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Not Your Thoughts

             “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:16)

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26-27)

On of the claims of an agnostic I know seems to fit nicely with the passage from Isaiah. He wouldn’t say that God’s thought or ways are “higher” but that an omniscient, omnipresent, good God would – by definition – be so different from us that it would be folly to even pretend to have the tiniest clue about Him.

It sounds respectful, but his goal is to undermine the whole of Scripture and verses like the ones from Gensis 1 and 1 Corinthians. Those passages tell us that God designed us and made provision for us to be able to understand a small part of what God thinks and does, especially if He instructs us.

I partly agree with the agnostic. This is the reason I think it sound to reject so many religions and philosophies. The vast majority sound precisely like what a human would say. If you do this list of things, if your heart is lighter than a feather (not weighed down by evil), if you this, if you that… then you get to go to heaven.

The Judeo-Christian religions don’t work that way. Yes, there are lots of commandments, particularly in Judaism, but nothing in the Mosaic Law says that if you keep the Commandments that you will go to heaven. The Law was given to direct people into a way of earthly, temporal life that was just and good. The same is true of the commands given to the Christians.

What makes Christianity different (and yes, I’m repeating myself) is that in Christianity, mankind is doomed. We cannot be or do all that is necessary to win entrance to heaven. God stepped in and solved the problem. If God’s thoughts and ways are different from and higher than ours (and they are) then this is the sort of thing that should lead us to take a closer look at Christianity and the claims that it is ”man-made.”

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