Debate 5: None like God

The Bible contains many Scriptures that convey the fact that there is none like God. For now, we’ll take that at face value. There are also many Scriptures that say what God is like. Rather than delve into them all, for brevity’s sake, I will take the two most common metaphors. The ones most people know. First, God is like a good shepherd. Taking this together with the fact that there are none like God, we can guess that the function of a shepherd only covers a fraction of the attributes commonly associated with the God of the Bible. After all, we know there are shepherds and some quite good at shepherding, but since there is none like God, either they are not as good as God at the task, or the job description of the shepherd is incomplete compared to the reality of God—probably both. The best shepherd that we know cannot claim to have created the flock and the fields and the streams nor can he know every danger or hole or snare that could harm his flock. God does claim to know all this.

Second, God is like a father. Being a father myself, I can comprehend more and illustrate more using this metaphor than the other. Later I will, but here’s what I find: the more I learn about being a father, and the more God reveals to me about Himself, the more truth I find in the Bible’s declaration that He is like a father. I expect it is the same for the shepherd. Nevertheless, we know that the metaphor is only an imperfect representation of the reality. God is perfect and able to encapsulate everything we learn about good fathers and good shepherds. We are not perfect, so no matter how good we become as fathers or shepherds, we will still discern only a fraction of the truth that these metaphors offer. We will never encapsulate God. God is infinitely more complex than we are, so we cannot know God perfectly, the way He knows us. We can only know what He reveals to us. J.I. Packer explains this pretty well in his book, Knowing God (InterVarsity Press, 1973).

Knowing God is a more complex business than knowing another person, just like knowing my neighbor is a more complex business than knowing a house or knowing a book, or a language. The more complex the object, the more complex is the knowing of it. . . . We recognize degrees in our knowledge of our fellow men . . . according to how much, or how little they have opened up to us. . . .Thus, the quality and extent of our knowledge of other people depends more on them than on us. Our knowing them is more directly the result of their allowing us to know them than of our attempting to get to know them.

While I’d like to just plop down a page and a half of text from his book, I will sum up his point with a question. If knowing people well depends on them judging us a worthy confidant as Mr. Packer contends; and if knowing great, important, and influential people delights us as name-droppers everywhere contend; then, how much more should those who know God be delighted that they know Him? I’ll let you think about it. You can find what the Bible says about it here: Jeremiah 9:23-24.

All men can know things about God. Many great truths can be gleaned from His works (creation), or from revelation, (the Bible) but without knowing Jesus, they will only know about God. This is because intimate knowledge of God comes through His Holy Spirit, given to those who have believed Jesus. Without this, men will always see God as they see themselves. Perhaps they will imagine Him a little better than they, or more powerful than they, or older and wiser than they, but more or less the same. They will imagine Him the same way they imagine some great, distant relative (a benevolent grandfather perhaps) or a ruler having absolute power (a good king or even a tyrant).

The application of this to the masturbation debate seems clear enough to me, but you may be wondering exactly how this exposes the error of our hypothetical question about masturbating in front of Barbara. (If you just made a face because you came into this post unaware of its placement in a larger series, follow the navigation links at the bottom of this post to catch up. The question I’m referring to was in part 4.) The answer: a person with no firsthand knowledge of God can only utilize the imperfect metaphors that fit in their mind to formulate theories of God. The more narrow or imperfect the mind, the more narrow or imperfect is the theory. In this case, NEGATIONofP sees God as a person he doesn’t want to disappoint. Let’s say a parent because it goes along with the metaphor described above. We can then assume Barbara is his mother. Disgusting, but here we are. He doesn’t want her to know he is depraved, so he never masturbates in front of her, and to his credit, stops masturbating every time she comes in the room—reasonable enough. To his sophomoric brain, this is proof positive that all people will always stop doing a thing they believe is wrong, whenever their mom walks in the room. Now, presto-chango, substitute God for mom, what do you get? Nobody actually believes in God. If they did, they would never masturbate because God is in every room – even the shower!

I’m aware that every person must go through sophomore year if they intend to graduate, and the only stupid question is the one not asked. But this is somewhat ridiculous. I hope no one considers the ridiculous nature of the scenario as just my way of insulting NEGATIONofP. That isn’t my intention. If you watched the masturbation debate on YouTube, you’ll know this scenario was fairly close to the scenario in his video. It betrays two things about him. One: he doesn’t know much about God, and two: he thinks his parents/friends/loved ones are idiots. Mom washes the towels. She knows!

I love my children. I want them to respect me and love me. In spite of this, I do things in front of them that I should not do. Sometimes, I lose my temper and get angry at little things. I raise my voice. Sometimes, I discipline them when I should listen to them. And when I’m tired, I tend to let them go a little wild when I should discipline them. I’ve lied to them, broken promises to them. I’m not a perfect father by any standard, but no matter how angry or how disappointed I am with their behavior, there is nothing they could do to make me love them less. I will do everything in my limited power to correct them and steer them in the right direction, but ultimately, my job will come to an end and they will be sinners, just like me. After my best effort, grace will still be their best hope.

That’s it for today. Next, I’ll cover the grace-based relationship in more detail.

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