Trying to force God into our little idea of what he should be

Trying to force God into our little idea of what he should be

I have a friend who seems to have fallen away. As far as I can tell he started to think God had to be a certain way. When God seemed to not be like he thought God should be he got disenchanted. Did he start to fall in love with his theories of what God was like.? I run into a lot of people whose excuse for not being a disciple is they would not follow a God who would do (fill in the blank).

So just supposing here, it's too sensitive for me to talk to this guy about it, he started feeling God was not who he thought he was, or what he thought he should be. When he could not fit God into a neat little box (of his own creation) he got disenchanted. He felt he could not love or follow a God who was not like his ideal.

The disciples had a problem like this with Jesus. (More than once actually.) When in John's gospel we hear Jesus talking about eating and drinking his body everyone was grossed out. Many stopped following Jesus at this time. But the disciples decide to stay because Jesus has so many other wonderful qualities, they decide to deal with the dissonance. They don't understand it but decide to take it on faith that Jesus is God's messenger somehow and they want to be where God is. As John so aptly says, "To whom shall we go, you Lord have the words of life."

We can lose our way if we start telling God how he should be, how he should act. His ways are not our ways. Yes we can hang on to the truth that God is love and God is just. Yet he is infinite and we are finite. We cannot even understand what infinite means. We can have faith and trust God.

We can even be God's friend but we can never control him. Nor can we totally understand him.

In yesterday's sermon the preacher mentioned untimely deaths. We are shocked that God would allow them. (Does God totally control the world? How do we understand evil and disasters in the world?) He went on to say, "Everything can be explained by God's love. Yet God's love was expressed by the death of his son." That does not make sense to out little, finite minds. How can God die? How does allowing Judas to betray him seem loving? We don't know. We can try to explain it but we should not take too seriously our explanations.

Faith is involved. We must trust God. We can love him too. God wants a relationship with us. The great infinite God is big enough to love us all individually.