We have to put labels on everything - a label such as a word. We all know, or at least those that have loved, the the label or word "love" does not really give you a good abstraction or realization of what love really and totally is. In fact, when asked to describe what love is, people often have difficulty. They may say, "Love is when you care for someone so much that..." and then go on to give you not an objective definition of the word but merely their own personal experience of "love". Other people reading the person's definition may even think, "That's not what I think love is!"
Love is just a word. Like God is just a word. Just like love is so much more mysterious and unfathomable than the label, God (and many other words too) share the same lack of enlightenment.
Interestingly, if you look at the words of God when he allegedly spoke to Moses on Mt. Sinai, God himself cannot put a single word or name on himself which is very curious. Read the below and in bold:
"Jahveh (Yahweh) is one of the archaic Hebrew nouns, such as Jacob, Joseph, Israel, etc. (cf. Ewald, "Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache", 7th ed., 1863, p. 664), derived from the third person imperfect in such a way as to attribute to a person or a thing the action of the quality expressed by the verb after the manner of a verbal adjective or a participle. Furst has collected most of these nouns, and calls the form forma participialis imperfectiva. As the Divine name is an imperfect form of the archaic Hebrew verb "to be", Jahveh means "He Who is", Whose characteristic note consists in being, or The Being simply."
If that conversation actually took place then whatever it was that spoke to Moses did not want to be named or maybe could not be named and simply chose to address Himself (or Itself) as "I am" - or as named: "The Being".
It gets even more complicated too. Just as the word "love" really doesn't do the reality of love justice, so it would appear that many words do not pay homage to the subjects they describe. And not just words either. Try to paint "love". Make an image of love. You could not do love justice by any image you could create. Similarly, "The Being" warned Moses about attempting to make images of Itself. Of all ancient deities, Yahweh is uniquely abstract. All other gods could be carved or painted as an image or idol. And the "Being" is also very insistent not only on his ineffability but also on his singularity and that any other god is a "false god". Most of us have heard, "Though shalt not make unto thee any graven image..." Ever wonder why this omnipotent being would say that? Why shouldn't people make an image of this being? The reason, in my opinion is there is nothing we can create, whether stone or paint or whatever, can be an image of this Being. You can't carve love out of a piece of wood and you can't create an image of what we call God out of anything that I can think of. To do so would be to base our image of God on our own human precepts. Wouldn't it be an insult or bring about a feeling of disgust if someone attempted to depict true love out of animal parts? How can you make an image of the "Being" (the "I Am") out of something like sticks or stone or paint?
Just a few thoughts on a Monday night. Nothing for debate. I enjoy contemplating these things. I've come to realize that to truly know God and the nature of God comes with the very harsh realization that God is ultimately unknowable. That is not to say that you cannot relate to God or that you cannot find yourself in God's friendship, just simply that we are not intelligent enough to understand the full scope of the Being that is God - not all that dissimilar to the way we can't truly understand love - only be aware of it's presence. Or the way we can't truly understand the true amount of a googleplex. We can see the word and we can even represent the number but we can't understand the size of it. It is simply an abstract concept.
LOL.... maybe this whole post is an abstract concept.
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