In Isaiah the prophet records words from YHWH to Babylon (Isa 14). In that text, God speaks also to Satan. "You said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High'" (Isa 14:13-14). Words of Satan's rebellion, but, in fact, to the standard human's rebellion as well. "I will make myself like the Most High." Or, if you will, "I will be God." It is interesting, then, that, as God made us in His image, we tend to make God into our image.
In our arrogance, we assume that we know what's best, what's wisest, what's good. So we build up this jittery tower of values and tell God, "You will need to conform to these. If You do not, we will remove You." And God finds Himself stuck. He can do what's best and wisest and right, or He can go lesser, even sinful, in order to please His creation. Not really a dilemma at all, of course, because pleasing His creation is not His purpose. Doing what is best is. So we say, "If God is like that, we want nothing to do with Him." And "that" is always something that God reveals about Himself. Scripture tells us, for instance, that good and bad come from YHWH (Lam 3:38). "Oh, no," we declare, "if God gives us bad, we don't want that God." God Himself declares, "I am YHWH, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things" (Isa 45:6-7). "Well, now, hang on," we fire back, "'light' and 'well-being' are okay with us, but that 'darkness' and 'calamity' has to go." John wrote, "Isaiah said, 'He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them'" (John 12:39-40). "John, come on," we will answer back, "it is not possible that God would blind their eyes and harden their hearts. That's not what a good God would do."
God, according to God, is not like us (Psa 50:21). He is Spirit (John 4:24). He is holy, holy, holy (Isa 6:3; Rev 4:8). He defines love (1 John 4:16) and defines good (Psa 145:9). He is the Lord of lords and completely Sovereign (1 Tim 6:15). Not like us. So He will harden whom He hardens and show mercy to whom He shows mercy (Rom 9:18) and we have no right to answer back (Isa 29:16; Rom 9:20-21). Let us -- those who seek to love God and follow Christ -- not be guilty of trying to shove God into a human-shaped box. He isn't human. Instead, let's let God be God. He's much better at it than we are.
3 comments:
We have such difficulty with trying to understand the incomprehensible that we have a tendency to try to minimize Him to make Him more palatable and understandable. I thank God that He has prevented me from shrinking from His grandness.
I think that this circles back to Lewis' words about people who end up in hell do so because they want to be separated from God. Scripture tells us time and time again that the created want to usurp the role of the Creator. It's nothing new. It's so much easier to deal with a god that we can define according to our standards, and to believe that we are the most important. As has been said many times before it's all about "Did God really say..." and pride.
“...[A]s God made us in His image, we tend to make God into our image”--such an idolatrous and foolish tendency of ours. Indeed, if God could be contained in “a human-shaped box”--almost as if He were our pet!--He would be subservient to me, rather than the Lord of all that He is. (The picture of an eagle with its wings clipped and confined to a zoo enclosure or a tiger in a cage comes to my mind. While we humans might rule over the animal kingdom, not so with the Creator of it all!)
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