Knowing the God who is

Last night I caught up on news items and different blogs I visit. One that caught my attention was a blog post titled, "Why I'm not a Christian." As I read the author's description of the God he didn't believe in I thought to myself, "I don't believe in that god either!" It's fascinating to me how we "repackage" what we don't want to believe in so that any sensible person would agree with us completely.

A.W. Tozer wrote in The Knowledge of the Holy, "Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, "What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man." Our understanding of God, our beliefs about him, will determine much about us including our decisions and the course of our lives.

A man who wants nothing to do with God will describe him in such a way that it makes perfect sense why no one would want to deal with the God he denies. When you describe the God you don't believe in you are telling me much about what you do believe. Your very words tell me the theology that will guide your life. Now, you may ask, "How can an atheist have a theology?" But in fact he does. When someone who doesn't believe in God tries to describe to me that God he denies he's telling me his theology. That theology will determine the course of his life. Fascinating, isn't it, that theology affects the atheist as much as it does the theist?

As I mentioned earlier, if the God described by this atheist author was in fact the God of the bible I would be an atheist as well, but what he described was no god at all. Like the ancient Greeks he had created a god of fantasy that looked so ridiculous that only fools and children would believe in him, and so this author seems the wisest of men to deny the god he has created. But wisdom is easy when all others are described as fools.

Sadly, this author, who doesn't believe in the god he has created, is missing the God who is. I wish he could really know the God who is. His views of life, history and the crisis of man would change completely. But this author may have chosen first to be an atheist and so created the parody of god to justify his choice. I may never know. One of the leading atheists of the last generation said, "I refuse to believe in a God that I must be accountable to." For this man it was God's righteous judgement that he refused to submit to and because of that he dismissed God completely. Truthfully, the decision to deny God is rarely intellectual. Most atheists I have read make great pretense to intellectual reasons for their lack of belief, but it's much simpler than that. An atheist is created in many ways, but at the core is not information, but emotion. Something happened to that person. A prayer wasn't answered, a parent died, a tragedy happened, a desire for sin arose, whatever the reason a choice was made and an atheist was born.

I wish they could know the God who is. In the light of that knowledge, one day, every knee will bow in worship to him. I do wish this atheist author would discover the God who is. I think it would change everything for him.....to see the God who is always changes us. We are never the same again.