You know...I don't think we take enough time to think through what being "God" means. It's impossible to fully grasp. God is unique and has a set of rules that apply only to Him. Just wanted to throw out some random thoughts on the subject.
God is perfect...He lacks NOTHING. In other words, He does not need you or I. You and I must act on the basis of need. We need food. We need relationship. We need rest. God is in a total state of perfection...in other words, at every moment, He has NO need. In turn, He never acts out of want or need...He acts ONLY out of free choice. We cannot understand that, because every decision we make, every action we attempt, is, at it's most free, a coerced choice or a "forced choice". At some level, every choice we make is effected by "need". In fact, our entire life is colored by need.
God owns everything. That's me, that's you, that's your Mom, your house, your stuff...it's all His. In the faux ownership thing that we live everyday, really just minding HIS stuff, we don't like anyone telling us what to do with our (HIS) stuff...well, neither does God, and even more, because it is His stuff...and it really is. He's not caught in the fake state of ownership like we are, attempting to "own" everything, including our own bodies. He really owns it all. Unlike us, He's not just holding it until the real owner decides to take it back.
God is not moral. Before you lynch me, follow me a little. I'm not saying that God is immoral. When we say that something is "moral", we are saying that here is a "moral standard" and this thing/act/person conforms to that standard, therefore they are moral. God conforms to no standard...He is the standard. It would be more correct to say "Moral is God." The standard by which we determine something being right or moral or just is what God is. That's the only requirement. In this sense, God is not just...Just is God.
Whatever God decides to do in the moment is right. He is not bound as we are, by a standard that is out there that depicts justice or righteousness that we try to model.
For example, if God decided to completely flip the rules of life tomorrow (which He would never do, because He is unchanging and consistent to His character, but for sake of argument)...if He did...say...make murdering people right and correct. That's just crazy, but I'm just picking something "nuts" to make a point. If he made that switch in morality, then that would be the right and moral thing to do, because He is the standard of right...there is no other.
For us, we can easily fall into a very American mentality of thinking that the authority needs to meet our approval. God cannot be judged or evaluated. There would never be an evaluation that comes back but "that's the most perfect action to be taken". Why? Because whatever God does, by definition of "being God", is absolutely right. The misconception that we all fall into at times is that there is a standard set that we are supposed to judge God by, that He should meet to determine if He deserves our allegiance. That is completely wrong and it makes terribly misguided conceptions of God. It lacks an understanding of what it means to be God. Think about these questions...
What if whatever you decided to do was instantly a law of the Universe?
What if gravity was your decision?
What if what you felt defined reality?
What if the concept of perfection was based on what you are?
What if the way you are determined the way the world worked?
What if physics was based on you and not the other way around?
Getting the picture...to question God is not to understand who or what He is and to demonstrate an ignorance of life itself.
There is no effort required to be perfect or all-powerful or all-knowing...it's just who He is. It's more natural to Him to be all of those things than it is for us to attempt to breathe. Easy and hard are irrelevant terms to God when "nothing is impossible" for you. As I said, the normal rules and assessment techniques don't apply when it comes to God and when we attempt to say things like "God didn't do that right" or "God is wrong" or "I think it would have been better to have done", we just spout ignorance of the reality of the situation, not some sort of evaluative wisdom that God didn't understand somewhere.
And the glorious thing is, in the middle of this situation, that He is aware of our almost insulting ignorance and He's quite willing to walk patiently with us through the complicated and impossible process of understanding...why? Because He loves us that much...and because, nothing is impossible for Him...another by-product of being God.
Please continue to pray for us at Bay West Church as we try to be the church of Jesus to west Palm Bay Florida.
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