God Explained
Are you up for a treasure hunt?
God is he who needs nothing to make everything. This means the true God doesn't need you or me. He can't be bribed or manipulated. This messes with the idea that we must "earn" his favor. He lacks nothing to complete himself.
A god smaller than everything is simply an idol; an imaginary comic book super hero or ancient pagan demigod of mythology, impotent against any reality bigger and more complex than he, she, or it is.
Our problem as humans is that we are by nature idol worshipers. We don't want more of what we can't control. Why do you think talking about God is so unpopular?No, we shoot for less by attempting to control things ourselves. I know it sounds ridiculous, but there you go.
We like to invent idols for entertainment value and to pretend we can manipulate nature. This desire to control the future for our own security results in the ability to manipulate and be manipulated by others based on "secret knowledge." This is how cult leaders operate. They are simply psychological dictators using fear of damnation and special religious-sounding insider-secrets to capture the allegiance of subjects who pay dearly, often with their lives, for the privilege of having a leg-up on eternity. Behind all the pomp and circumstance is just a clever con to grow the leader's wealth and power.
Every time we attempt to explain or understand God from our perspective we fail. After all, we are finite creatures who have difficulty comprehending the scope of the universe from sub-atomic-micro to super-nova-black-hole-macro, let alone attempting to grasp the infinite.
So how can we come to know the God who needs nothing and makes everything?
By sitting and listening to his story. In essence, that is what the Bible is here to tell us. It is God's story as revealed over time to the human race. The more you read and learn about this particular book, written and compiled over 1,300 years, and how it holds together, not only as a well-woven narrative, but as a profound answer book to even so-called "sophisticated" problems of our day, the more the character and personality of The Almighty is revealed to our finite minds.
So let's review. We can't know the infinite or test infinity. We have no capacity to completely understand eternity. This tempts us to take the mindless path of simply writing God off as unknowable and therefore not worth our time and attention. When we do this, we end up playing games with idols of our own making. We look for life in jobs, in money, or in someone who lights our fire. And this little bubble life is nice for awhile. Unfortunately, the problem is, unlike God, we have an expiration date.
Fortunately, the good news is that the One who created everything, including each one of us for his own reasons, understands our dilemma and has made himself known in history. And where he has revealed himself, he not only can be found, but wants to be found.
Think of learning about God as a search for hidden treasure. If you do this, life turns from drudgery to an adventure beyond our wildest dreams. Seriously, all you have to lose to follow the God of the Bible are your chains.
