daily java

Daily Java: He made the earth by his power;
he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.
When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar;
he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth.
He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses.
Every man is senseless and without knowledge;
every goldsmith is shamed by his idols. Images are a fraud; they have no breath in them.
They are worthless, the objects of mockery; when their judgment comes, they will perish.
He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these,  for he is the Maker of all things,
including the tribe of his inheritance— the Lord Almighty is his name. (Jeremiah 51:15-19)

I saw something the other day that I am seeing more and more. It has been around since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, but I suppose I have just begun noticing it. It was a comment about Jesus not liking someone because they did a particular thing. It was using Jesus as a political and social tool to get people to do what the person wanted.

It is akin to the idea of God blessing America. While America did a great thing by forming itself on godly principles, at the same time, God is the God of the world, not one country.

In the past, any conflict America was in was characterized as the forces of God (America) fighting the forces of evil (Germany, Iraq, whatever). God became a proprietary force. He is ours and he likes us better than he likes you.

While I believe God blesses those who do his will, at the same time he is owned by no one. If he were, he would not be God.

What we want is a God who is all-powerful and can do anything, but also who bends to our will. What we have is a God who is all-powerful and who does whatever he wants, regardless of what we say or want.

The problem is, you cannot have an all-powerful God who is also subject to your whims. He either is God or he isn’t.

We have a God who made the earth by his power. Through his strength, the universe was formed. A god you can from yourself, no matter how well-meaning you may be is a god that is powerless. To rely on such a creature shames you. It makes you look foolish. Anything you can make, no matter how big or strong or wide-reaching only has your power.

The ancient Greeks and Romans tried to make gods to do stuff. But their gods were just like them, only bigger. They got madder than ordinary mortals, they loved harder, the had bigger fits of jealous rage – but they were just extensions of people.

It is like the scene in The Jerk with Steve Martin where he gets a lot of money and builds a new house for his family. As the scene goes out, you realize that it is just exactly like their old house, which was a shack, only it is a double sized shack. The door is eight feet tall, the walls are longer, the windows are bigger, but it is a giant replica of their old house, the shack.

When we make a god, we do the same. It is just like us only bigger and meaner, more petty, more jealous, more silly. That is because we just cannot envision anything greater than us. Our god will do whatever we would do if we were God.

So our god would be worthless. We would have accomplished nothing. Such a god, one who is controlled and manipulated is not worth serving.

God by nature is greater than anything we can imagine. There is no way we can understand him. That isn’t to say we don’t try, but we know from the beginning that he is greater than anything we can imagine.

Or he wouldn’t be God.