by Charlie Miller
Pastor, Lima Baptist Temple, Lima, OH
As a kid, I was big-headed, brown-eyed, and skinny. In pictures, my head literally looked as big as it does now but stuck on a 50-pound body. I looked like the little guy on the BIC pens. Like most boys, I looked up to my dad. I remember my dad being massive … 6’5” … arms chiseled out of stone … and strong as an ox.
Dad could throw me in the air and catch me. I never worried about my well-being. He worked and made a living. He protected us. I remember Dad as a giant.
As I grew bigger, Dad seemed to get smaller. Come to find out he wasn’t 6’5” — he’s actually 5’5”. When I turned 14, I was looking Dad straight in the eyes. Like the punk I was, I said, “I am as big as you are old man!” In about half a second, I was on the ground, and Dad was on top of me. He didn’t hit me. Dad never hit me in anger — not one time. To be honest, I am not sure what he did. But he held me down with one hand and looked me right in the eyes and said, “I am still your Dad.” He picked me up and hugged me.
I went through my rebellious streak — thinking I was an adult because I had passed chronological and biological markers. I was bigger than Dad. I didn’t need to listen to him anymore — I was a fool.
In our humanistic and relativistic culture we act as if we have outgrown our Father. We have constructed a god. We identify Him as the God of the Bible, and we stand tall to look him in the eye. We frame this god according to our own logic. We conveniently fill out his anatomy and persona with the snippets of scripture that we find hard to understand. We call him the God of the Bible, but he is actually the god of hay — a straw man easily dismissed. He is small, dumb, lifeless, and impotent. We poke him. We mock him. We burn him. Then we dance around his charred remains declaring our freedom from him, pretending He is God and Jesus Christ. We are fools.
By definition, God is the Uncreated One — the origin and beginner of all things. He is the only logical explanation for how everything came out of nothing (something completely overlooked by secularists). This makes Him bigger and greater than everything else. The God of the Bible — and the God necessary to be the Uncaused Cause of all things — is infinite. You purport that God is illogical. No, He is beyond your fractured, human logic. You claim that He makes no sense. No, your inability to understand Him is your problem, not His. God’s too big for your narrow little box. He’s not your pet … on a leash, in a pen, under your spell.
We think we have outgrown God because we are sophisticated, modern, and technologically superior to our ancestors. Science is our new faith, technology is our savior, scientists are our priests and pastors, laboratories are our churches, and the New York Times is our Bible.
Farmers don’t pray for rain — they feel they don’t need to anymore. The sick go to the hospital — throwing all of their faith onto a fallible human to heal their body without ever pleading with the one who makes and controls the body. We place our trust in politicians to deal with injustice, poverty, and crime. We control our entire lives from our phone and pretend to be the god of our own universe. We have set ourselves up for a colossal and catastrophic collapse. Even now our society is morally sliding as we become more sophisticated. Our kids cannot read, they cannot add, and they cannot identify historical figures. We take human lives for the convenience of our hobbies, careers, and lifestyles. We have constructed our Tower of Babel. We have shown Him! And we wonder why we are so confused?
We are in our rebellious streak. When will we wake up? When will we grow up? God is bigger than us — and it’s really not close. At some point in our lives He will knock us to the floor — firmly but without abuse. He looks us in the eyes and says, “I am God.”
We know it, but we refuse to admit it. Our ego, our pride, and our hurt will not allow us to go there. Some of us had a friend, a parent, a church member, or even a pastor control us, abuse us, and hurt us in His name. Understand this: the abuser only latched onto His reputation, authority, and image. They did not represent Him. Furthermore, God intends to judge those who hurt others — especially those who hijack His name and glory to accomplish it.
We need to humble ourselves and realize that human logic is not meant to stand in judgment over God. Reason was given so we could understand enough about Him to call out for His grace and mercy. Until we repent and humble ourselves, we are never going to be able to understand even the most basic things about God. God has pinned you down. You have reached the bottom. Where will you go from here? Don’t crawl away into idolatry and immorality. Grab the hand that is reaching out for you.