I’ve run into an enigma here and there where people want to keep the idea of God, but they don’t want to agree with him. And so some find themselves venturing down a path where God can still exist, but his opinion doesn’t really matter. With nothing really to guide their opinion about him other than their own feelings, they eventually create a god out of their own experience. In time, they either make themselves into their own god or they meet a different god that’s willing to identify with them.
We don’t need the Bible to address this conundrum—we just need theo-logic. If God exists, then he is wiser and better than us. If God exists, then he is right about things. We, the created beings of God, cannot become wiser, better, or more right than God himself. The created cannot become better than the Creator. This was the very fault of Satan who was filled with pride to the point that he tried to usurp God’s cosmic throne. How could a created being think he could be better than the Creator? This sounds like pure madness to us. Or at least it does until we realize we do the same thing.
Paul waxes poetic about the mind of God, saying, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?'” This is theology put rightly. Like many, Paul had crafted God in his own line of thinking until God messed him up for it. Then Paul realized how much wiser and better God was than he had originally thought.
We, too, often miss the glory of God’s wisdom because we’re too stuck in our pride thinking we’re smarter than him: “Well if I was God, I wouldn’t have done it that way.” But such thinking is misled, because we’re not God, and we’d do good to remember that. Instead, when we don’t understand God’s choices, judgments, or wisdom and we don’t know how to make sense of it, we would do much better to pray, “God, only you are good. Please help me understand whatever I am missing here that makes me think otherwise.”
*This devotional was created out of the themes of Romans 11:25-36 found in today’s reading at CommonPrayer.net. Below are the various AI-created pictures I typed into existence via Mid Journey to mock up artwork for today’s post.
Jamin Bradley 