Let God Be Bigger Than Your View of Him
The older I get, the more convinced I am that most of us confound our emotions with the thoughts of God.
In other words, too often we ascribe to God what we feel, think, desire, or see, rather than letting him be the infinite being he actually is, far beyond our comprehension.
Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) said it long ago: "God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.”
So how do we keep our emotions from creating a God who looks suspiciously like us? We begin with Scripture rather than our impressions, hold our interpretations with humility, and pay closest attention to what God has made clear about Himself, especially in Jesus. Our feelings are real, but they are not large enough to contain an infinite God.
This Is Not Just a Modern Problem
Theological systems tend to reflect the age in which they were built. You can see it in medieval Catholicism, in Luther's reformation, in the legal framework running through Calvin, and all the way down to today.
The difference, as best I can tell, is who is doing the constructing. In earlier centuries it was the theological and/or deep thinkers. Today it is all of us. Everyone today carries a slightly different view of God, shaped by personality, experience, emotion, social relationships, and long-established patterns of thinking. And many aren’t thinking deeply or widely about it.
"In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Judges 21:25
Where there is no dominant theological voice or shared systematic view to follow, everyone ends up seeing God from his or her own vantage point.
An Infinite God and Our Finite Understanding
This is the unavoidable problem of an infinite God creating finite creatures. We will never fully understand him on this side of eternity. We simply can't.
Most of us are left with two options:
We can lean on others who have thought about God longer and more carefully than we have, or
We can settle for our own limited view, filtered as it is through our personality, our experiences, our emotions, our friends, and our thoughts.
Don't Try to Build a System Out of Him
So what do we do with this choice? It seems to me the answer is to focus on what Scripture actually says about God and then let it be. We must resist trying to make a system out of it. Don't force everything to fit together into a tidy, finite package that our brains can fathom. Because when we do, our own finiteness becomes the limiting factor in letting God be God.
It is like standing in front of a picture made of dots. A few of the pixels are clear. Most are not.
Maybe this is closer to what the deepest, most scripturally grounded thinkers see:
And here is what most of us actually see:
If That's True, What Follows?
1. We have to study Scripture to know God.
There is a progressive revelation running through Scripture, and in Jesus we see the fullness of God put on display in front of us. But the very fact that he took on the body of a man, setting aside the some of his divine attributes to do it, means that even there we are not seeing God in his entirety. Philippians 2:6-8 (NIV) describes Jesus Christ clearly when it says, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
2. We have to resist the temptation to make everything make sense.
Some things are meant to stand in tension. The freedom God has given us to choose sits alongside his complete knowledge and his sovereign purpose. His goodness beyond measure sits alongside the sinful things to be experienced by innocent people.
3. We can stand firmly on what is clear from the entire Scripture.
God created us and continues to pursue us. Every one of us falls short of his intended design and chooses not to follow him. In Christ we find God's ultimate redemption for our rebellion. And as we enter that relationship, our lives can increasingly reflect the presence and power of his Spirit. We can major on the pixels we can actually see. In the second image there is a bright spot revealing the sun and its reflection on the water. That much is unmistakable.
4. We would be less dogmatic and more gracious.
We would hold our judgments of other people more loosely, because we may not be seeing all of God's providence in their lives or in our world. We would be less dogmatic of our own interpretations and far more gracious to listen to others with whom we disagree. I am content to let God do the judging, in and through eternity.
5. We would live with hope.
Hope that we will spend eternity with the God of Scripture, and that then all of it will be clear. In the meantime, we love God with everything in us, love others the same way, and love ourselves, whom God created in and through Christ.
Faith, Hope and Love When We See Only Part of the Picture
I am not arguing that we cannot know God. Scripture is clear about the things that matter most, and I have staked my life on those things. John (the disciple who was with Jesus) is pretty clear about this when he writes in 1 John 5:11-13 (NIV)… And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
What I am suggesting is that we should stop treating our particular arrangement of the pixels as if it were the whole picture.
As I stated at the beginning, the older I get I am less interested I am in painting God as on my side by suggesting he thinks, feels or acts like I do. I am now more interested in the three things Paul said would outlast everything else. Faith that God is who He says He is. Hope that one day I will see Him clearly and understand things perfectly. And Love of God and the people around me who are looking at a different set of pixels than I am.
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 NIV
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