Going around in a circle on our journey to God

Going around in a circle on our journey to God
By Bobby Neal Winters
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by
There's a better home a-waiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky
--Charles Gabriel
There are some people who say that the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament are different Gods, but it just ain’t so.  Having said that, I will say that I’ve never seen anyone who believed they are different change their minds, so I am not going to try.  Go on believing whatever you want to.
Man is on a journey.  From the Biblical account it starts in the Garden of Eden, and if you go all the way to the Revelation of St. John, it ends in a city, the New Jerusalem. 
I say the Garden of Eden and the New Jerusalem are the same place when looked at from the correct perspective: The Presence of God.
Adam and Eve were very childlike in the Garden.  They enjoyed an easy intimacy with God.  Have you noticed that little children aren’t respecters of persons?  They will throw up on the King of Spain with as much ease as they throw up on old Aunt Alice. 
This is the sort of relationship Man had with God in the Garden. And God, the supposedly mean, vicious, hateful God of the Old Testament dealt with them as one does with small children.  He threatened their very lives to keep them from breaking a rule.  When Adam and Eve broke the rules and were ashamed of their nakedness, he didn’t kill them.  He made them better clothes.  It was a teachable moment and He took advantage of it.
And he gave them a start on their journey.
Yes, there are places on the journey where God seems to be cruel, but we need to remember that the Bible was written by Man.  It documents this journey, this struggle with God from Man’s side.  The cruelty was Man looking in a mirror seeing himself and not window onto God.
If you read it, struggle with it, persist with it, you will see Man’s understanding of God sharpen, come into focus.  It is much like how we increase our understanding of our parents as we grow up ourselves.
There is this poem, this meme, whatever called “Footprints in the sand.”  There were two sets of footprints, one belonging to the poet and the other to God.  The poet remarks that during one period of his life there was only one set, so where were you God.  The poet has God reply, “I was carrying you.”  Okay, God might very well have replied, “I was letting you learn to walk by yourself.” (Yes, I have read Butt-prints in the Sand.  Google it.)
So when Man was young in his journey with God, he understood him as a child, so presumably when we close the circle we will understand God more like we understand our parents when we grow up. We will put away childish things.
We absolutely cannot separate the New Testament God from that of the Old.  When the writers of the New Testament referred to the scriptures, they were referring to the Old Testament:  The Books of the Law, the Books of the Prophets, and the Books of the Writings.  Those writings draw a map which the authors of the New Testament believed to be completed in Jesus.  They present Jesus as a New Adam, a new beginning for Man.
It is a journey, a circular journey.  At the end we find the God we left behind, but by virtue of the journey, we will understand his perfect love because we will have learned it ourselves.
Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. )