Trust in God Trumps Understanding, Lent Part 4

Spirituality Column #229
March 29, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Lenten Series 2011: Just Not That into God, Part 4
Trust in God Trumps Understanding
By Bob Walters

Some people are just not that into God because He’s too big to fully understand.

He’s infinite, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent … and we’re not.

We seek the truth, chase the good, and pursue righteousness. God actually is all those things. He’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The “good” is all that resides in and with Him. His righteousness is the final answer.

In our humanness, we require an intellectual middle ground for discussion, rationale and knowledge. We crave to learn but we need context. We strive to form an opinion, find the logic, or settle an issue. God is different. Way different.

“My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God tells mankind plainly in Isaiah 55:8. God is so big He hides from knowledge as we define it. “God,” theologian Joseph Bottum notices, “reveals himself only to faith.”

As people we have a contradictory mix of good and bad in us. Our human truths have limits and conflicts. We debate righteousness. We divide our loyalties on a sliding scale of convenience between human concerns and divine providence.

On truth, good and righteousness, God is everything, but He’s not a mix of anything. He’s an absolute, not a sliding scale. We want logical answers, and God wants obedient faith. When we trust with faith, God makes sense. When we trust with logic, we trip over syllogisms.
For example: If God is everything, and evil exists, then God is evil. Blame God.

Wrong answer. Try it again with discernment and faith.

When we encounter evil – and evil assuredly exists – it is because something is in disharmony with the perfection of God. The starting point is: God is good and created a perfect world. Since the sin of Adam, “… the whole creation has been groaning,” we read in Romans 8:21-23. We’re in “bondage to decay.”

Examples are everywhere: an earthquake in Japan, a ruthless dictator in Libya, my friend’s baby granddaughter diagnosed with cancer. Our faith must surpass all understanding, trusting God to shoulder every tragedy borne of a fallen world, earthly sin or human mortality, and ultimately make the world right.

Make the world right. That was the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Trust in that, and God starts to makes sense. His ultimate, eternal compassion isn’t about the greatness of our understanding; it is about the greatness of God’s faithfulness.

Now that’s big.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) predicts that if we understood God, we’d want a bigger God we didn’t understand.

Blessings

And In This Corner...

Spirituality Column #145
August 18, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

And In This Corner …
By Bob Walters

Let’s say life is a boxing ring.

If you think God is in the other corner, I’m here to tell you that is never the case.

Satan is the opponent we battle; God is always in our corner.

When the worst of the worst things happen in our lives – loss of a loved one, death of a child, encountering incalculable injustice, tyranny, suffering, or disaster – why do we blame God instead of Satan?

“How could God let this happen?” we ask, we demand, we plea.

But the enemy is never God. The enemy is always Satan.

Perhaps we blame God because deep in the soul of every human heart we know God, know He authors faith, hope and love, and want to trust His merciful perfection. We also know Satan, know he stands for merciless evil, temptation and death, and yet somehow overlook Satan’s authorship of imperfection.

In an oxymoronic but consistent human switch, we blame our miseries on God instead of Satan.

What our hearts tell us about God is true – He is merciful, perfect, and He knows us. Yet much about God baffles humanity; His thoughts and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8). We want to understand Him, but too often can’t.

The deeper I go in my Christian faith, the more I understand that God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is always my advocate for righteousness.

The Bible tells me so (1 Samuel 26:23, Romans 4:24).

I think it’s a mistake to look at the Bible primarily as a history book, a rule book, or a science book. When we do that, we get lost in literalism and lose scripture’s central point, which is that the Bible is a relationship book … the comprehensive story of and operating manual for mankind’s relationship with God and God’s Creation.

That relationship, in Christ, is centered on God’s righteousness and His will for our salvation, period. God created a perfect world (Genesis 1 and 2), and we’ll end with a perfect world (Revelation 21-22). For now, though, we reside in a fallen world.

God is our strength and refuge in time of trouble or distress (Psalm 46:1, 59:16, Jeremiah 16:19), while Satan delights in destroying God’s perfection.

We ask God to take away our pain, because we know Satan won’t.

Good heavens, if you are going to blame somebody, blame Satan.

He’s in the other corner.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows that a good corner-man in boxing will always tell you the truth, no matter how much it hurts.