The God Box

It is my sneaking suspicion that many of us have shortchanged God. It's an easy, essentially human thing to do. We begin to think that, since we were made in His image, He must be like us. God had to warn people off that notion more than once. He used Balaam the prophet to tell Balak, "God is not a man" (Num. 23:19). He used the prophet Samuel to tell King Saul the very same thing (1 Sam. 15:29). He tells the wicked, "You thought that I was just like you" (Psa. 50:21). It's an easy mistake, underestimating God. And my second suspicion is that this is a dangerous mistake. If idolatry is defined as "worshiping a false image of God", and our mental image of Him is a false one, are we committing idolatry? And it doesn't take a Bible scholar to figure out what God thinks of that particular sin.

The big item that occurs to me in this is the general perception that God is a "nice God". We tend to think that God's highest concern is our happiness and wholeness. We think that God doesn't do "mean" things, things that we would classify as harsh, painful, unpleasant. We put God in this "nice" box ... and then find that it is a contradiction of God's Word. He's not there.

When the evil of 9/11 occurred, Christians rose up to defend God. It was actually stated by prominent Christians, "God is a gentleman; He does not interfere." And we all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that God would never allow such a thing. It's evil Man's fault. That we can deal with. It's sin in the world, not some plan of God. So when a Hurricane Katrina strikes with devastation, not evil, they step in again. Now, your insurance policy calls such things "acts of God", but well-meaning Christians assure us that God didn't have anything to do with that either. No, no, it's just nature, not God.

Apparently no one bothered to ask God. He doesn't seem to mind at all taking credit for such a thing. He tells Israel, "I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me; that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these" (Isa. 45:5-7). Well-meaning Christians declare, "Natural disasters are just that -- natural" and God taps them on the shoulder and says, "No, I did that." And we've misjudged God. Well-meaning Christians point to the fallen towers and say, "God is a gentleman", but the Bible says, "The LORD has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil" (Prov. 16:4). Paul claims that God "works all things after the counsel of His will" (Eph. 1:11). And while we would agree that God doesn't cause evil, God is quick to caution us that He can use it if it accompllishes that which suits His will. "Oh," we say, "but surely God only wants us to be happy and comfortable." The idea doesn't play in reality or in Scripture. Instead we are told, "For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives" (Heb. 12:6). It's hard to fit that into our pleasant little "nice God" box.

There are things we know, and things we infer. We know that God is good, but we infer that this means that He does only "nice" things. God's idea of "good" is far more expansive than ours can be. What is "good" to God is not our normal thinking, and how God achieves it is not our normal thinking. As a result, we stand on the verge of being idolaters worshiping a false god that we think is the God of the Bible but is actually only a god of our incorrect inferences. We need to let God out of that box, to allow Him to be God. Instead of conforming Him to our image, we need to conform our thinking to His image. I suspect that when we do, we will find a God far greater than anything we had imagined.