Let God be God
God is God, and we’re not. Duh. But problems happen when we pretend we’re God or forget we aren’t. As the great preacher Charles Spurgeon wrote:
The holiest of Christians, and those who understand best the gospel of Christ, find in themselves a constant inclination to look to the power of the creature, instead of looking to the power of God and the power of God alone.
The troubles of the world are because humans have tried to play God. All problems go back to man’s attempt to equal God in some way. It was the devil’s original temptation in the garden: Just secure the knowledge of good and evil, just like God. The natural conclusion: God becomes less necessary.
People may try, but they can never attain the attributes unique to God. For example, we are finite; He is infinite. Being finite, we cannot fully understand an infinite God. One can dedicate oneself to studying things related to God (known as theology) but fall immeasurably short of knowing everything about God. The best theologians can also be flat-out wrong about many things they think they know concerning God, yet insist there’s no acceptable alternative.
It’s reminiscent of the little girl in Sunday school, feverishly working on a drawing, when her teacher asks, “What are you drawing?” The girl replied, “I’m drawing God.” “But,” said the teacher, “no one knows what God looks like.” Without hesitation, the child responded, “They will when I’m done!” Some theologians are no less foolishly confident.
The common denominator between playing God and pretending to be too sure about the unknowns of God is pride. God hates pride primarily because it is a reflection of independence from God. Pride is the basis of idolatry. It destroys our relationship with God and, when it happens in the church, it destroys the unity of the body. Nothing has divided the church more than the pride of insisting we know answers to the unknowable.
One of the unknowable aspects of theology is reconciling the doctrines of predestination and free will. Simply put: If God chose us ahead of time to be His in Christ, how do we also have the freedom to choose Christ? Scripture teaches both truths. Paul writes that we have “been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11). Likewise, he says in Romans, “those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). God predetermines our salvation.
Then there is the seeming contradiction. Later in Romans, Paul writes, “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). In Acts 16, Paul responds to the jailer’s question about how to be saved, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). Odd response if we have no choice in the matter. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that scripture unquestionably teaches two things: 1.) Our salvation is by God’s choice long ago. 2.) To be saved, we must choose God through Christ. Are you confused? No offense, but that’s your finite mind at work.
In his classic book, The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer writes: “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us” (p. 9). Great and scholarly Christians over the centuries have unfortunately become so focused on insisting either predestination or free will is true, not both, that it has consumed their thinking about God. It has defined them. The problem seems to be trying too hard to discern God’s thinking. How can both predestination and free will be true? We don’t know, but God does. He makes His choices, and we are free, responsible and accountable when it comes to ours. So we should stay in our lane. With our finite minds, we can’t know how both things can be true. Let’s not fight over the unknowable. Let God be God.
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again?” —Romans 11:33-35