Humility Required
| God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few. (Ecclesiastes5:2) |
I pray it will be meaningful and impactful.
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It was 1988 and I was a first year theology student. These were the opening words of our first year Systematic Theology Professor Johan Heyns:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, don't think that we will be putting God on a microscope slide and examining Him.
We can never be the Subject who will examine God as the Object.
Anyone who attempts to examine God will discover that God is always the Subject and that it is us who look up from the microscope slide to get a small glimpse of the One who sees us in entirety."
Over the next few weeks, we will be talking about who God is and what He is like.
This should always be done with great humility.
Even our ability to perceive Him and think about Him are a gift from Him.
We see only what He reveals to us and only what our minds can cope with.
(The brain-bending photographs from the new James Webb telescope come to mind in this regard and the photographs aren't photographs of God, just photographs of His handiwork!)
Normally when we describe something or someone, we are setting the boundaries. We talk about delimiting and delineating... This is normal when we are the subject describing an object. But when we talk about God we can never be the subject.
Whatever we say about God does not define or delimit Him, but makes a demand on us to respond.
If we describe God as Holy then we are called to be holy in as much as we can
If we describe God as love then we are called to love in as much as we can.
If we describe God as Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscient then we are called to worship because we cannot be of those!
The writer of Ecclesiastes took the razor of pragmatism to the complexities of life and the meaning of it, and yet, when it came to God, he refused to be reductionist - he insisted on wonder:
"God is in Heaven - you are on earth."
God is the Subject. You and I are the object.
And so we let our words be few...
I pray our series will be one where we will attempt to describe just a little (few words) of what we understand about God and then I pray that we will contemplate in worshipful wonder!
