Tuesday, September 11, 2018

When we say "I can't believe in a God who would ___", we're saying we don't really want a God beyond our comprehension.

5 comments:

Stan said...

Indeed, a God who must conform to my expectations and my demands.

Dan Trabue said...

So when you say I can't believe in a god Who Would contradict that god's own self... or, I can't believe in a god that is evil or advocates evil... do you mean that such a God is beyond your comprehension or is beyond what is reasonable?

Craig said...

Since I didn’t say either of the things you said, I can’t answer your question. The fact that it doesn’t make sense is also a problem.

Craig said...

I'm pretty sure the point is that we want to shrink God down to the level we can comprehend.

Craig said...

What I’m noticing is that even though the words say “I can’t”, what’s really being said is “I won’t”. Which gets to the point of the comment. It’s about us putting limits on the kind of God we can comprehend and who meets our concept of what a god should be then arrogantly excluding anything that doesn’t measure up. It’s about saying “God can’t do that.”, as if we have the perspective to make that judgment.

Of course Jesus came to “show us what God is like”, but in no way could that be an exhaustive view. Scripture has plenty of examples of how we can’t fully understand or grasp the reality of God.

Finally the whole “Jesus came to show us...”, argument only works if one is prepared to state unequivocally that Jesus was who He said He was. It takes actually being able to say without reservation that Jesus existed.

Unfortunately there are many who can’t do that.