American Idols

Based on the recommendation of my friend Christine, I've been reading through some books by Donald Miller.

In Searching For God Knows What, Miller spends some time talking about the difference between the God of systems and formulas that everyone seems to know exhaustively and every televangelist and politician tries to speak for incessantly, and the true God who is bigger and wider and deeper than anything we could hope to control.

He talks about a God he fears--not in a negative way, but because the One who is above all else is so radically different than us makes knowledge of Him an awe-inspiring and terror-rific experience.

I don't know what to compare it to. Maybe you could compare it to a single bacteria cell in its little bacteria world realizing the complexity that is the human being.

And I'm sure that doesn't even come close to the difference between God and us.

Yet because we like things we can control, we try to make the Almighty God whose ways are not our ways fit into our systems and try to tell others we know what He is thinking all the time.

We just want something we can grasp onto.

I've just graduated from seminary. Theology is my thing, I suppose. In its simplest state, it means "words about God." But so many times it can become more than that. So many times it can rationally and logically take the place of the God who is far beyond my silly logic. And that's not right.

Miller writes,

"...if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but
by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of
which only heaven knows. Imagine, a Being with a mind as great as God's with
feet like trees and a voice like rushing wind, telling you that you are His
cherished creation."

Theology is nice and has its place. But I think that in a lot of ways I'm getting off that train.



Knowing the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob may be at times a confusing, frustrating, and fearful thing, but its much better than the silly god I try to systematize in my head.

"O LORD, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in time of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth and say, 'Our fathers possessed nothing but false gods, worthless idols that did them no good. Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods!'"

Jeremiah 16:19-20