July 2005

The un-boxing of God

It is humbling to me the longer I live the more I understand how little I know about everything I thought I knew something about. Do you ever feel this way? I believe the same is true as well in the understanding of God. Actually, I believe it is true a hundred times fold or more. We can understand accounting, basket weaving or potato guns eventually, but fathoming the Maker of heaven and earth: That’s not going to happen. Not even a little bit.

As humans we seem irresistibility drawn to ordering things and boxing them up for our clarification and understanding. Many times mystery equals doubt or at least uncomfortable chaos. In seeking after God and righteousness we think it nice for our sense of control to have everything so easy to understand once packaged neatly for our comprehension. God 101. It may be nice packaging, but it’s a complete farce. The trouble is God’s mystery is most of what is His make up and it is not package-friendly. There is no possible boxing system real or imagined that will work. (Ever).

I am reminded of my daughter the other day trying on her father’s shoes. It was so endearing to see her walk around thinking she didn’t look utterly ridiculous. To her nothing was wrong with clomping around in shoes 14 inches longer than her chubby little feet. She was all at once very silly and very lovable to me. I think that must be how God sees us as we make up our guesses about Him.

I have no impressive degrees or coveted theological training, but God is Almighty and imparts His godly wisdom to all who have His Spirit of Truth within them. For me it is only just a glimpse once in a while, but He has shown me this: He is very big. As big as I can think of Him is not big enough.

Oh, how we strive to understand that which is mysterious and often fail to understand and abide in what He has made so simple. That is this: God has made a way to peace, and peace with Him when we accept His own sacrifice in human form as payment for the darkness and waywardness of our hearts.

We make many efforts to decipher Him, to understand His mind. We try to walk around in His shoes as if they fit us just fine. Take the dimension of time for instance: We are ordered by time. We live on a timeline. We only see things in that particular paradigm. We even tend to imagine eternity as a long “time”, rather than the total absence of it. But how else can we think when we have never experienced anything but living in this created dimension? Even in that small way we fail to understand God or the deep level of His mystery.

Einstein proved that the dimension of time is not only an illusion but it is even susceptible to being warped by matter with respect to gravity. Planets circle the sun rather then crash into it because the space around the sun warps time. And still we sit around trying to figure out God in our sweet, little time bubble bound by the terms: first, middle and last. Do you hear the clomp, clomp, clomp in His really big shoes that have no business being on our chubby little feet? Don’t our perceptions seem hopelessly human? Hopelessly earthly? If reverence, worship and awe replaced all our many preconceptions and wasted deliberations how much more pleasing would be to our Savior?

Take as well this church splitting topic: Free Will vs. Pre-destination. Uh oh, look out! The theological debate rages on. How cute. How silly. Here we are trying to understand something we have no way to know about as humans captured within time. Bear with me for a minute more.

First of all- Free Will: {We make up our own minds.} How cute. How do we genuinely reconcile that God is Almighty and Sovereign and yet we are certainly not mere robot toys on God’s autopilot? What a vast mystery. We’d sure like to think we have choice, right? But we also know God is in control. How do the two concepts merge? Can this be put into a diagram, or a package to unveil the ambiguity? We ought to not be so foolish.

Who can know the workings of His mind and His created world let alone His chosen creation, humankind? It is a circular consideration to explore for too long what manner God gives or does not give us choices. The Scriptures say none are drawn to Him without His prodding, none escape His dominion yet we are asked to receive him. The mystery it not settled by conjecture because it a rife with contradictions and puzzles. Understanding His manner of Will in this world and in us is like grasping the wind.

Second of all- Pre-destination: {Our path is pre-planned.} How silly. Pre, Present and Post exist only to us, only to the earth-bound. Time is a created illusion as mentioned earlier. As the speed of light is intertwined with time, His first words, “Let there be light” may have been the creation of time itself. The light from the sun, moon and stars were as we know not created until day four of the creation story in Genesis. There is no “pre” with God. He declares to Moses He is “I am”. It leaves no doubt all time is in the present to Him. There are no bygone days. He does not hope for the future. We do. He was never a boy. He will never grow old. He will never die. “I am” means just that. How profound. What mystery. We must be comfortable with mystery and just as much be comfortable with His love and Sovereignty.

Because God is, Jesus’ sanctifying work on the cross covers us (from our perspective,) before our time, during our time and after our time. From his perspective it is finished work and always was. But of course there is no “was” to Him. See, it does get tricky. His work is once and for all times. For Him, it is. Pre-destination was epistle semantic contrivance used to show God’s omnipotence not to promote a dogma code to squeeze God into an illusion He himself created. How foolish to think He is so small.

I don’t know much, but I know that we all box God up in a pleasant little mental package and fail to see Him for who He is. We make God an idol of our own divining. If we can imagine Him 1,000 times more loving, powerful and unfathomable than we presently do, that is progress. Yet, we are still so far off the mark to understanding Him as to be ridiculous. Let our grace abound to all, my friends. We are so foolish. God is “un-boxable” in all respects. Our minds cannot capture Him or understand His love for us, yet He and His love are both finite for us individually and infinite and changeable for all times.

I pray you and I will un-box the God we made in our minds, take off the big shoes and go about the work of loving Him and others.

Lisa DeLay

©2005

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