Looking for God in all the wrong places
Where is God?
In biblical times, men assumed God lived in the sky, somewhere amid the clouds.
As man learned to fly, God was pushed to outer space. When man went to space, he was again moved to someplace in the universe. Now, as Hubble and other space-borne telescopes gaze through the heavens (kind of ironic calling them that), they see no sign of God. All that can be seen is his creation.
Now we have the likes of Stephen Hawking and others trying to prove that creation could happen without God.
As we search the stars are we failing to see the forest (maker) for the trees (creation)? The question remains, where is God?
As a Christian, I know God to be in my heart in the form of the Holy Spirit. Lately I’ve been reading some books that have me thinking anew about the nature of God. We try to visualize and restrict God to what we can see and experience for ourselves. To me, that is like trying to understand an artist by looking at his painting. It doesn’t tell you much of anything about the artist, the equipment he used to paint with, his viewpoint and ideas about his subject or anything else about his world.
All we can discern is what we see on the canvas. The picture is beautiful, even as we muddy it up with our destructive way of life. To us, that canvas is all that there is. There is nothing beyond the frame. To me, that way of thinking is incredibly ignorant and small-minded. We theorize and assume there must be no painter (creator) because he is not visibly reflected in our limited picture.
We do not see him and we do not see his other works of art nor the world in which he lives. Therefore, we must have evolved and appeared naturally with the painting. After all, everything we see and know can be found in this painting.
I submit to you that God is much more than the painting. I think some of what he is has been reflected in his masterpiece that is creation, but that there is infinitely more to him than that which we know and see.
Consider for a moment that God is eternal – no beginning and no end. Eternity is not limited by the linear concept of time as we understand it. God, being an eternal being, can move forward and backward in time. I believe he also goes above, below and through it. Because he can be at any point in time, he certainly knows everything there is to know about what he has created.
One of the books that I’ve just finished reading is “The Shack” by William P. Young. While it is a work of fiction, it wrestles with some very deep concepts about God and why bad things happen in this life. It opened my eyes to the fact that what happens in this life is not about us, but about him and our relationship with him.
In the book, the protagonist is bitterly angry when his young daughter is kidnapped and killed. He is angry at the killer and at God for allowing it to happen. While I don’t want to ruin the story for those who want to read it, suffice it to say that it says a lot about forgiveness and looking at situations from a perspective not our own. It places a huge emphasis on God’s love for us and his desire for a relationship with each person – even those who do evil.
The concepts of forgiveness and relationship have been reinforced in the book I am currently reading called “Pagan Christianity” by Frank Viola and George Barna. That book takes a startling and, dare I say, shocking look at how modern Christianity in all its forms have been to prevalently influenced by paganism. I am amazed at how much stuff we call “church” is anything but scriptural.
What is scriptural is the call for Christians to be in fellowship with and to minister to one another. We are to be in a continual relationship with God. He’s not some distant being who serves as our go-to guy when we need a prayer answered or when we attend church. We are indwelt by him in the form of the Holy Spirit and he expects us to act like it. I plan to have more to say on this book after I have read it and delved into the follow-up books.
In the meantime, I am learning to look within myself and in the hearts of others as I seek God. I know he is not hiding someplace in the cosmos waiting to be found by prying eyes with majestic telescopes. He’s right here, with you and me – where he wants to be and has been all along. By looking within we can see beyond the canvas of creation and see the artist.
In biblical times, men assumed God lived in the sky, somewhere amid the clouds.
As man learned to fly, God was pushed to outer space. When man went to space, he was again moved to someplace in the universe. Now, as Hubble and other space-borne telescopes gaze through the heavens (kind of ironic calling them that), they see no sign of God. All that can be seen is his creation.
Now we have the likes of Stephen Hawking and others trying to prove that creation could happen without God.
As we search the stars are we failing to see the forest (maker) for the trees (creation)? The question remains, where is God?
As a Christian, I know God to be in my heart in the form of the Holy Spirit. Lately I’ve been reading some books that have me thinking anew about the nature of God. We try to visualize and restrict God to what we can see and experience for ourselves. To me, that is like trying to understand an artist by looking at his painting. It doesn’t tell you much of anything about the artist, the equipment he used to paint with, his viewpoint and ideas about his subject or anything else about his world.
All we can discern is what we see on the canvas. The picture is beautiful, even as we muddy it up with our destructive way of life. To us, that canvas is all that there is. There is nothing beyond the frame. To me, that way of thinking is incredibly ignorant and small-minded. We theorize and assume there must be no painter (creator) because he is not visibly reflected in our limited picture.
We do not see him and we do not see his other works of art nor the world in which he lives. Therefore, we must have evolved and appeared naturally with the painting. After all, everything we see and know can be found in this painting.
I submit to you that God is much more than the painting. I think some of what he is has been reflected in his masterpiece that is creation, but that there is infinitely more to him than that which we know and see.
Consider for a moment that God is eternal – no beginning and no end. Eternity is not limited by the linear concept of time as we understand it. God, being an eternal being, can move forward and backward in time. I believe he also goes above, below and through it. Because he can be at any point in time, he certainly knows everything there is to know about what he has created.
One of the books that I’ve just finished reading is “The Shack” by William P. Young. While it is a work of fiction, it wrestles with some very deep concepts about God and why bad things happen in this life. It opened my eyes to the fact that what happens in this life is not about us, but about him and our relationship with him.
In the book, the protagonist is bitterly angry when his young daughter is kidnapped and killed. He is angry at the killer and at God for allowing it to happen. While I don’t want to ruin the story for those who want to read it, suffice it to say that it says a lot about forgiveness and looking at situations from a perspective not our own. It places a huge emphasis on God’s love for us and his desire for a relationship with each person – even those who do evil.
The concepts of forgiveness and relationship have been reinforced in the book I am currently reading called “Pagan Christianity” by Frank Viola and George Barna. That book takes a startling and, dare I say, shocking look at how modern Christianity in all its forms have been to prevalently influenced by paganism. I am amazed at how much stuff we call “church” is anything but scriptural.
What is scriptural is the call for Christians to be in fellowship with and to minister to one another. We are to be in a continual relationship with God. He’s not some distant being who serves as our go-to guy when we need a prayer answered or when we attend church. We are indwelt by him in the form of the Holy Spirit and he expects us to act like it. I plan to have more to say on this book after I have read it and delved into the follow-up books.
In the meantime, I am learning to look within myself and in the hearts of others as I seek God. I know he is not hiding someplace in the cosmos waiting to be found by prying eyes with majestic telescopes. He’s right here, with you and me – where he wants to be and has been all along. By looking within we can see beyond the canvas of creation and see the artist.
posted by Joe Southern | 1:43 PM
1 Comments:
Joe,
You are the canvas, he is the artist.
PS Remember the old addage," You are who you hang out with". Who are your friends these days? Who have you friended? And what does that say about you for the man of God that you want to be?
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