You can pick and choose all the things you think God should be like, and everything you think God ought or ought not to do – but the problem is that ultimately you are creating a god in your own image. Your own subjective view of what is best, while the person next to you creates a totally opposite god, justified by their own contrasting opinions. Any one human viewpoint – one small corner of one small planet in all of creation, confined to one short span in the whole breadth of history – is always going to be too limited, too blinkered, too biased to approach the full truth.
Our only hope for a final, reliable, objective answer, is if God himself chooses to reveal his nature to us, and the good news is that he has. He has revealed himself to us through the Bible – the book which trumps all other ancient texts for how accurately it has been preserved – and he has revealed himself through Jesus, God himself taking on human form and coming into the world.
He is the God who made us, and rather than abandoning his creation when it went wrong, dug in for the long haul to save us. The God who holds infinite power, yet thinks it worth his time to care for the broken hearted. The God who cannot tolerate sin, yet would rather pay the penalty for it himself on the cross than judge us for our rebellion. You could not make this God up – but thank God that he is so much better than the sum of our own imagining.
There is wrestling to be done with the Bible – some aspects of God are simply not revealed to us, while others take careful study to try and discern – but do yourself a favour and take the time to wrestle with it. Don’t piece together a view of God out of good feelings and best intentions. That kind of god won’t be enough, it won’t do him justice, and it won’t lead to fullness of life.
The quote in the image is from a recent talk by Daniel Goodman, who heads up the leadership team at City Church in Cambridge – go and drop in on a Sunday!
