One of the biggest barriers I believe people have when it comes to believing in God is the fact that His character does not make total sense to us. He is full of love, but also judges. He is gentle but also extremely powerful. He is fair but also assigns favour. He is a Father but also a King; an angel commander but rarely talks in whispers. He is outside of time but we can only engage with Him in it. He is everywhere but can go unnoticed. He is radical but also respectful. He is good, but there is so much bad in the world. He is full of fun but also incredibly formidable.
It is so hard for us to piece together the 3D image of God – especially in an age where we prize ourselves as the most cognitively advanced ever. The thing is if God could be completely understood, he wouldn’t be God. He wouldn’t be greater than our intelligence, which would mean He wouldn’t truly be who He is. Nothing created could ever fully understand its Creator.
I have had the privilege of growing up with the anomaly of God and my reality. As a child of incredibly strong Christians, I have been involved in ministry my whole life. But my mom has a rare degenerative eye disease that has meant she has been legally blind my whole life as well. You might think that doesn’t make sense – I have a very valid reason to not believe in this God that is considered good – this God who calls Himself a healer. But I beg to differ.
As much as I don’t understand why our family, my childhood and most of my mom’s life has been heavily affected by her version of eyesight – I still believe in God and all He says He is. Just because I haven’t seen the full outworking of His goodness in my own life doesn’t mean He does not exist at all. Neither does it mean that I (or any of my family) am any less in His sight. Life is hard. Life is unfair – but that isn’t God’s fault. It’s our own. Read the first three books of Genesis if you want to argue with me on that point. We all live with the consequences of generations of sin. Does that mean someone is to blame for mom’s blindness – not at all. We just live in a world that is fallen because humanity chose that path.
This world is flawed. But instead of that chasing me away from God and all He is, it compels me to press in to know Him better. As I have done so – under the example of my parents – I have found everything the Bible says about God to be true. Time may still unravel the good story He intends for me and my mom and our family, but while things still don’t make sense, I choose to engage with the elements of God’s character that are eternal and trustworthy.
So, if I were ever to endeavor to make ‘sense’ of God, I would say:
Touch
Jesus told Thomas to touch his scars when He had risen from the dead. I know in my life there have been times when I have doubted God, but Jesus still has that open invitation to us. Whenever we are trying to make sense of the injustices of our lives or the world in general – we are invited to ‘touch’ the scars that were formed by the brutal beating of Jesus. It is written that we are “healed by His scars”. He knows suffering deeper than we will probably ever experience, and He did so for us to have the hope of seeing the end of our own. Jesus’ death was the full-stop to the reign of injustice and pain. But due to the boundaries of time, we’re still busy reading out the sentence. Even in times that seem unbearable, we can rejoice in knowing that there is an end to it all – not in our own death, but in the glorious life God has for us. You may be going through a hard season. Jesus intentionally came to earth so that we can know that He wins in the end and that He empathizes with us in our present suffering.
Smell
A poet in the Bible wrote, “May my prayers be like sweet incense to you.”
In moments that don’t make sense to me personally, one of the greatest ways to shift my focus and see the bigger picture is to choose to worship. Worship isn’t a genre of music or the act of going to a church. It is allowing your soul to be blown away by the immense majesty of God. It’s the only way you can respond when you witness the greatness of His creation and His presence. Going out into nature, being inspired by incredible music, being deeply moved by great artists and orators, reading the Bible, hearing stories of things He has done and choosing to pray and find rest in God’s presence – all of these things cause me to worship God. And all of a sudden my own struggle is dwarfed by the amazing, glorious goodness of God. Don’t get me wrong – this is not some heightened form of escapism. When we acknowledge God in our broken reality, it helps us grow our capacity to handle our struggles and find hope to deal with the hard areas of life.
Hear
Faith is not a noun. It is not a descriptor on a census form. Faith is the active belief that there is an unseen world in which things are operating. Faith is a decision to push past your own interpretation of life and lean into the ancient and eternal bedrock of existence itself. One of the great New Testament writers said, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” In situations that don’t seem to align with God’s nature, the first thing that begins to wane is my faith. But in those moments, a powerful thing to do is to open the Word of God – the Bible – and read it out loud. There is power in hearing the Words that God has spoken uttered once again. I cannot explain why, but every time I have closed the Bible stronger in spirit and determination.
Taste and see
Another thing that the Bible says of God is that we need to “taste and see” that He is good. The original Hebrew is referring to a deeply personal firsthand experience. When things are tough, my hope stems from a deep love for Jesus and the Holy Spirit – it’s the kind of relationship that cannot be fully described. It has to be a firsthand experience, but all I can say is that it has been a crucial factor to me living the way I do. If you would like to find out more – I want to encourage you to click on the link below. As I wrote earlier, don’t let the tensions and struggles of this world chase you away from God – if you choose to rebel against that kind of small thinking and press in to find out who God is for yourself, I believe you will begin to understand the absolute immenseness of God. It means a lifetime of discovery and adventure with the most interesting, relevant and powerful individual that will ever be known.