Why are we tested?

My BFF Cheryl and I were conversing after the service on Sunday about why God tests us and it really got me thinking, which led to a pile of books on my coffee table and Firefox tabs open to a obscene amount with maps and other bible-web paraphernalia and here is what I am in process with. We all to some extent are influence by a lack of diverse ideas in our lives and possibly at the church we attend. There are some ideas that have been reinforced so many times that we think they our own but they are not. What did I just say? Simply put, I am interested in challenging myself and maybe you by serendipity or maybe your response will be, "duh, I already knew that dumb, dumb." If you don't like what I propose, that is cool with me, we can still enjoy a nice "Cab" together as long at it is reasonably priced, but I digress. This may seem like four wheeling in Washington State with a rental Mazda 5 (I heard about someone doing that by accident once) but maybe we'll learn something.
Thirty Six verses in the O.T. use the Hebrew word H5254 - "nacah" translated:

prove 20 times, tempt 12 times, assay 2 times, adventure 1 times, try 1 time but that is not the only word used. Another word H974 - "bachan" is alternate word for testing and is translated: try 19 times, prove 7 times, examine 1 time, tempt 1 time and trial 1 time

I read all these words in their context and here is what I think I discovered; maybe test isn't the best idea for what God was doing to His people. One of my favorite web-tools is the Blue Letter Bible, it is a wealth of "Greek Lexicon this" and "Hebrew dictionary that" and it is very helpful,

The Gesenius's Lexicon says that the word "nacah" has the idea that you test something by smell. That's right, God smells us so....yeah. The second word "bachan" is a word used when you touch something or use a touchstone to test it's purity. For instance by using a touchstone you can discover the amount of gold or other precious metals that make up a rock. (Ps 26:2, 1Cor.3:12-14). So God proves us by feeling us out too. Both of these words are used for men "testing" God as well even though God tells man not to test him, He sometimes accepts the test and proves himself. i.e. Exodus 17 (Israelite's "test" God and even though they are told not to, God still shows up and provides water. Also, "where your fathers tested and tried me, though they had seen what I did. (Psalm 95:9 italics mine showing both words for test in the same sentence)

With so many choices what makes a translator translate a word the way they do? Context, theological upbringing, consultation with other translators (that usually have the same theological bent that they do) and prayer. I am not knocking the translators I just want to understand it for myself.

Before we talk about the actual passages lets consider the culture and time period where we are introduced to these words. To our modern ears testing gives a connotation of school with pass or fail notions. But these people were farmers and herdsman that only attended the school of "hard knocks." 8000 years ago, to "test" something they would smell it to see if it was ripe/ready or touch it to see what it was made of. i.e a touchstone was used to see how much Gold was in a rock. Another word that could be used that translators would accept is the word assay. According to dictionary to assay something is to assess or see what someone or something is made of. I think that is what God was doing, He was not testing them (pass/fail) He was seeing what they are made of so He could decide what they could handle next. My friend Nathan Bloom is really smart and he says God has a growth chart for all of us but some areas of growth can't begin until some other areas of growth are completed. He says in the project management field it is called the critical path. check this out:

The essential technique for using Critical Path Method ^[6] is to construct a model of the project that includes the following:

1. A list of all activities required to complete the project (typically categorized within a work breakdown structure),
2. The time (duration) that each activity will take to completion, and
3. The dependencies between the activities

This is fascinating. Abraham can't have Issac until he completes some check marks of faith (stop trying to create a baby your way and stop saying Sarah is your sister) and God is O.K. waiting for him to be ready or as KJV frames it "(long-suffering).

The Israelite's that enter the dessert after the Exodus get stuck there because they never complete their critical path and are left there while God waits till their kids are ready (Numbers 14).

Judges 3 says God "assayed" the children by leaving some of the minor enemies of Israel and he did this "² (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience)".

In every Bible verse that uses either of these words seem to emphatically promote that God is sometimes upset, sometimes bewildered, always long-suffering, always faithful, believing and hoping all things (1 Cor 13) but he is waiting to see something in us to move us on to the next step of our critical path and because we have free will he has to wait, he can't force us and he won't make us learn. (I know you are wandering, "but I thought God knew everything", apparently, to be in relationship with us, he appears willing to limit his foreknowledge. I know some are you a thinking, "I thought he only test us so we would learn something about ourselves not so he could learn something?" Maybe you right but what I was taught about hermeneutics and exegesis is that I am not suppose to read meaning into a passage if I can't find in a the Bible a clear statement of a theological belief in other words I can't find anywhere in N.T. or O.T. where God says, "when I test you it is so you learn something about yourself not so I learn something about yourself." No where not once. I can't explain it, I am just saying that is what it says. Maybe a later date I will tease that idea out more but until then I welcome open discussion on that matter. Nevertheless, I say all that to say this. God has plans to prosper you and not to harm you and His test are not about some kind of school grade it is like life coaching. When I Coach youth sports, I "try" and "test" each player at each position and then I make a Critical Path to help them develop and succeed in sports. Sometimes I hold them back from shooting, throwing, swing or kicking in certain situations so that they don't become discourage; meanwhile I am chearing on every success and lifting them up in the areas they still need growth. How much more your heavenly father would do the same for you.

Grace and Peace

The necessity for motion

When I think of my elementary years I don’t usually have very fond memories. I usually think about how much I moved, reminisce about the violent and crazy people I knew and how unstable my life was at that time and then I usually skip forward to when I was seventeen and accepted Jesus as lord and life leader. But recently, in a unguarded moment I found myself reflecting on how important it was for me back then that I was in constant motion. This lead me to think about my parents situation back then. My parents did not have the greatest upbringing either. Both of them had to overcome unbelievable obstacles that were stranger then fiction (their childhood's would make Stephen King have nightmares). So when they married they came together with all their baggage and passed on to their children (most of it seemed negative) but one thing was positive...motion. A pivotal moment in our family was when my dad was laid-off from his long standing job of 17 years in 1981 and we lost everything. Both of my parents educations didn't exceed the 8th grade so manual labor was the only opportunity provided them but they chose that instead of government assistance even when government assistance would have given us more. In the third grade, I remember having to get up at 4 A.M. to go with my dad to start the coke ovens at a company called PermaCoat plastics, driving a forklift around the plant for fun (once I knocked down a flight of stairs, oops), after the morning plant chores I was taken to school by another plant worker named Robert E. Lee (I kid you not), spending the day at school, then going to the Uniontown Polish club (yes, I learned to play pool and polka) where my dad bar tended all night, only to starting the process all over again the next day. My dad and mom both worked at the plant, my mom stripped incoming pipes and my dad did a little of everything else. My dad made $2.85 and hour at the plant and even less at the Polish club and to add insult to injury the factory wouldn't pay him sometimes for a month. Some weeks we had nothing to eat but canned corn and canned tomatoes heated up with powder milk to drink. We lived in the projects and other run down housing. Once, my parents bought a duplex for $10,000 but soon lost it to the bank because they couldn't afford it. Life was unbelievably hard but my parents never gave up motion. They fought, kicked, scraped, had nervous break downs, were depressed, got back up, separated, drank to much, got new jobs, moved, clawed, bit, climbed, fell, bled, cried, tried, failed, pulled their hair out, found Jesus, lost him, found him again, went to school, worked harder, found a Steele mill in New Jersey, retired, went back to school and stayed together. All the while staying in motion...riding momentum. I honor that. I think their lesson saved my life. I have been on the edge of depression and suicidal tendencies I have been addicted to lying and pornography and fighting and cheating and I dropped out of High School and tried to out do Paul for the "chief of sinners" title meanwhile, I found Jesus all the while following in my parents foot steps of motion, work (I have been gainfully employed since I was twelve) and falling forward. So there is this little verse in the bible that says, "But those who wait on the LORD
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint."

Isaiah 40:31

and earlier in the passage I am assured of my redemption and that God is holding all things together. It use to bother like it bothered Tom Petty, (yeah, the waiting IS the hardest part) cause I am no good at waiting it frightens me. When I am not in motion I feel like the darkness will catch up and swallow me but I think I am starting to understand it, waiting does not mean we a stagnant it means we don't try to form answers to questions that God has not clearly spoken about. In other words, we move forward while we live with questions. Why is this world so messed up? Why do I want to hurt myself? Why are there stillborn babies born? Why are my parents alcoholics? There are endless questions that start with why and they can cause us to freeze like deer on a dark road in the middle of the night which is for them the worst time to wonder, "why is it so bright over there to my left, that's weird (famous last words)?" the best thing for us to do is keep moving. Luke 18 has this great passage about this very thing, persistence and motion which epitomizes everything we love about the apostle Paul and other bible character's of faith.

Luke 18

The Parable of the Persistent Widow

¹Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. ²He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. ³And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'

⁴"For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, ⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "

⁶And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. ⁷And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? ⁸I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

Faith is not psychological certainty but persistence into a idea like "God is good all the time" and then in all my questions I will begin with the premise God is good which will fuel my motion forward and eventually answers or peace on this side of heaven. We are assured that our persistence will not fall on blind eyes or deaf ears in heaven. So keep on fellow travelers and may God bless your feet.