The child, the philosopher, and the religionist have all one question: “What is God like?”
This book is an attempt to answer that question. Yet at the outset I must acknowledge that it cannot be answered except to say that God is not like anything; that is, He is not exactly like anything or anybody. — A. W. Tozer
As a father, this is something I can say I have experienced to a limited extent from the other end of the spectrum now. One of the interesting facts of childhood is that your parents are like gods, incomprehensible, and totally sovereign. As you grow older, you learn that this is not actually the case, but the knowledge of a three or four year old, this is true enough. Young children only know God in what they see in their earthly father and mother.
From the other side, I know that I have a hard time explaining some things to my son. He’s now four, but he sometimes asks the most extremely difficult questions. For example, he asked me what I do at work. How do I explain taxes, tax collection, payments, credit cards, checks, electronic checks, banking, fees, and all other tidbits? (That’s not even covering the software development aspects.) I didn’t. The conversation was something like this:
Dad: You like to play at the park?
Son: Yes. (delivered with a condescending glare)
Dad: Well, because we own a house near the park, we help pay for all the fun
things you play with at the park. That’s called taxes.
Son: That’s silly.
Dad: At work, I help people pay their taxes so that the parks near their
houses will be fun to play on.
Son: Can we go play cars now?
I find most of what I do at work nearly incomprehensible and I have a pretty good grasp on this stuff. He’s four and without hope of really understanding any of this for at least a dozen years and probably will never understand it to the depth I have unless he ends up in local government.
The intellect knoweth that it is ignorant of Thee because it knoweth Thou canst not be known, unless the unknowable could be known, and the invisible beheld, and the inaccessible attained. — Nicholas of Cusa
God is infinitely more incomprehensible. We have all of eternity to get acquainted and we’ll never finish the task of knowing God as He truly is.
I think Tozer strikes a blow to the heart of human knowledge when he says, “We want a God we can in some measure control.” This is true of virtually every scientific or pursuit of knowledge. We want to take the complex and difficult to understand things and make them simple. Historically, people often did this by using superstition. Now, we make educated guesses, but still make the mistake of thinking we understand complex issues better than we do.
Whether it’s biology or meteorology or anthropology or psychology or paleontology or physics or mathematics or anything else, in most areas of most fields we have just enough knowledge to ask a few interesting questions. Assuming we continue to push our knowledge forward for the next hundred years, or great-grandchildren will be laughing at some of our ridiculous notions just as we can laugh at the fact that 100 years ago people worried that if you drove in a car too fast your face might tear off.
“The God of contemporary Christianity is only slightly superior to the gods of Greece and Rome, if indeed He is not actually inferior to them in that He is weak and helpless while they at least had power.”
In the case of God, most of humanity wants a safe god. He’s like a bigger than life person. He’s cool, he’s nice, he really wants to do whatever we want him to do. He’s not very demanding and he really wants us to have fun. Or whatever idol that is constructed. Most of the gods out there are created in man’s image and not the incomprehensible and terrifying and yet merciful God of the Bible.
In Christ and by Christ, God effects complete self-disclosure, although He shows Himself not to reason but to faith and love. Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience.
This is really a restatement of Matthew 11:27, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
If the Son chooses to reveal himself to you, you will know something about the Father. You will know enough. If the Son does not choose to reveal himself to you, you will know nothing of the Father and nothing of God. This is not a cosed invitation. All are welcome to seek the Son and the revelation He can provide of the Father.
“What is God like?” If by that question we mean “What is God like in Himself?” there is no answer. If we mean “What has God disclosed about Himself that the reverent reason can comprehend?” there is, I believe, an answer both full and satisfying.
Through the Word, that is Jesus and his scripture, you can learn enough of the Father to know God. But this knowledge is never complete. We all must start with the holy terror that is God and move from there to full understanding of his holiness and his mercy. (Provers 1:7)
Cheers.
