My God...

            Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29)

           Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

          …Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

          He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.” (Genesis 18:23-25 & 32)

 

             “I would never worship a god who….”

            “My god would never ….”

            I hear people say things like this, and I don’t know quite how to respond because if they are setting the rules by which their god is permitted to act, they are the god, not the god about whom they make such statements. But at the same time, I think of passages like the one above, in which Abram argued with God or Jacob spent the night wrestling with God at Peniel.

            We’re told in the first passage that God is a consuming fire, and we should treat Him with due respect. The point of this passage seems to be that God is God, He has the right to do as He sees fit, and we should treat Him with respect He’s due. Sometimes, I’ve heard it said that to say, “No, Lord,” is a sort of contradiction. If He is Lord, we have no right to say, “No.” And yet…there are times when God listens and grants what we have asked even though it contradicts what he’s said. Moses told God that if God wasn’t going to go with them, Moses wouldn’t go, either, and the surrounding nations would mock Him.

            I’m not saying that we should treat God with anything other than respect. But how do we deal with these seemingly contradictory ideas? Is there a time when we can and should rightly say that “My God would never…”?

            There is one difference between the statements. When the person says, “My god would never…” or “I would never worship a god who…” they are talking about their god or about God. What Abram, Jacob, and Moses did was argue with God. The one who says “Never” is dividing himself from God, while the one who argues with God is coming together with God because you can’t argue otherwise.