"Reclaiming YHWH"

A few weeks ago one of my professors, Mary Hess, posted a link to this piece on her blog, Tensegrities. "Reclaiming YHWH" talks about the ancient Jewish concept of YHWH (God) in comparison to the ancient Greek concept of Zeus.

The author, Ellie Roscher, argues that the early church's understanding of God was deeply influenced by the Greek view of Zeus, and therefore many of YHWH's characteristics were obscured or lost to Christians.

Here's an excerpt:

YHWH is humble, self-emptying, abundant love. Zeus is a self-contained, muscular, sexual, manipulative, controlling male. YHWH is relation with, Zeus is domination over. Zeus deals with creation like an appendage, YHWH is deeply in, with and through all of Creation. Our Church today is worshipping a very Greek influenced God. Zeus is winning....If we don’t start making the vulnerable, relational YHWH God accessible, we are going to keep losing young people.

Very provocative thoughts that I think have some merit. I encourage you to read the rest of the post for more on how and why this distinction impacts young people.