Random Ruminations about God
/A Twilight Musing
How presumptuous of me to think that I can love mankind more than God does! And such a presumption is the basis of my difficulty in accepting the uniqueness of salvation through Christ. I assume that it is my respect and regard for other people which makes it difficult to consider the possibility that good people can be lost, even if they are sincerely moral and religious by their own lights. But my reluctance is really an unwillingness to relinquish my own finite viewpoint for God’s infinite one. It is a refusal to admit that if there are spiritual realities, they are not going to be changed by my not accepting them. It is foolish to refuse a physician’s services because you consider your illness unfair. By the same token, if sin is a mortal illness and God’s grace is the answer, my view of whether human beings ought to be held responsible is irrelevant—this aside from the fact that God has not obligated me to make the leap from believing that “good” people can be lost to figuring out who is going to be damned.
My choice is whether to accept the fact that God is Love. If He is, then He only is the measure of real concern for others; if He is not, He is either not worthy of consideration, or merely a construct of human ideals. I cannot presume to show God’s love apart from God’s truth; I cannot consider the eternal good of my fellowmen apart from God’s perspective. The last and most stubborn stronghold of myself is my determination to maintain my own sense of fairness rather than God’s. If our warfare is spiritual, the weapons and the tactics are no more of my choosing than is the battle itself. If it isn’t, the “life of the Spirit” is a psychological illusion and a distraction from the concerns of the “good life.”
Rumination 2 - God absolutely IS, but He is also BECOMING. He will not stand still for us to analyze Him, nor will He permit us to stand still while we seek Him. Only that which is in motion lives; stagnation does not belong to God. There is infinite variety in God, but it is variety with an unchanging core. Only when we see Him as He is will we fully realize how that which is Immutable is also an endless chain of newness. Until then, we must be content to accept even that which appears to be mutable as an integral part of His design. That He is always one step ahead of us assures us that the unknown is His; we need beware only that which we know.
Rumination 3 - It is difficult for humans to put God’s wrath in perspective, because we see wrath only as we ourselves exercise it to fulfill a need. God’s wrath is absolute, springing from His absolute Holiness, and not something needed to build up His image or as an emotional outlet. Man understands only his own self-satisfying wrath and is confused because he imputes that kind of wrath to God.
Rumination 4 - The mind of God, it seems to me, is more analogical than logical. Mere logic is too neat and tempts one to believe that he has reached the limits of consideration. God prescribes from absolute, unconstructed wisdom; humans can prescribe (be dogmatic) only by the artificial frameworks of logic applied to the supralogical Word of God. God’s absolute edicts are probably altered when they are put into human language; at any rate, humans should be careful not to dilute them even further by trying to enclose them completely by logic. Logic can systematize truth in a limited way, but it must be tempered by a more spiritual way of understanding God.
