Preferring to understand the big picture, I embarked on a mission to comprehend God, vainly hoping the more I understood him and his nature and his essence, the better I could follow. Easier for an ant to assess Einstein. Unable to grasp the core of God in the vast distance between our natures, I drifted—until I gave up on the attempt.
One truth came clear from this—God is alien to us, yet not at all in a negative way. Many of us perceive God as much like us humans, but just bigger. But God far transcends humanity, in a manner we can’t fully grasp. “But” signals an antithesis…an opposing idea. But God stands in contrast to our natural understanding of him. Some examples.
First, God did create us in his image, but we’ve allowed sin to stain and distort much of that. But God’s image, his nature, remains free of that damage, and the difference is vast. Our very natures diverge—humans are limited by our finiteness, in so many dimensions, by our sin. Therefore, we struggle to grasp the infiniteness of God. The ant and Einstein, once more. Just expect this.
Second, we live in a culture with values typically antithetical to God, and those values impact both followers of Jesus and his body, the church. Thinking we know best, we choose our values, right and wrong. But God knows best how we best live. A good friend, David Timms, and I wrote a book exploring that, Just Leave God Out of It, that you might want to read if you doubt how we think we know better than He.
A previous pastor, Doug Posey, focused on a line in Ephesians: “But God…” (2:4, mostly). I came home today and opened my Online Study Bible, searching for “But God,” and found 549 times those words came up. With “But Jesus,” we can add another 157. These suggest that God acts in contrast to we humans.
The significance? Simply, very often, God’s nature and values and relationships stand apart from our nature and values and relationships. So, if we want to know him fully, we’ll benefit from an awareness of those differences, and a strategy that realizes his ways transcend ours. Keith Miller, author of the classic A Taste of New Wine, once said life has two truths: “God is real, and you’re not him.”
Kick Starting the Application
What is your conception of God? How much is based on him being an expanded human? What aspects of God most puzzle you? Why? What aspects most comfort you? Why? In specific ways, how does your view of him drive your relationship with him?
PS I strongly encourage you to embark upon an education of who God is, according to his Word. Don’t get into the fruitless attempt I did, but focus on how he’s revealed himself to us. Several books can aid this journey, Knowing God by J.I. Packer, and my own, A Passionate Pursuit of God. Both of mine are out of print, but are available on Amazon. I also have some new copies, just let me know.