Voltaire once said,
“In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to
repay the favor ever since.” Why do we try to cast God in our own image? We
could call it a failure of imagination or a failure to listen to the revelation
of God through creation, scripture, and our lives. Most likely, though, it is
an effort to control God. If God thinks like us and acts like us, then we know
what we are dealing with. As Paul said in the letter to
the Colossians, we need to put aside the “greed that is idolatry”—the worship
of idols that, we believe, will satisfy our greed for wealth, success, praise,
and security because we create these idols ourselves and thus can control them.
The true God,
on the other hand, is mysterious and unpredictable. We do know some things about
God because they have been revealed to us over and over throughout human
history: God is merciful, compassionate, loving, trustworthy, and creative. However,
because God is continually making all things new, God also constantly surprises
us with new invitations, new companions, and new revelations that challenge our
circumscribed, narrow understanding of what life with God is meant to be.
It is very
human to want certainty regarding how God will act and what the future will
hold. Such a desire is futile, of course. However, we can pray for the openness
and trust displayed by American civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy, who
said, “I don’t know what the future may hold, but I know who hold the future.”
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