Purpose-> God Is: What God Is Not

God is not a meerkat. Now, though most would think such a commonsense statement deserves little attention, let's not be so presumptuous. For some not only think God created the meerkat, or that a meerkat is a god, but that all is god, including meerkats. There are so many conceptions of God, though reasonably much fewer concerning meerkats; but all these conceptions are so different in crucial respects, it simply cannot be so that all are correct.

Similarly, such claims of 'God the meerkat' are far less farfetched to the worshiper of created things. Such a one might tell me, "No, you have got it all wrong. God is a Sun- or Moon, or some zodiac constellation." I'd respond as such, "I joke my friend. For God is none of those things!"

What I am doing here is presenting the Christian conception of God, and it's deep-rooted contrasts with other belief systems.

Any worshiper of created things, what I'll call a pagan, has fallen far from the Christian marker. By created things I mean things thought to be created by God and things certainly created by humans. I mean the physical universe just as much as I mean Zeus, or countless other gods of ancient mythology. It seems strange that the air around me or the voiceless star beyond would rule me. But I could believe in something that is both around me and beyond. For nothing pagan is like this. Mythology is purely of things beyond, and creation-worship is purely of things around. Who could you call on when the god of agriculture wanted your son for breakfast? Some people even gave into those demands, though who made them is unclear. What is clear is that it was not God. It is not God who sends out solar flares from 93 million miles away nor who pulls in the tides. Christ's words reiterate this: "The Lord your God is one Lord." And equally powerful, "God is spirit."

And to just swiftly make the assertion and keep on walking, God is not dead. He is not dead in the ontological sense (meaning He actually died, and was previously alive), nor in the evolutionary sense (namely that the evolution of man has discovered that God is incompatible with reality). A wise psalmist, calling God the living, even sought an appointment with Him, saying, "My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I go meet with Him?" All that we know about ourselves and the world, all the most common questions that men's minds tremble to answer, are answered when we meet God.

Deep in the herculean heart of Asia are witnesses to different things, all of which I only discuss for the sake of their differences with Christianity, not with each other. However, to be a Hindu is often to not be a Buddhist or Jain. For Hinduism has so many concepts of God. Christians certainly disagree on certain details, but to denounce a universally believed doctrine would certainly cause you to denounce Christianity as a whole. Some Hindus believe that all is God, others that there is no God. No such distinction can be made in Christianity while retaining the label; if you believe that God doesn't exist, you cannot be a Christian. To conclude, any conception of God that allows the possibility of His nonexistence is at odds with the Christian conception of God.

Buddhists are essentially in the group called 'God Is Dead.' Buddha saw all questions concerning God or creation as worthless. Therefore, since Christians do not believe such questions are worthless, but because God exists, are of ultimate worth, these two world views are incompatible. Jainism as well denies a divine creator.

I must point out here that my purpose here is not firstly apologetic, meaning I'm not here t make a case for Christianity, but to discover the purposes of God's most important choices.

A Meaning For Everything

I heard a phrase repeating itself around me, like a confirmation reconfirming itself. I'd imagine if I did nothing with it, I'd be that man the joke is made of; the one who drowned when the divinely sent opportunities were ignored. Perhaps it'd be told something like this. "A young man loved the knowledge of God. So, God offered Him the Message. The man passed it down. Then God offered doctrine. Still no response. Finally God offered purpose. After that, as I hope the ending would go, the young man's life was changed." Certainly success would turn the joke on its head, but it would still be a joke. Rather than the Devil telling it, it's me telling it to him.

Anyways, the phrase was spoken as the following: "When you don't know the purpose for something, abuse is inevitable." Perfection is always one, and deviation is always many. And for an awkwardly, obviously crippled species as ours, deviation is practically the norm. And my diction here is precise. We are crippled for we once walked right, and the deviation is only practically normal for us, because it is never spiritually normal. In practice, we see that is appears normal, but in the heart the damage lingers undeniably.

As I pondered this timeless fundamental, it's clarity and richness in sense allowed me to adopt it as a personal tenet at once. After reading Doctrine by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Greshears, and completing the book's study guide, I had a curious idea to merge these two studies. Chapter three of Doctrine, for example, was "Image: God Loves." Out of this curiosity, I wondered why. What is the purpose of God's image, and what does it have to do with love? Or, what are the purposes of God's judgment against sin?

This is my answer to the joke. My answers to the curiosity concerning the divine...man, and the good news surrounding Him, are going to spell themselves out here. I will pick God's brain and investigate with child-like sincerity the point of God's most important choices. For everything He's done has meaning, has purpose. And everything we do should too.

A Bride to A Husband

Every Man's Battle, written by Fred Stoeker and Stephen Arterburn, shifted even what I thought were the most human passages in the Bible to a God-centered perspective. In a specific instance, they did it with The Songs of Solomon.

How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!

Your eyes behind your veil are doves.

Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon;
your mouth is lovely.

You are altogether beautiful, my darling;
there is no flaw in you.

You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
you have stolen my heart
with one glance of your eyes,
with one jewel of your necklace.

How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride!
How much more pleasing is your love than wine,
and the fragrance of your perfume
more than any spice!

Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
Your hair is like royal tapestry;
the king is held captive by its tresses.

How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
my love, with your delights!

Songs 4:1,3,7,9,10;7:5,6

The authors also asked if I, in reading this excerpt, felt Christ's desire for me. And I in return.

This was my reply.

The scripture almost seems purified by Christ. I see Jesus holding me, like a newborn baby, telling me softly I've no flaw as His new creation. I sense Him stare in my eyes, and as His heart beat quickens, He gives it all to me and, winking, asks me how I took it so gently from Him. I picture Him stroke my hair back, a Father like a husband and child as a bride, captivated by my tresses and cherishing my locks. Oh Christ loves me so much! He stands firm as the Father of fathers, holding me when I sleep. I couldn't wish for a better God to share a covenant with. He certainly is salvation come true.

Unpardonable Sin

"Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” - Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

A hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton said in his book Orthodoxy. "...for I thought (and still think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin." One may first ask, "Well who's right?" My question is, "Are these guys talking about two different things or not?"

The story here begins in the third chapter of the Bible's second (Mark's) Gospel. Amidst trying to have a meal with His followers, Jesus is thoroughly interrupted by a crowd and some "teachers of the law." In the two chapters prior, Jesus gets baptized, fasts forty days and shuts Satan up, gets some disciples, drives out demons, heals a bunch of people and prays in between, meets Matthew, dines with sinners, gets interrogated about fasting AND the Sabbath, completes His search of all twelve disciples, and finally, where we begin, is accused by his own family and the religious teachers. So we can tell that his relationship with these individuals has started off very shaky.

Speaking carelessly, they said Jesus was possessed by Beelzebul, basically the Hebrew word for Satan. Then Jesus made that statement I began with. Essentially, the teachers called God the devil.

Earlier, I also suggested a possible parity of sincere pessimism and the instance of the blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. Firstly, let's be clear of what sincere pessimism is, as distinct from insincere pessimism. The latter is displayed when one, in expecting good over bad, grants his hope onto another. In doing so, he's also displaying faith and love. However tainted with pessimism this hope may be, the worst it can become is insincere pessimism. It happens when an older sister lets her constantly clumsy younger brother do the chore he's been begging to do, hoping but doubting he'll succeed. Sincere pessimism is the hopeless, doubtless grimace of caring no longer, believing no longer nor loving any longer.

Sincere pessimism is the inability to doubt in another because of the inability to hope in another. It is when one cannot even fathom the success of a particular other. It is when a parent could hope nothing for their own child. It is when a person tells another, "Thank God I'm not like you."

Again, were Christ and Chesterton referring to two different things? What kind of person must one be to look God in the face and see a devil? A sincerely pessimistic person. They must feel so hopeless, that they'd doubt God would love them enough to die for them. They would first believe a self-proclaimed Messiah to be a devil than to believe God would put humility before reputation. For you to see sin in the sinless, to curse the blessed, to rebuke the only thing in this entire universe capable of saving your soul, is for you to give up all hope.

The Bible is not a story of fairy tales, but imagination, not make-believe but of what makes belief. To look God in the face and see the unimaginable love, or to look God in the face and utter the unpardonable slander.

The Complete God

It is certainly easy to end up falling victim to erroneous decisions, dangerous people and hence, difficult circumstances. It's not a stretch to say God Himself has faced grim circumstances. Nevertheless He retains His perfection. For us people who know nothing but imperfection, it gives us an opportunity to see how perfect God really is. Inherent in His perfection is completeness, for perfection implies He lacks nothing and has never lacked. Hence He is whole; hence He is complete.

For the first fifteen hundred years of His relationship to Israel, it is clear that God's revelations were limited in context. There were always only specific people who'd directly commune with God, people such as Moses, the Aaronic priesthood and after their sin of the golden calf, the Levites. But God was known to an exclusive group who managed the holiness of the people, who were even commanded to bear the iniquity of the nation by means of certain rites (Leviticus 10:17).

Now however, with the New Covenant, we know what God is like. Firstly, according to Colossians 1:15, Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. Therefore, we have been revealed the true nature of what it means to be divine. Secondly, we have an "advocate", a sort of invisible social worker guiding us (John 15:26). This "advocate" is the Holy Spirit.

And what do we learn about God? We learn that God knows true freedom, firsthand. For being a complete character, needing nothing, there is no circumstance which can take Him outside of Himself. This is the true freedom. Take a person, who believes freedom is circumstantial. But all I'd have to do is place him back in that circumstance and he'd be bound once again. This freedom is false because it is temporal. God urges us to a permanent freedom, one that is unending and unchanging.

It is from this completeness that we get the "lacking nothing" of James 1. It is from completeness that we get Matthew 5:48, a highlight of the Sermon on the Mount. Be perfect as God. Be complete. Be whole. Lack nothing.

From a personal perspective, dealing with sexual impurity( in New York City!) is a perfect example. I must master completeness in character or else fall to sin each time temptation arises.
A complete person can be tossed into a storm of temptation but walk out unscathed. What is your weakness? Flaw? What's holding you back? Without gaining "lacking-nothing", how do you expect to meet that need?