The Ambiguous God

By Martijn van Tilborgh

After 40 years of wandering through the wilderness, Moses encountered God at the burning bush. The last thing on his mind was ever to return to Egypt, a land associated with deep trauma that he finally managed to lock away. He had thrown away the key a long time ago!

Yet this supernatural encounter would cause him to face his demons and deliver his people from bondage. However, Moses was confused by this whole situation. He had two major questions that needed to be answered before he could embark on his mission: 

1. “Who am I?” (Exodus 3:11)
2. “Who are You?” (Exodus 3:13)

Moses was insecure about himself and his ability to get the job done. For starters, he wasn’t a great communicator. He hadn’t spoken much for the last four decades as he wandered through the wilderness herding sheep. Also, he wasn’t too excited about delivering “the word of the Lord” to the man who practically raised him, especially since his message wasn’t particularly encouraging. 

Though insecure, God assured him he was the right man for the job. He provided Moses with a practical solution for his speech impediment by assigning Aaron, his brother, as his “mouthpiece” and gave him several “tricks” to demonstrate his spiritual authority. 

The second question was more challenging to answer. Who are You? What’s Your name?

On the one hand, Moses couldn’t deny that the spiritual experience at that bush was real and transformational. Yet, at the same time, he was unsure about the identity of this god that was sending him on what appeared to be a suicide mission.

He wasn't confident in his ability to accurately articulate who it was that was sending him. 

It makes sense when you think about it!

Moses had grown up in environments that would have caused most of us to become spiritually schizophrenic at best.

For starters, he was raised by three different sets of parents and cultures who each worshiped different gods. 

First, there were his natural parents. However, he moved homes before he was old enough to understand who the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was. 

In Pharaoh’s house, many gods were worshiped. The most prominent one among them was Ra, the sun god. As a young man, Moses was indoctrinated with the idea that you really wanted to stay on Ra’s good side, or else. So, picking a fight with that guy to get his people out wasn’t a small ask. 

Through a series of unfortunate events, Moses ended up in the desert, where he met Jethro, the priest of Midian, who adopted him into his family. One could argue that Moses ended up “unequally yoked” by marrying the daughter of this strange religious character. I’m not exactly sure what a priest of Midian believes, but it doesn’t sound very “Christian.”

From the context of his upbringing, the question, “Who do I say sent me?” seemed a fair one to ask. Moses got to know quite a few gods over the years, which made him wonder which one he was talking to.  

Now, here’s what I'm getting at: The answer God gave Moses regarding His identity was astounding and profound.

God told him, “Tell them that I AM WHO I AM has sent you!” (Some translations say, “I’ll be who I’ll be.”)

Wow, it’s hard to come up with a more ambiguous answer than that, right? 

Really? I am who I am? That’s the best You’ve got? C’mon! You gotta give me more than that! 

When you read the complete account of Moses’ calling, you’ll discover that God didn’t fill in the blanks related to defining His identity. The answer remained ambiguous and impractical at best. 

He told Moses not to worry about the specifics regarding His identity too much. He would just “be who He would be” as Moses would embark on his assignment. 

The only tangible answer God gave Moses was that He assured him He was the same God of his father—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (see Exodus 3:6).

Well, at least he got that out of his burning bush experience. Rest assured, the God his ancestors had worshiped was the same God he just conversed with. 

But what did all this mean? “I am who I am”?  It’s kind of open-ended, isn’t it? 

In pondering these questions, here’s what I learned: 

1. We’re all on a journey.

Although God doesn’t change, our perception of who He is constantly changes. This is true for both us as individuals and humankind as a whole. Throughout history, God has continued to surprise humanity with what appears to be an ongoing process of progressive revelation about the truth and nature of His being. 

Consider this remarkable scripture from Exodus 6:3: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name Lord I was not known to them.”

Apparently, it is possible for God to be revealed in one aspect of who He is while another part of His identity remains hidden from that generation. In this case, God was known as the all-powerful one, yet by the name “Lord,” He wasn’t known to them. 

God Almighty defined precisely who God was to Abraham. 

He was the creator of all things. 

Everything belongs to Him. 

However, there was more about God that was hidden from him. Years later, some of the “more” was about to be revealed to Moses. 

By calling Himself Yahweh (“I am who I am”), God tried to explain to Moses that there was more to be discovered about Him, things hidden from previous generations. Instead of spelling out the “more,” Moses was invited on a journey of discovery that, over time, would reveal new things about God that were previously hidden. 

Scripture teaches us that God “declares the end from the beginning,” implying that we find ourselves in the middle of that same journey Moses was invited into. A process that pushes us forward into discovering more of who God is. 

2. God will not be defined.

Throughout history, many well-intended people have tried to define God. Even Scripture has been used repeatedly to attempt to decipher and define the anatomy of the Divine.

It makes me think of the following verses: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).

Instead of looking at Scripture as a means to define God, look at it as inspired text that points us in the right direction, like lamp posts light the way in which we should go—light and direction for a journey of discovery that generations past have started and that we now are privileged to continue. 

Don’t look at the Bible as the definitive word of God, but rather a word of God—a word that speaks of the unfolding story of the divine dance that God is involved in with creation. 

The Bible is too small. There is so much more. 

Please don’t take my word for it. The Bible teaches us that it only contains a sampling of who God is. The apostle John puts it this way in the last verse of his gospel: “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

Our world is too small even to begin to define all God is and what He has done, let alone what He will continue to do!

Who God is always falls outside our existing paradigms, thus creating that relationship of ambiguity.

3. God of the past. God of the present. God of the future. 

In Revelation 4:8, John speaks about “the God who was and is and is to come.” This could imply that the nature of God changes throughout time, that the God of the past is different from the God of the future. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Rather than God changing His mind constantly, we change our minds about who He is. 

The God who was. We can read the stories of how God interacted with the “heroes of old.” How He surprised humanity every time with a more extensive understanding of “who He was” through the lives of His people.

He showed Abraham, who was accustomed to a culture where “god” needed to be appeased through sacrifice, that he no longer needed to do this. This was a revolutionary revelation that changed the trajectory of humanity. 

He showed Moses a “moral framework” through the Ten Commandments that would revolutionize the culture of the day and would set Israel apart from all the other nations. He showed through the life of Jesus that what was true for the Jewish people was now also true for the whole world! 

The God who is. Who God was to the heroes of the Bible has become the foundation of who He is to us today. What surprised the early church in the book of Acts when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost has become the status quo of our belief system today. 

The challenge is not to embrace the God who was or even the God who is. The real challenge is to seek the God who is to come! The reality is that the God who is will become the God who was tomorrow. We need to understand that the journey continues.

The God who is to come. Like Moses, God invites us on a journey through which we get to be surprised by new aspects of “the ambiguous God,” who is who He is! 

A journey that will allow us to participate with Him in seeing His kingdom come on earth as it already is established in heaven. A kingdom that transforms all of creation through righteousness, peace and joy! 

Yes, God is everything we ever believed He was. Indeed, He is everything we believe He is. Yet, all that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of who He is to become!