The god of God
"It’s difficult to maintain modesty under pressure. Before we know it we’re making claims about things way beyond our grasp and speaking for God in a way that God will not speak for himself. [In the book of Job] Zophar was saying what God ought to be doing to the wicked and Job is saying God isn’t doing what he ought to be doing. These wise men looked out on the same world and saw different things. In each case it wasn’t enough for things to be as they were, these men had to doctor the facts, emphasizing this, ignoring that and presenting a lopsided picture of God’s reality. For one reason or another they were as discontent as we are with how God handles things so they acted, as we often act, in God’s name and without his permission. I wonder why we find it easier to take God’s place on his throne than take his place on his knees (John 13)? The brilliant [and waspish] Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man (Epistle 1, verse 4) brings our sinful tendency home with great power when he says:
Go, wiser thou! And in thy scale of sense,
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such,
Say, here He gives too little, there too much:
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, If man’s unhappy God’s unjust...
Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge His justice, be the god of God.
Jim McGuiggan said that in Life on the Ash Heap (quoted by permission). It’s perfectly true that we can’t accept as the work of a righteous God what is plainly contrary to our moral sense of things. This means we’d have to call some of what the Bible teaches into question or re-examine our moral sense of things. I truly do think that in light of Jesus Christ we ought to give God the benefit of the doubt and at least for a while doubt our doubts rather than God. We’re so limited--aren't we!-- and our emotions carry us about like the wind carries leaves or a slow river current carries a big log. Maybe if we can take that into account and give the scriptures a brave and fair hearing that we could trust God even with some serious questions still not fully answered to our satisfaction.
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