The Great I Am

“Abraham Casting Out Hagar and Ishmael” by Guercino (1591–1666) . Wikipedia.

It happens sooner or later. In this case, later. After finding a church where I feel at least to some degree at home and grow to love the Christian ritual, the candles, the flowers, the incense, the heavenly music, the singing of old hymns I sort of know, the reciting of old prayers, the same, I hit an obstruction.

Usually it’s something from the Old Testament, which has been causing problems for would-be believers for hundreds and hundreds of years. Revised over and over, explained to make it palatable to moderns, it still contains sentences on which I choke.

Sunday it was “The Great I Am.”

It came up repeatedly in a hymn following the hard-to-swallow chapter in Genesis when Abraham, 99 years old, is visited by God and told he will be the father of nations. His wife, Sarah, presumably about the same age, who has never conceived, will at this late date produce a son who will father those nations. I’ve always loved the version where Sarah, overhearing in her tent (she would not have been allowed in the presence of the Almighty) laughs, observing that both she and Abraham are beyond the age of sexual pleasure. Neither God nor Abraham have mentioned pleasure as a part of the act.

But of course that’s no problem; Abraham manages to do his duty and Sarah conceives and has a son. And so on and so on into eternity.

Now, to the “Great I Am” in the hymn that seems to mirror the current obsession with forcing us to have babies.

Anyone who has raised boys, as I have, will have endured a time when the three- or four-year-old becomes “The Great I Am.” We try as best we can to both endure and civilize the being who knows nothing but his own will. (Girls may go through the same phase, I don’t know, but if so there would be no question of acceptance by the culture that still insists that all girls are sweet and pretty, thus the pink.)

I remember how hard I worked to bring some moderation to the screaming, crying, foot stamping, adamant refusal, head butting and so forth. But surely these are exactly the qualities the hymn extols in The Great I Am.

And even in the midst of trying to moderate this behavior, I harbored a secret admiration for the single-minded determination the little boy showed to rule his world. And yet it is this same determination that destroys the world with wars and makes women’s lives difficult to the point of desperation.

So now I’m caught in a quandary. Although I may never again hear or read this detestable phrase, I will know it is lurking in the background, pressing me to my knees, bowing my head over my clasped hands as I recite the commandments.

I did find a thread of hope in the lecture that preceded the service yesterday. Our associate priest, who is a woman, was laboring to explain how we humans are made in the image of God, a difficult aim to achieve since many of us still associate that image with a bearded old white man. But then she began to list, on a computer screen, the attributes ascribed to that image:

“Gentle, forgiving, self-controlled, merciful, obedient, gracious, healing….”

Most of us would say those attributes are stereotypically feminine, and, in terms of what is helpful to this troubled world, of more use than the masculine traits also ascribed to God: “strong, authoritative, dominant”—although here reinterpreted as “being in conjunction with.”

I wonder if these rigid classifications have burrowed so deep into our culture that young people who have never heard them are fleeing in the thousands the gender roles defined in the same way.

I’ll go back to the church for the music, the flowers and so forth—and also because it is so pleasant to be in the company of good people, who pack supply bags for the homeless and volunteer to cook and serve at the shelters.

But I’ll always know that The Great I Am is lurking somewhere.

In Religion