An Unchanging God?

"You are eternal, unchanging" go the words to one of my favorite modern Gospel tunes. I've been thinking a lot about that recently. Is God really unchanging? I don't think so. In the Hebrew Scriptures it seems like God is constantly making new decisions – that is, changing. He punishes Israel for its sins, then relents. And what is a miracle but God changing the natural order of things? Or at least giving us a new understanding of possibilities, that is, changing us.

God is constantly changing my understanding of who God is. This is the process of revelation. Would any of us get a new understanding of who God is if God were unchanging? Or is the possibility of new understanding built into creation from the beginning? Maybe God is unchanging because it is part of nature for us to change our understanding of God. This is the question of predestination. I believe we do have choices, that our fates are not predestined, and that there is the possibility that the events of our lives show us things about God. If different things had happened to me, I would have a different understanding of God.

Today's Gospel lesson (Mathew. 15:22 - 28) involves Christ changing his mind, even his understanding of what the reign of God involves. A foreigner, a Canaanite woman, disturbs him with a request that he cure her daughter. At first he refuses, even calling her a dog. But she persists, saying that even dogs get to eat the crumbs from the master's table. Jesus, amazed at her faith, grants her prayer. This is a sign that Jesus now sees the reign of God as including those at the margin, the foreign Canaanites.

Jesus learned from his experience with the woman. An unchanging God would never learn anything.

Now to my previous post. Did God make me less than a "real man"? As a queer am I less than a real man? Or, having grown up when I did (in the sixties), is my understanding of "real man" too narrow, too defined by the Marlboro man and 007? Is being a man more than anatomy?