All right, I’m troubled. I was reading some of the comments on a popular blog, and I started wondering if we were on the same planet. Many of those commenting come from my faith heritage, but…

Basically they were saying that some of the things the Bible says can’t be true because those things don’t fit their view of God. One person wrote: “These – the violent stories – were how the people understood God and how they looked back and interpreted their actions but I think we can say with confidence that God was not interested in killing every living thing. Unless we are willing to say that the God of the OT is not the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.” That’s not my God, they’re saying, He doesn’t act that way. So whoever wrote the Bible was wrong.

Reminds me of Job and his friends. Nothing about what God was doing fit their theology, so they tried to make things fit. The friends blamed Job. Job blamed God. Then, in the end, God stepped in (or, as the commentators on that blog would say, some Hebrew wrote what he imagined God saying… but I digress). In Job 41 and 42, God basically says, “I’m God. You’re man. I don’t have to make sense to you.”

That troubles us, but it’s true. Fact is, if God is as much bigger as us as we think He is, we shouldn’t be able to fully understand Him. To use a crude example, it’s like cockroaches trying to explain humans. What we do probably doesn’t make much sense to them. In cockroach terms, man is inexplicable. Shouldn’t God be hard for us to explain?

Here go a few principles that come to mind:

• God is not limited by human logic. Just because something about Him doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
• God is not limited by the “laws” of science and/or nature.
• God is only limited by His nature. He is holy, so He can’t sin. He is truth, so He can’t lie. [I have problems fitting love and hate into this; any ideas?]

Bottom line: My God is so big that I can’t fully understand nor explain Him. When revealed truths conflict with my preconceived notions, it’s my notions that need adjustment.

If your God isn’t that big, then my God can beat up yours!