement of availability for intimacy and relationship. In essence, God is saying, over and over, even in a place of sorrow and torment, âDo you understand that Iâm still with you? Iâm still located in that spot.â
Hereâs how that idea might show up in our lives: perhaps God is saying, âYou may be in a job right now that you absolutely hate, but do you know that Iâm still there, hineni, here I am?â Or maybe youâre in a relationship thatâs a real place of struggle and you donât want to be in a place like that anymore, but really, âhineniâhere I amâIâm in that place too, right alongside you.â The grand question of God is that location is where God is in relation to us at all times. In this way we are reminded that presence with God is a full commitment to the question of Godâs where. Are we located relationally with God in what we do and what we say? Do we ask our questions of God from a distance or from a place of closeness and vulnerability? Are you willing to get close and intimate when you ask these questions and to let God respond in the same way?
THE TETHERED SELF
The idea of getting close to God, or really to anyone at all, might be a dying art in the Western world. A thought experiment Iâve adapted from MIT psychologist Sherry Turkleâs article âAlways-On/Always-On-You: The Tethered Self â will help to illustrate this. Imagine that you step onto a crowded city bus only to find yourself wedged in a seat between two people youâve never seen before. Bodily, you may be in very close proximity to them, giving an initial sense of closeness. But as you pull your smartphone out to start texting and surfing, and as the strangers next to you do the same, a distance emerges between you and the people on either side. From this moment, youâve come to be thousands of miles away from either one of them psychologically and spiritually, just as theyâve become from you. Your elbow might be pressed against his ribs, and the scent of her shampoo might be wafting into your nostrils, but online, youâre texting a friend across town while one of your seatmates is doing a status update for his Instagram story, and the other is lobbing political grenades on a polarizing social media comment stream with an obscure relative in Denver.
The phenomenon of close-but-far is what Turkle calls the âtethered self,â as though our real self is tethered to the social media stratosphere and we are pulled away and distanced from those who are in close physical proximity to us at a given moment. Tethering goes beyond distraction; itâs as though weâre living in multiple locations at the same time and fully present in none of them, living fractured, fragmented lives in different places and pockets all at once. Iâm a fan of social media, and I find it connects people in wonderful ways we couldnât have fathomed even a generation ago. But when we become distant and removed from one another, when we canât actually be in the same space with another human and ask a deep and abiding question, then our true location is lost, and all thatâs left is a tethered fraction of the whole human person.1
ARE: TRUE IDENTITY IS A VERB THAT NEEDS FEEDING
This leads us to the second part of Godâs question: âWhere are you?â Are is a verb of being. Anything that is action requires fuel, and so this part of Godâs question itself raises additional questions around who and what it is that feeds our ultimate questions. What are you feeding on right now? What are you drawing your strength from to ask the questions that frame you into the person that God would have you to be? What sources are you drawing from in order to see God more fully? What situations in life are acting as catalysts to help you to understand your are a...