Monday, February 26, 2007

God Cannot Be Defined

I have a confession to make.
I am confused about God and His character.
I know a few solid things about Him...He is faithful. He is good. He is all-powerful. But what is He?
Just when I think He is something, He becomes everything, and I struggle to understand how and why and where from.
It is evident from looking at the world around us and everything He has created that He is very diverse, with many different angles and aspects and parts of Him...But God cannot be just one personality, because if he were, He couldn't have created all the personalities we see today.
So if He is not just one thing, what is He? How do you describe God?
He is not a concept, and yet He created concept.
He is not a human, and yet saying He is a spirit gives Him limits, which is not possible.
That's just what I am trying to say...There is no way to limit God, and that is exactly what it is to describe someone or give them a label. Limit them. Put them in a box and expect only certain things from them. It does not work on the God of the Universe - the God of things beyond the limits of the Universe - the God of things we do not know.
He is the God of intellectuals and eccentrics and little old church ladies and boy-crazy teenage girls and girl-crazy teenage boys and missionaries and pastors andn terrorists and rapists - and He made them all and loves them all. They are all so different, and yet He is the God of them all.
I guess one of my biggest issues about God is the fact that He doesn't hate or even dislike any person. I am a loving person, and I don't hate anyone, yet I will admit that there are people I cannot stnad or that are very very different from myself. How can God relate to all of them as He relates to me? Everyone has someone or some type of person that they don't like. Some lifestyle that drives them nuts. How can God be my God and yet be the God of Margaret, who lives in a nudist colony and eats only sushi? How?
I constantly bring God down to my level and ask Him to explain Himself, and yet He never does...I don't have to understand, I just have to trust, and I guess that's where my problem is. I keep trying to understand Him instead of trust Him. I want to give Him an exact definition - I want to be able to give the answer to Who, What, When Where, and Why. I want Him to be small enough for me to comprehend - the way I comprehend my siblings and develop certain tactics that I know will work on each of them. How do I trick one who is omnicient? How do I have the advantage over the God who knows all things - including my heart and mind and the depths of my soul and my deepest longings - the things I don't care to admit are even a part of me - my past, present, and future - Not only the me that I believe I can define, but the me that lies beneath the surface - the me which I do not know and the me that would frighten me if I knew she were even there?
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How do you pinpoint Him that has no beginning?
I think many of the things we know about God (such as the fact that 'He' is a 'Him') are the things that God allows us to believe because we are so limited by language, He allows us to call Him 'He' and gives Himself a name ('God') because He knows we will ask the little questions I am asking now. "If God is not a man and He is not a woman, what is He? And what should we call Him when we talk about Him, if not 'he' or 'she'?" And, "What do we call Him?"
He knows that it would blow our little minds if He revealed what He is, or even if He gave us a new set of terms to define Him that are different from the specifications we use to describe whether a being is male or female.
The more I ponder these things, the more I realize that it is impossible to define God. As I said earlier, to define or label someone is to limit them. We can try to define God as much as we want to, but One such as Him cannot be confined by such things. He cannot be confined by anything!!! Humans torture each other with labels and definitions and political correctness and limitations and laws and social rankings...But God is not human. He made us and therefore we submit to Him, He does not submit to us.
It is stupid enough for us to place these limitations on ourselves and each other, but GOD??? Submitting to a HUMAN standard? Give me a break.

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