How many people across the Western world have convinced themselves that the God of the Bible can’t be the real God, because they’re sure that the real God would do things differently?
The Biblical God is “too narrow-minded”, they say. He’s too “exclusive”. He’s “judgmental”, “divisive”, and far too “simple” for our modern tastes. Most recently, God is said to be too “masculine”.
This way of thinking attempts to re-make God in our image-a task as impossible as re-making the universe. A re-made God isn’t really God at all: he’s our servant, our waiter, our employee, our lacky, our maid. If there is a God at all, then God, who has to be far above us in intellect and wisdom and power, has his (or her) own mind, which is independent of our wishes and our idea of what God should be like.
We would all like our lover or our spouse to be different-to be more sensitive to our feelings and our desires; to be more attractive; to be more intelligent or more affluent. But he or she isn’t what we would wish him to be, or what we imagine him to be. If God does not have his own mind, he isn’t God at all. Therefore, God will not always-if ever-do things our way, and will not always think what we think.
The Biblical God most definitely has HIs own mind. That fact is made clear on every single page, where you will find that His will, his judgment and His plans are often in total opposition to those of human nature. Were He human-like in his ways, He would be no better than a Joe Biden, or a Vladimir Putin, or a Hillary Clinton, or a Kim-Jong-Un: fallen, flawed, mistaken, self-serving and untrustworthy. How could such a God ever have created or sustained anything worthwhile?
Scripture declares openly how differently our Creator thinks:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Moreover, Scripture tells us that our God intentionally does things to put a wrench or spanner into the works of prideful human reasoning:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Prideful, arrogant humanity says that it can think up something better than the Biblical God. Well, you can “think up” a better lover or spouse, or a better president, but open your eyes, and you’ll find that the one standing in front of you, or slouching on the couch pushing more food into his or her face-the real one-isn’t the one you imagined at all. This is a tough lesson for people in our post-modern culture, but learn it we all must, and usually the hard way. Reality is most often quite different than our imagination.
We as humans with the gift of free will can choose to dislike God if we like. We can choose to reject His way of doing things, His judgments and His ideas of right and wrong. But in so doing we are rejecting reality. We’re rejecting what’s good for us, because that’s God’s intention in the way He tells us to live. We are in so doing rejecting the one path to freedom, to contentment and peace, and to Life.
The God of the Bible requires us to “repent”. When we repent-His way- we turn our backs on our old, fallen way of thinking, and we embrace His way of thinking, as outlined in the pages of Scripture. We turn to His son-His only son, Jesus Christ, and we seek to please Him in the way we live. In so doing, we are openly admitting that our ways are wrong, and His ways are right, and good in every way.
Fuel for Faith 