Perhaps the reason Scripture includes so much poetry in and outside the narrative, so many parables and stories, so many visions and emotional letters, is because it is attempting to describe a relational break man tragically experienced with God and a disturbed relational history man has had since then and, furthermore, a relational dynamic man must embrace in order to have relational intimacy with God once again, thus healing himslef of all the crap he gets into while looking for a relationship that makes him feel whole.
Maybe the gospel of Jesus, in other words, is all about our relationship with Jesus rather than about ideas. And perhaps our lists and formulas and bullet points are nice in the sense that they help us memorize different truths, but harmful in the sense that they blind us to the necessary relationship that must begin between ourselves and God for us to become His followers. And worse, perhaps our formulas and bullet points and steps steal the sincerity with which we might engage God.
- Donald Miller in Searching For God Knows What
Brad,
It is obvious that in describing a relationship one has to resort to more than so and so is a friend of so and so or married to so and so. How boring would that be?
Also the reason Scripture is not proposition-driven is because God is beyond ordinary human speech and that means beyond human reality. If he were subject to human speech only, Christianity may crumble under the weight of the accusation that it is Made on Earth rather than in heaven. The Word of God is the Revealer of God in human flesh appearing. The reason that following God cannot be bulleted is because it requires Holy Spirit given imagination: Dig the roof, walk on water, eat this book.
The ways prophets and friends of God speak of him is by the use of metaphors such as father, king, ruler, shepherd, atonement, justification, ransom, lamb, redeemer, etc…