“The Character and Nature of God”

This was presented during communion on Sunday, September 15, 2013.

Three blind men encountered an elephant. Each of them touched the elephant in a different place. They each then describe what they imagine the elephant to be. “It is like a wall”, the first man replied, having touched the elephant on its side. “It is not like a wall at all, but instead like a rope”, said the second after felling of the elephant’s tail. “The elephant is much like a tree, tall and slender”, said the last, having encountered one of the elephant’s legs.

They have a heated debate that does not come to physical violence. But the conflict is never resolved.

An ancient poem about this incident summarizes it like this:

And so these men of Hindustan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right

And all were in the wrong.

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean,

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen.

Does this sound anything like debates at church? Consider just two opinions of the character and nature of God. Both come from well-known theologians.

Here’s the first:

“The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”

This is an except from one of the most famous sermons in American history; that of Jonathan Edwards’, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Edwards depicts God as full of wrath, bound by law of abstract justice. We have failed; we deserve to suffer. God is angry.

You wouldn’t expect this God to say, “I have really been looking forward to seeing you face to face. It is so wonderful to have you here with us.”

In contrast, one of the early Church heroes named Athanasius penned these thoughts about God.

“The God of all is good and supremely noble by nature. Therefore he is the lover of humanity. As, then, the creatures whom He had created were in fact perishing, and such noble works were on the road to ruin, what then was God, being Good, to do? Was He to let corruption and death have their way with them? In that cast, what was the use of having made them in the beginning? It was impossible, therefore, that God should leave man to be carried off by corruption, because it would be unfitting and unworthy of Himself.”

This is how William Paul Young, author of “The Shack”, sums up man’s attempt to describe God.

“The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who God is by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much, and then call that God. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who he really is. He is not merely the best version of you that you can think of. He is far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.”

Have you ever held a fine diamond in your fingers and turned while light was shining on it? I believe this is a good example of what “looking at God” is like. With every move of polished surfaces, of facets, you see a new color or reflection that wasn’t there before. In mathematics you learn that the intersection of n-dimensional objects is an (n-1)-dimensional object. A good example of this is our world. It has three dimensions that we can see, but there is another dimension that we cannot see: time. At any given instant we can only see the 3 dimensions around us. As soon as it arrives it vanishes to give way to the next instant in time, never to be seen or experienced again.

I believe that is one reason scripture records the description of the love of God using 4 dimensions: breadth, width, height, and depth. We encounter His love in one instant and imagine that He is like that. We encounter His grace in another instant and imagine that He is like that. We may encounter His justice in yet another instant and, again, imagine that He that is all there is to Him.

The reality is He is all of that and more! He is everlasting to everlasting. He is past finding out. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is altogether lovely. He is a raging fire, a booming thunder, and yet a still small voice. He is a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. He is the first and the last, the beginning and the ending. He is righteous; He is holy. He is truth!

And yet He has chosen to come and commune with us when we agree to meet with Him. He is here.