God, the Rock and Me

I was in junior high the first time I heard the question. And, it kind of shook me. I knew it was sort of a joke …sort of.  But somewhere along the way I had gotten it into my head that it was my job as a Christian to “always have an answer” to these kinds of puzzling questions.  So I wracked my adolescent brain to come up with an explanation that would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind (especially my own) about the existence of God.

So, what was the question?  Here it is, “Can God make a rock so large that He himself cannot lift it?”

That’s it. This was the cause of my early-teen spiritual angst. It has been called the omnipotence paradox. I knew it wasn’t right, but somehow it still troubled me. I think it inadvertently brushed up against my own deeply hidden spiritual disquiet. Beneath the surface of my normal Christian life was an emerging harvest of questions and doubts that would eventually blossom into a period of atheism in my life. It wasn’t the question itself that bothered me as much as the niggling awareness that many of my answers did not even really work for me. 

“Is God powerful enough . . . ?”  Hidden in the question is the subtle implication that, “if He can’t do everything, then perhaps He can’t do anything.”

It is, of course, all word-play. God is all powerful. “All” is all encompassing. If there is something more than “all” then “all” is no longer “all.”

The question is an attempt to find a limit to God’s power. What it reveals is the limit of our logic and language. There is no end to God, but we can very quickly reach the end of ourselves. Our ability to comprehend much of the world around us is really very limited. All of us, on most subjects, are two or three questions away from, “I don’t know.”  The “I don’t knows” of our life create a tension between all the things we think we know and the gaping holes of uncertainty that tell us we really don’t.   And so, we are led to an uncomfortable and yet inevitable need for finding peace with mystery.

If there is a god he must necessarily be shrouded in mystery. Any god that we could completely understand would not be much of a god. So, by his very nature, God is beyond our reach. This is why the story of Jesus’ incarnation is such a surprise. God chooses to reveal His unknowable nature through His Son.

John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

God reveals Himself to men by becoming a man. If this makes sense to you the first time you hear it, then you are not paying attention. The mystery of how God can become a man . . . must stop us.  We have no way to make sense of this.  The idea that the God who made everything, would write himself into our story and then for a time be both within while remaining outside is literally incomprehensible.  We have no way to make sense of such a mystery.

The Christian faith is not really about making things understandable.  It is about making God known. How God does what he does is not explained, but who he is, is literally fleshed out. The particulars of God remain mysterious but he chooses to pierce through the mystery and reveal his heart through the story of Jesus.

“For God so loved the world that gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17.

The important part of everything is that everything was created by a God who loves. God’s love moves Him to act. And, the action He takes is to sacrifice himself through Jesus so that we, His creation, can have life and be rescued from perishing.

My journey out of atheism was not about answers. I found my way back to faith by asking “the God that I did not believe in” to reveal himself to me. And he did. I know that sounds like the end of a bad Christian movie, but it’s what I experienced. I encountered Jesus and he began to change me. I still don’t have a good explanation to lots of my questions, but I do have an answer.

Jesus is the rock of our salvation. God lifts him up and he draws all of creation (including people like me) back to himself. God’s love, as demonstrated through the story of Jesus, changes everything. Jesus is the ultimate omnipotence paradox.

As you embrace this Lenten journey ask, “God, let me see you.  Reveal yourself.” If we seek, we will find, and we will be lifted.

(Copyright 2014, Sam Howard)