November 1, 2008

Dear Friend,

When it comes to understanding God, we are at a terrible disadvantage. That doesn’t keep us from trying, but we have a terrible habit of wanting to go where no man has gone before. For example, a man named Arius, back in the fourth century, argued that Jesus Christ was a created being. It isn’t clear exactly how he knew that, but he invited the kind of rebuke God handed to Job when he got presumptuous.

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

(Job 38:4-7 NIV).

Where were you standing, God says, I must have missed you because I don’t recall seeing you at the time. Never imagine that God is unwilling to be sarcastic. There is one simple idea that might be helpful to us. Of the time before there was a planet, whether you think it was four billion years ago or 6000, we know nothing about what God was doing then. People chase proof texts around the Bible, and develop tortured explanations of things that simply are not revealed. They are guessing, and they divide whole churches over mere conjecture.

Some think Jesus was an angel, but the Bible doesn’t say so. John and Paul plainly say Jesus was the Creator of everything created. By a process of logic, this means Jesus created the angels and therefore was not one of them. Moreover, he was not himself created.

Here is another simple idea. There is very little in the way of direct revelation of a world that exists alongside our world. We have gotten little glimpses from time to time in the testimony of men who, in vision, were privileged to see a little of it. But we know next to nothing about the properties of that world, about the laws that govern its working. We know the names and jobs of some players, and that is about it.

What I am saying is that we’re ignorant. It makes us very uncomfortable to admit we are ignorant, so we try to create truth for ourselves. Since my truth differs from your truth, we’re left with relative truth, which is merely ignorance by another name.

I’ll try one more simple idea. Any explanation of God offered by man can only diminish God, can only make him smaller. Here is a corollary: Any attempt to make God relevant to our world will create a God made in our image, which is no God at all. After all, the making is the other way around.

Now, does this mean we can’t understand God? Not at all. What it means is that we can understand God on his own terms or not at all. We can know his character in broad outlines. We can know the things that matter. And when we try to explain the rest, we do nothing but cause problems for ourselves and others.

Years ago, J. B. Philips, scholar and translator of the New Testament, wrote a book titled, Your God is Too Small. I have not read his book, but the title says so much, I hardly feel the need. There are so many who have tried to make God relevant to their world, only to succeed in freezing him into something like an idol made of stone.

Just last week, I recorded a new program by that title, Your God is Too Small, and you will want to have a FREE CD of that program with all the Scriptures and all the arguments intact. Just check the box on the enclosed card and fire it off to us. We’ll do the rest. This one is important.

(To download your copy of this program, click here.)

Keeping at the job,

Ronald L. Dart