The High Calling of Loving our Difficult God

Our Trinitarian God is big. He is complex. He is not easy.

If God were easy, then He would be easy to love. We could as easily wrap our minds and hearts around Him as we could wrap our arms. But our arms don’t reach, and neither do our minds or hearts. And so, we are tempted. 

We are tempted to take our big, complex God and make Him small and simple. We are tempted to refashion Him in our own image, so that He nicely aligns with our pleasures and preferences. We are tempted to shave off His “rough edges,” to make Him more comfortable, easier to live with. 

When we succumb to this temptation, we are no longer worshipping “the one, true God.” Instead, we are worshipping a false god of our own making, of our own imagination, and we become guilty of idolatry. God says in Psalm 50:21, “You thought I was just like you.” It is clear that what we thought was wrong. 

When we puzzle about God in our minds, it is easy to imagine God as we want Him to be. But then, when we read our Bibles carefully, as for the first time, we begin to see some things that don’t fit well with our god-formulas. 

The Bible shows God to be sovereign, and we want a sovereign God, just so long as He is not too sovereign. But a God cannot be “kind-of” sovereign. Either He is, or He is not. And so, when we take steps to limit God’s sovereignty, we are taking steps toward idolatry.

But on the other hand, the Bible also shows God to exhibit amazing flexibility in his dealings with men and women, so much so that it seems that our immutable, unchangeable God actually … changes. And so when we contradict what God has revealed about Himself, we are, again, guilty of idolatry. We must be careful.

And, we want a God who is universally honored. And, He is not. He is mocked, not universally, but widely. His existence is denied. His character impugned. And certainly, His worship is neglected. We want a God that we can look up to. And it would sure be a lot easier to look up to Him if everyone else did as well. And they don’t.

But not only is he not honored, but He actually humiliated Himself, in the death of His Son, according to His own purposes - part of His sovereignty; part of His flexibility; part of His mercy - and for all these reasons, and more, we should love Him - our difficult God.