If God is God . . .

This morning I read a new blog written by a dear friend from college. I was excited to see that she is now blogging because she is rather a gypsy and difficult to track. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve seen her since leaving Athens nearly twelve years ago. Interestingly, she is also using blogging to help develop discipline in her life. As you well know I began this blog with the same goal and I am thrilled to see how she will use this challenge. I am greatly encouraged that I am not the only female nearing her mid-thirties who struggles with discipline!

As she progressed through her post I was disheartened to see revealed her belief that the lives of humanity would be more full and fulfilling if we opened ourselves to “The Voice.” My friend goes on to describe this voice as an inner guide that will lead to happiness and prosperity if only we would take the time to listen. Though I want to chalk this up to Jiminy Cricket singing, “Always let your conscience be your guide,” she takes the definition of this voice one step further and permits this voice any number of names including, but not limited to: inner wisdom or connection to the life force, intuition, the divine, the great spirit, the universal intelligence, God.

Now guys, I love this sweet friend and I am certainly not knocking her attempt at a better life. I think there are entirely too many of us, myself included, who live life too safely and miss out on the adventure and abundance that is freely offered to us. I also know many people who claim this Deepak Chopra-style of religion and are completely satisfied to be guided by their inner goodness to a life in which they claim fulfillment. This voice is she is seeking to find can be one or more of the many things she named or something completely different and lacking a name, but it cannot be any of those things and also be God.

You see, by definition if there is a GOD then there is no other god. If there is an absolutely powerful creator-being in the universe he cannot and would not have created something as powerful as himself. A belief in a definite God does not allow for a belief in lesser beings or pseudo-gods that can also be omnipotent, omniscient guides. Sure, you are free (especially here in the USA) to believe what you want to and define God by whatever definition you so choose. But if you are honest and truthful at some point you must come to the question – If there is a God, a true GOD, how does he define himself?

And dear friends, this is nearly the entire reason, concise and definite, I believe in One True God and I believe that God is indeed the God of the Bible. The God of scripture has defined himself clearly and declared himself knowable to a dark and wicked humanity (in whom he has stated there is nothing good – certainly not anything worth seeking to follow). There is no other god in the universe claiming absolute truth and, if God is God, shouldn’t he have a corner on that market? I will be the first to admit that our Americanized, antiseptic Christianity has done the One True God few favors in helping the world understand who he is. The last hundred years have found churches to be social halls filled with brain-dead drones rather than gatherings of believers excited and changed by the understanding of what God has revealed about himself. But, because he is God, he has chosen to awaken an entire generation to the understanding that we don’t have to guess and decide for ourselves who God is; he has clearly revealed himself in scripture. We just need to take the time to investigate what he has revealed and not wallow in what we think we know or someone in a pulpit has told us we should believe.

Tonight I won’t go in to the veracity of the scriptures and how they have proven themselves truthful and trustworthy throughout history. I just wanted to take a moment to ask you to think about how you are defining God and what you are calling a god. Are you wasting your life worshiping an idol of your own imagination you call God; who is comfortable and loving, but lacking in every other attribute the Bible claims of the One True God? If you are searching for a god who can indeed make your life fulfilled and fulfilling look closely at what you give credence and what the gods you choose to follow are claiming. If your findings point toward anything other than a God who has defined himself in absolute truth, absolute power and absolute authority I would sincerely question any claim to god-ness made.