“Anchor Points”
“Beyond ‘The Force’”
February 27, 2000
Anchor Point #5:
“God is Transcendent, Sovereign, and Personal”
“’God is a concept by which we measure our pain’; I’ll say it again;
‘God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
I don’t believe in magic; I don’t believe in I-Ching;
I don’t believe in Bible; I don’t believe in tarot;
I don’t believe in Hitler; I don’t believe in Jesus;
I don’t believe in Kennedy; I don’t believe in Buddha;
I don’t believe in mantra; I don’t believe in gita;
I don’t believe in yoga; I don’t believe in kings;
I don’t believe in Elvis; I don’t believe in Zimmerman;
I don’t believe in Beatles; I just believe in me.
Yoko and me, that’s reality. The dream is over; what can I say?
The dream is over; yesterday I was the dream-weaver, but now I’m reborn.
I was the walrus, but now I’m John. And so dear friends,
You’ll just have to carry on. The dream is over.”
-“GOD”, by John Lennon
“The practice of Scientology is to bring one to a new state where he can reach his own conclusions concerning the nature of God or a Supreme Being.”
- from the Scientology website
Doukhobors believe that “where there is Love, there is God”, and become aware of “the Spirit of God within oneself and all human beings.” The Doukhobor understanding of the Holy Trinity involves the trio of our conscious understanding of things; our reasoning power; and the exertion of our wills in order to deliver the action that should be the result of the reasoning. The goal is to “unite with the Greater Force that is directing all people towards harmony and brotherhood.” - from the Doukhobor website
“May the Force be with you.” - Obi-wan Kenobi
One man, troubled by what he read in the Bible that didn’t make sense to him, wrote down his own theories of God and published in a book. In it, he develops the concept that life arose as the result of an initial unplanned, chance event, thru the hand of science, followed by a deliberate, planned event thru the hand of God.
One man writes, at conclusion of a poem he entitles “The Loneliness of God”, “we are all God, struggling to overcome our forgetfulness; afraid to return to the knowledge that God is the loneliest being there is.”
Yet another website, published by a group calling themselves “distinctionists”, suggests that God is “a concept humans developed to further their own development”, adding, “the concept of God isn’t required for personal development, but it is a wonderful option.”
Contemporary Pluralism either
- Latches onto a few elements from each religion in piecemeal fashion to try to point to common threads in all religions, or
- Tries to point to a greater Reality behind all religions
“Gods” of Contemporary Pluralism
1. “The Great Big Play-Doh God”
“And so man created God in his image…”
“Patty saw God as a voice inside that directed her to use the best of herself.”
2. “Warm, Fuzzy God”
“I like to think of God as love…”
“Dean experienced God as a presence that gave wonderful gifts and guided his behavior.”
3. “The Force”
“It’s, like, this power for good, like…”
God is an impersonal force.
4. “If it Ain’t God, It…Ain’t!”
“If you see it, it’s divine!”
“God is everything.” PANTHEISM.
The Stakes
One may either be a Christian or a pluralist, but one cannot be both! People want to invoke the name of God without thinking too deeply about the nature of God. We can no longer assume that just because one says “I believe in God”, that we each understand what is meant by the term. Gallup says that ca. 90% or more Americans say they believe in God; be certain that the definition of MANY is well-removed from our own.
- From the point of view of the pluralist, the Christian is a bigot! Hate-monger; intolerant; pick your adjective.
- From the point of view of the Christian, the pluralist is an idolator!
3 Truths About God to Counter Contemporary Pluralism
These three truths are effectively NEVER put together into one by postmodern man. He may think of God in one of these ways, but never the three together. But this scandal to the mind of today’s man is just the Bible picture of God!
1. God is Transcendent.
A. He draws His existence only from Himself.
Bible does not argue for the existence of God; it rather assumes it. “In the beginning God…” What we are forced to acknowledge is that there is SOMETHING beyond the laws of cause/effect; there is SOMETHING or someone who is eternal. We are left with the eternality of matter or the eternality of One Who created that matter. The Bible portrays God as the One Who is eternal, with neither beginning nor end.
Isaiah 41:4 – “Who has…(called) forth the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, am the first, and with the last. I am He.”
B. He is thus not dependent upon anything else.
If God created the universe, He is of necessity not dependent upon it for anything. God doesn’t NEED anything from us, contrary to what some who call themselves Christians seem to teach (which we’ll talk about in a minute).
Psalm 50:12 – “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all it contains.”
C. He is absolute.
Ancient Greeks had a pantheon of supposed “gods”, but each of these had weaknesses and foibles; none was absolute.
Isaiah 40:12-13 – “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens by the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales?
Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has informed Him?
2. God is Sovereign.
His power and His rule are so extensive that nothing takes place apart from His providential reign. Proverbs 16:4 – “The Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil.”
This world is not rocketing out of control; we are not part of some random chain of events. Philosophers have suggested as much; that life is meaningless and without purpose because of these seemingly random events. What a comfort to realize that, when things take place in our lives and in our world that are beyond our understanding and comprehension, we can trust that God is on His throne and knows what He is doing. We take this by FAITH! I can’t answer all of the whys and wherefores, but I can trust that God, in His plan, has everything under control. And remember, without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Men like Camus, Nietzche, Sartre, Heidegger, stress the autonomy of the individual before which all other concepts, including the existence of God, must be eliminated. We “find ourselves” when we cast off restraints. Thus, like the illustration above, we see the idea of God being an unnecessary, but possibly helpful, tool of self-improvement. “I” am placed at the center of things—and we had certainly better be careful that we see God as the center of our lives, and not some aid to our own pursuits. It is all about His glory, not mine, for He is sovereign, not me!
A. He is omniscient.
God is all-knowing. In the Garden, the serpent tempts the woman with the idea that she can “be like God, knowing good and evil.” It is seen here that God is known as the great knower. There is a strand of Christianity today that calls itself evangelical that essentially is watering down this understanding of God. One writer has published a book on what he calls “The Openness of God” and suggests that God is not all-knowing. This is a dangerous path to follow, because it does not come from solid Bible exegesis and leads to some problematic ends.
B. He is omnipotent.
Over and over in Genesis 1, we read, “And God said…” Everything that He decrees comes to pass. There are some who picture God as being deficient in some way. Even some of the so-called “faith teachers” have developed pictures of God that bind His hands. According to Kenneth Copeland,
“Adam committed high treason, and at that point, al the dominion and authority God had given to him was handed over to Satan. Suddenly, God was on the outside looking in…After Adam’s fall, God found Himself in a peculiar position…God needed an avenue back into the earth…God laid out His proposition and Abram accepted it. It gave God access to the earth and gave man access to God.” Heresy!
C. He has absolute freedom.
Account of creation pictures God as freely creating, doing as He pleases, and then calling all that He has done “good”.
3. God is Personal.
He is a Being Who interacts with other being, with interchange, speech, and personality. This is not to say that He is a person in exactly the same WAY as other persons, but He is personal nonetheless; He is seen in the Bible as way more than just some force or as the totality of everything. Pantheism sees God as being part of everything. But the Bible pictures Him differently. We can have no communion with an impersonal force; we don’t have a RELATIONSHIP with a tree, for instance. In a pantheistic world, I end up ultimately looking to myself to understand “God”—and I am ill-qualified for the task!
A. He is self-conscious.
God is the everlasting “I AM” of Exodus 3:14; the eternal self-conscious One who has always been perfectly conscious as to His own nature and regarding all truth. He says, “Let US make man in our own image…”
B. He is self-determining.
In the opening lines of Genesis, God speaks things into being. He makes decisions as persons do.
C. He exhibits characteristics of personality.
God
- Loves
- Is angered; this is a significant Bible theme seen first in Genesis 3. As the Creator God, it is His prerogative to demand allegiance. When His demand is violated by sin, He is justly angry. He would not be God if sin did not matter to Him. This aspect of His character is one which the contemporary God-makers do not want to think about.
- He asks questions (Gen. 3).
- He gives commands.
- He listens to praise and to prayer.
- He responds as He chooses.
- He grieves (Genesis 6:6).
- He has personality within His own being, in the sense that He is a Trinity—God in three Persons.
