How Do You Describe God?

How do you explain God to his own son?"

 This is the quandary Mary and Joseph found themselves in when seven year-old Jesus starts asking questions about his birth in the new movie The Young Messiah. It is a powerful portrayal of the day and danger Jesus is born into in Roman-controlled Israel. At the same time, this well-crafted story probes the questions about when Jesus really began to understand who he was and his earthly mission.

How would you describe God . . . to anyone?

If you haven't figured it out from my earlier blogs, I'm a God-junkie. Been one a long time. Don't mind talking about God-stuff anywhere, anytime.

I used to hold to the belief system -- if you read (and re-read) the God-book enough and listen to the wisdom of other God-junkie specialists, you would get to know God well enough to explain Him like an expert. After all, isn't the God-book (the Bible) a description of Him and THE Handbook on how to live if I want to be a "good, obedient God-junkie?"

Then I ran into a couple of disturbing questions:

1. Too many God-junkie specialists adamantly contradicted each other in what they insisted was "Truth" about God.
2. How did the people in the olde times, before the God-book, explain and obey God without the written God-manual to go by?

I'm reminded of the Ten Men and The Elephant. A group of men stood touching an elephant learning what it's like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the ear. They then compare notes and are soon arguing, each insisting he is right.

A man walks by and sees the entire elephant. He interrupts the debate telling the men they are all right but also all wrong. None of them have the whole picture -- because they are blind and lack the ability to see the whole truth.

Perhaps part of our religious blindness comes from a cataract-belief the God-book is a guide for daily living. Study it enough, uncover all the answers for living, and God will be pleased with you. Like a divine vending machine, do everything right, punch in the right performance and out pops your blessings for life.

It's a bit unsettling to learn this "bill of goods" is sold to us by religion to keep us in line, busy, and filling up the agenda of church programs that wants to look successful to the community and make other churches envious.  The God-book is, instead, a book of identity.

When God spoke to Moses from a bush that burned but was not burned up, He said His name was "I AM," not "I DO."  Then we read in the God-book Jesus spent three-and-a-half years showing us what God the Father was like. He was all about relationships and freedom. We are human beings -- not human DOERSl

The traditional religionists of the Jesus' day stayed frustrated and embarrassed by Him. They claimed a corner on the God-junkie knowledge market. They said they had the God-manual (Torah) written by the God-expert (Moses). Sending a large contingent of soldiers to arrest Jesus, He asked who they were looking for. He responded "I AM" claiming His God connection. It had such power it knocked the whole crowd to their faces on the ground. (John 18:5-6) In the original language "I am" is a being verb. He was a threat to the religious establishment because His life showed a God-relationship trumped the performance-based system the religionists used to keep people controlled and filling their worship centers.

As to the question of how the God-followers of old got to know God the Father, it raises the uncomfortable question about divine revelation. We, modern religionists, are uncomfortable with the idea of not being able to read, study, and figure out a problem without depending on supernatural input. It's just a little too spooky.

At the end of a recent episode of the new X-Files, Fox Mulder asks his partner how it's possible to understand a God who seems so angry and distant all the time. Dana Skully replies, "Maybe it's beyond words. Maybe we should do like the prophets of old, open our hearts and truly listen."

Most of us start with some human concept of a father, then take those human traits and amplify them to the largest extreme we can imagine when attributing them to God. As a result, we  project on God he's stern, angry, hard to please, and greatly disappointed in us. If we've had an uninvolved or absentee father, we imagine a God-Father to be distant, too powerless to care or intervene on our behalf.

What we've lost is the ability to listen -- not to our learning or intuition -- but to the One who knows the God-Father best. The prophets of old learned that their concept of God could never be reasoned up; it had to be revealed down.

Reasoning up by what our minds think and our hearts feel, we take the fickle, variable nature of man and assign it to our God-Father. If our perception of God is variable, then we can please or displease him; that he can be happy or angry, frustrated or excited about me.

First Corinthians chapter 2 tells us that no one knows the God-Father like the Spirit of God, "but God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God." (1 Cor. 2:10) Everything about God has to begin by the Holy Spirit. We come to this reality because the Apostle John records Jesus' words, "... the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things," (John 14:26) and "when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." (John 16:13)

We are made in God's image, not He in our image. It is tragic mistake to give him "improved human qualities" created in our own performance-based-god with characteristics He does not have. However, based on the revelation from the God-book, you can be confident He is:

•  Good and Perfect without Variation (John 1:17) -- no shadow caused by his turning.

•  Love (1 John 4:8,16) -- because it is a pure love, you can’t move Him. You can’t make Him love you more and you can’t make Him love you less. You can’t deserve more grace or deserve less grace. His love, His mercy, His grace is not born in you. It is based in Him.

• Perfect Amnesia (Psalm 103:12, 1 John 1:9) - to the re-born believer, their past, present, and future sins are forgiven. There is NO record of wrong; you have a totally clean start before the God-Father. 

• Sees You As His Child (Galatians 4:4-7) -- Re-birth gains adoption as sons and daughters, where you receive the Spirit causing you to cry for Daddy. And since you are a son or daughter, you are no longer considered a servant but have all the rights and privileges of the God-Father's child.

These are just a few of the hundreds of pure qualities of the God-Father you can be confident of. It may take a bit of re-thinking to let this settle down in your spirit.

But I must give you a warning! Such freedom from meeting the God-Father who is pleased with you, whose child you are. and there is nothing you can do to disappoint or change that reality, will not be well received by the servant-attitude religionists around you. They won't find it very fair that you aren't giving the same amount of blood, sweat, and time as they are to get God-THE-Father to smile His favor on them.

 How do I explain God to one of His children? He is the ultimate freedom. You are a child by paternity not performance. And if that threatens some church structure which need people's performance to get God to love them so the pews stay packed, programs prolific, budgets buldging, and leadership egos enlarged, so be it. Perhaps their heart for God has been eclipsed by the spirit of religion which flourishes in the atmosphere and love of doing business for God.

Want to find the God-Father?

STOP -- your frantic activity of try to please Him. Don't listen to the old voices that demand action for the God-Father's approval.

LOOK -- at all the activity around you to please God without a freedom from performance-based acceptance. 

LISTEN -- "do like the prophets of old, open our hearts and truly listen."  Listen for the still, small voice which says, "You are valuable. You are accepted. You are appreciated. You are loved."

That is a God you can follow.