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Throughout history, people have been creating their own gods. They’re often humanoid, although animals and spirits have been popular as well. Whatever form they take, these gods are always easy to understand. Their thoughts and behaviors are very similar to ours, from being kind and parent-like to being fickle or even vengeful. In a way, false gods are almost always just elevated versions of us – they are what we’d be like if we had immense power.
Who is like You among the gods, O LORD? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, Awesome in praises, working wonders? (Exodus 15:11)
Then there’s Yahweh, the one true God of the universe. He is so unlike anything else in creation. He is love and wrath. Mercy and judgment. All-powerful, yet uses flawed humans to accomplish many of His purposes. Can He be understood as easily as the false gods people create? And if we can’t understand Him, can we still trust Him?
Making a false god out of God
First, let’s talk about those false gods named God and Jesus Christ. If you’ve been around religious people outside your own circle of Christianity, you’ve likely run in to them. When people talk about believing in God or Jesus Christ, it becomes very important to halt the conversation and ask who, exactly, these people are talking about.
People have many ideas about who God and Christ are. Some understandings of them are simply flawed, which is a problem many of us likely have. Yet others have such a deep misunderstanding of who they are that they become unrecognizable from how they show themselves in the Bible.
Whether it’s a small cult or a global offshoot of Christianity, the world is full of people who talk about God, perhaps even worship Him, yet the “God” and “Jesus Christ” they worship are no more real than the Greek or Hindu gods.
The list of how this is done is extensive, but here are a few ways that God, Christ, and even the Holy Spirit are so warped that they become incapable of offering salvation:
- I’ve covered this at great length in my multi-part series on Muslims, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses
- The Prosperity Gospel turns the God of the universe into a cosmic vending machine while Jesus Christ becomes our ticket to getting everything we want
- Many churches like to focus on nothing but the wrath of God, completely ignoring His grace and mercy to the point that salvation is about works
- Some find the Holy Spirit a bit weird and diminish Him down to an impersonal “power of God,” almost indistinguishable from something like the force in Star Wars
- Many historical heresies center around making Christ more easily understood, whether it’s Him being a separate being from God, an angel, or a spirit who appeared to be human
- Many pictures used to explain the Trinity (water, a father/son/grandson, 3-in-1 shampoo, etc) accidentally diminish the glory and majesty of God
The list could go on, but one thing is consistent: God is reduced because it makes Him easier for us to deal with.
Building a comfortable god
Why do this? Why spend a lifetime worshiping a God that, in the best scenario, gives a lesser form of satisfaction? Why worship a being who could be so warped that he can’t even offer salvation?
In the end, there’s little that separates us from those historical people who create gods out of statues. In our sinful and prideful hearts, what we really want is a god we can understand. We want someone who is just like us, but… a bit more capable of giving us what we want than we are. We want the comfort of worshipping something we can fully understand, and perhaps something we can more easily control.
In the end, we want a god that serves us, not one that we sacrifice our personal desires to serve.
It’s this innate desire that makes it so critical that we know how to read our Bibles well. History is full of false teachings that always diminish the greatness of God so that He can be more easily understood. The church has spent 2,000 years fighting for the truth of who God is to be maintained, and it’s a battle that’s easily lost when we want Christianity to be more comfortable for us.
But when we are willing to be uncomfortable, accepting that God is far beyond our full understanding, we will find ourselves loving Him even more.
Worship requires faith, not full understanding
Jesus *said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman *said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus *said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” (John 4:21-26)
All of that may seem like a roundabout way to discuss the title of the article. However, it’s important to see our motivation, and even our struggle, in not being committed to a God we don’t fully understand. After all, how many of us can fully explain these questions?
- How can God be eternal and without a beginning?
- How can He be one being, but 3 separate and distinct persons?
- If God is all-knowing, why did He make everything if He knew we’d fall into sin?
- Why does God allow evil in the world if He could easily prevent it?
- If He’s real, why doesn’t He just show Himself so everyone can believe?
Make no mistake, we have solid answers from the Bible to help us understand the truth of these questions. But there’s a vast difference between being able to answer a question and being able to fully explain it. It’s when we try to explain these things that we risk diminishing who He truly is.
Why? Because at the end of the day, we only have our limited understanding to try to explain the One who is infinite. We would be lucky to understand even 1% of all truth in the universe yet assume we understand 99%. Ultimately, we are 2-year-olds trying to explain the complex workings of the combustion engine that makes a car move.
As we’re starting to see, it’s often our own pride that gets in the way of our worship. We refuse to accept that we aren’t clever enough to understand something, and so we refuse to accept it as truth. We will only move in obedience and reverence if it makes sense to us. And when it doesn’t make sense, we’re tempted to pull God down to our level until it does.
Yet Christ tells us to worship God in spirit and truth. We are called to worship God for who He is, not who we want Him to be. If God is worthy of our worship, then even those confusing and unknowable things are worthy. Often, our worship requries us to have faith that God is who He says He is, even if we can’t fully explain it.
I have a lengthy series on what biblical faith truly is, but let me sum it up like this: If God has proven Himself to be trustworthy in the multitude of areas that we can understand, why would we not trust Him to be equally trustworthy in those things we don’t? Why would we compromise the truths of the Bible to fit the beliefs we want to hold, rather than submitting ourselves to believing what is clearly taught?
Understand what you can, trust what you can’t
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)
In the end, it’s okay if we don’t understand everything about God. In fact, God being so far beyond our total understanding is part of what makes Him God.
Him being so much more than a super version of us is why we can trust HIm to do what He says. It’s why we can trust that He won’t change His mind on Christ being a satisfactory substitute for the wrath we deserved. God being God is the only reason we have any hope at all.
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)
Yet that doesn’t let us off the hook for understanding God and what He’s revealed in the Bible. We may not understand everything about Him, but in His goodness, God has revealed much about who He is and how we should live.
It’s out of love for who He is that we want to know our Heavenly Father, the Savior He sent, and the Holy Spirit that we were given on the day of our salvation. We don’t study and grow so that we can know more about God, but simply so that we can know Him even more.
When we struggle with understanding God, we’re simply doing what limited-yet-seeking minds are prone to do. We ask questions. It’s what we do with those questions that matters.
If we try to develop an understanding of God that makes Him more easily understood, then we’re simply crafting a god in our own image. We’re making something we like, rather than setting our worship and love on the One who is true. We risk making our prideful need to explain everything replace the majesty of who God is.
Yet if we let those questions drive us to seek God even more, then He won’t let it go to waste. God may not give us the answers we’re seeking, but we can trust that He’ll give us the faith we need by revealing those things we can understand and letting us rest comfortably in trusting those things we can’t possibly fathom.
God is good. God is holy. God is powerful. God is ultimate. But above all, God is God, and that’s why we worship Him.
But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5)
Absolutely outstanding article Ray. Makes me want to memorize it.