Don't settle for Superman

Every believer wants to know all that can be known about God and to live in the light of all the truth God has revealed about himself.

This is why he/she reads the Bible, the only source of the true knowledge of God.

So how does the Bible describe or define God? How does it tell us who God is and what he is like? And how may we ensure that our view of God measures up to the truth he has revealed about himself?

These are self-evidently crucial questions. It is all too easy to construct a god who has all the attributes we like and none that we don’t like — a god who is all smiles and no frown, all love and no judgment. It is very easy for us create our own ‘god’ and to voice phrases like: ‘I could never believe in a god who . . . ‘ But if our view of God is different from or smaller than the Bible’s, we shall be astray in all our thinking and living. The object of our worship will be a projection of ourselves — a god we have made in our own image.

Serious effects

Moreover, if we depart from or distort the God of the Bible, our approach will seriously affect our devotion to him. It will undermine our worship, love, hope, assurance and service. It will put our lives on a false footing.

So how does the Bible show us what God is like? It does so in many ways, through such varied forms as narratives, parables, sermons, letters, poetry and prophecy. All these forms, however, have one thing in common: they show that God reveals himself largely by contrast — the absolute contrast between him and us, between Creator and creature, between him and evil, etc.

‘God is not man’ is the brief statement in Numbers 23.19, but that idea runs through the whole of the Bible. Examples abound of the total contrast between God and humans, the bottom-line truth about God. ‘You are the LORD, you alone’ (see also Nehemiah 9.6, 2 Kings 19.15, 1 John 1.5, Isaiah 64.8). He is holy, we are defiled. He is infinite, we are finite — in knowledge, power, purposes, holiness, wisdom, etc.

The contrast

Countless other Bible passages bring out the complete otherness of God.

One is where Isaiah challenges the people to see the contrast between them and God: ‘All men are like grass . . . the grass withers and the flower falls ... See, the sovereign LORD comes ... to whom, then will you compare God? ... “To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One’ (Isaiah 40.6,10,18,25). An absolute contrast.

Another is one of Paul’s doxologies: ‘Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? ... For from him and through him and to him are all things’ (Romans 11.33-36). Again, the absolute contrast.

Not more than

My car insurance company is called ‘More than’; but ‘more than’ does not and cannot apply to God. He is not ‘more than’ we are. God is not simply (much) bigger, wiser, more powerful, more knowledgeable than we are. He is completely other, he is different — he is not human, he is God. All humans by nature have limitations, quite apart from their slavery to sin. But God has no limitations — except that he cannot sin. That is the view God gives of himself in the Bible.

This contrast is what makes God-becoming-man so staggering. That ‘God who is not man’ should take it on himself to become man is almost beyond comprehension. What love for him to cross that great divide, to take on human nature — and then die for our sins.

What is the point of these simple, obvious comments? They show us how to view any teaching that blurs the contrast by putting limits on God. We do not have to look far these days to read views asserting, for example, that he cannot or does not know the future, that he cannot know what you or I or the world will do next. Those views allow that God can know all that can be known, but that what has not yet happened is beyond his knowing.

It is significant in this connection to note that the incarnate Jesus did not know everything: ‘No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father’ (Matthew 24.36). But Jesus’s words imply that God knows the future and that it is only as incarnate that the Son does not know the day.

Not in control

Some people deny that God is in control of everything; rather, he is ‘in conversation’ with us, but can only react to what humans do. He is an ad hoc God, constantly trying to make the best of things. Some draw an analogy from chess; in the chess game of life God is far superior to us as a player, because of his vastly greater experience — he has seen it all before and can pretty accurately guess what our next move will be. But he does not actually know and in any case, still cannot make his move until we have made ours.

Such teaching effectively puts God in the same category as us: in the game of life, we can thwart a god who has such limitations. The clay can frustrate the potter. The creature can hold up the Creator. (Logically, on this basis, it is difficult to see how God can ever get the universe to his desired consummation, for sinful human nature will resist God for ever.)

God or Superman?

To put this bluntly, those views leave us with a finite deity — a kind of Superman as god. He is bigger, better, more powerful and wiser, but not a God who is infinite and matchless in power, understanding, knowledge and every other attribute that God has revealed about himself.

But God is not human writ large; he is GOD, a being totally different. If we let that truth go, the sobering fact is that we have no God left at all — no God as the Bible shows him. We have only a limited being with limited knowledge and limited power — and how can such a being be GOD? A limited god is no god at all. It is not a case here of choosing between different views of God or of having different understandings of God; it is a question of whether or not we have God at all, whether we believe in the one infinite God of the Bible.

Think of the difference these two approaches make in our Christian lives. Paul writes: ‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles’ (2 Corinthians 1.3). But what comfort is there in a God with limitations? How can he help? He does not know the future, so we cannot be sure that it is in his hands. Will it be my decisions or my poor prayers that shape events? God forbid — that is cold comfort. The only true and solid comfort for any of ‘us in all our troubles’ is that we are in the hands of the infinite God, who knows the end from the beginning and has all the resources to see us (and his purposes) through.

Let God be God

As with all error, however well meant, it is not just that it is wrong, but that it has such a sad and harmful effect on our lives. May we have the insight and strength to let God be God. Keep the contrast clear; God is in a different category. Don’t settle for Superman.

Reflections on the 'Openness of God' debate

Serious effects

The contrast

Not more than

Not in control

God or Superman?

Let God be God

Bob Horn

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