This Wednesday night at The Creek we talked about the mind of God and how God literally knows everything: everything that is, everything that will be and everything that could have been. Simply put, God knows everything there is to possibly be known. He knows how many heartbeats you have had since you were first conceived. He knows how many particles of sand there are in the volleyball courts at Lea/McKeighan Park. He knows the exact diameter and circumfrence of Jupiter. He knows the next time my car is going to break down (never...please!). God knows everything.
This fact can raise some difficult questions for us. After The Creek this week, someone came up to me with a question. "If God knows everything, he knows Person A will follow him and Person B will reject him. So, if he knows that Person B will reject him why would he even allow them to be born in the first place?"
Paraphrase: Why would God allow people who he knows are going to reject him to exist in the first place if they are only going to face the consequences of their sin and spend eternity apart from him? For that matter, if God knew Adam and Eve were going to sin why create man in the first place?
Let me give you the best answer I can for that: I have no idea. None. I could spin theories for you based on human experience and wisdom, but the truth is I don't really know. Only God does. Isaiah 46:9-10 says:
Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I
am God, and there is none like me. Only I can tell you the future
before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I
do whatever I wish.
He is God. Not me and not you. He plans and does whatever he wants. This seems abrupt, but it is true. Isaiah 55:8-9 says:
My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."
I hated it when my parents would say this awful phrase:
Because I said so. It may be easy for us to read the verse above and get the sense that God is simply telling us, "I do what I want. Deal with it!" But that's not the case.
Since God is infinite and we aren't, we will never fully be able to understand how he works and why he does what he does. We will always have difficult questions that we will wrestle with that don't seem to have a clear answer. When those questions arise, instead of jumping to wrong conclusions about God, we need to remember the things that we do know about him for sure. I may not know why God created mankind fully knowing that many of us would reject him and face an eternity in hell, but I do know that the Bible says he is perfect in love. I know that his word says he is perfectly just and fair in everything he does. I know that his faithfulness to us lasts forever.
You see, I may never be able to fully understand the mind of God - why he chooses to do what he does - but I can remember what his word says about his character. When something happens that I think is unfair, I remember that God is just, loving and true. That's the beauty of how great God really is. Even when I don't comprehend why things are happening the way they are, I can always trust in the character and unchanging nature of the God who is in control of it all. That is why it is so important for us to always be learning more about him. Knowing God is the heart of our existence. Everything else springs from that. God is our anchor, and if we don't know him, continuing to learn more and more about him, we will always be battered and tossed around by the doubts and tough questions that will always pursue us in this life.
