Saturday, April 16, 2011

God's incomprehensibility

Incomprehensible (in-kom-pri-hen-suh-buhl) -adjective

  1. Impossible to understand or comprehend

  2. Limitless; not limited or capable of being limited

If you have not yet read Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts, I suggest you stop reading this blog post and pick up the book immediately. It's SUPER good. And I'm not quite even a third of the way through the book! You know what that means, reader, right? It means it's definitely worth your time.


Here's why I can be only about a third of the way through the book and squeal about how amazing the book is: I got to chapter five.


"Oooh, chapter five. I totally understand," you say in your head sarcastically with a laugh. I'm telling you, out of what I've read so far, chapter five completely is mind-blowing. As in, while I was reading the chapter, my head hurt because my mind was blown like six times in a matter of a page or so. I found myself actually overwhelmed with emotion and questions and I was screaming in my head, "God, whaaaaaat!?"


Allow me to direct quote, please (if you're not interested in spoilers, then go pick up the book, because this is huge, good stuff):



In the Hebrew tradition, which splintered off into the Christian tradition, which is how I was raised, light is a metaphor. God makes a cosmos out of the nothingness, a molecular composition, of which He is not and never has been, as anything is limiting, and God has no limits. In this way, He isn't, and yet is. The poetic imagery is rather beautiful, stating that all we see and feel and touch, the hardness of dense atoms, the softness of a breeze (atoms perhaps loose as if in play) is the breath of God. And into this being, into this existence, God first creates light. This light is not to be confused with the sun and moon and stars, as they are not created until later. He simply creates light, a nonsubstance that is like a particle and like a wave, but perhaps neither, just some kind of traveling energy. A kind of magnetic wave. Light, then, becomes a fitting metaphor for a nonbeing who is. God, if like light, travels at the speed of light, and because space and time are mingled with speed, the speed of light is the magic, exact number that allows a kind of escape from time....Consider the complexity of light in light of the Hebrew metaphor: we don't see light, we see what it touches. It is more or less invisible, made from nothing, just purposed and focused energy, infinite in its power (it will never tire if fired into a vacuum, going on forever). How fitting, then, for God to create an existence, then a metaphor, as if to say, here is something entrely unlike you, outside of time, infinite in its power and thrust: here is something you can experience but cannot understand. Throughout the remainder of the Bible, then, God calls Himself light. (Miller 60-61)


Dear reader, when I went to bed after reading this passage, I realized that I finally understood what it meant to fear God, as they say in the Bible. Before, I just thought of it either as being in awe or as being scared witless. Now, I understand, but can hardly describe what it is, what I feel, but I know it's what it means to fear God, a God who is completely outside of everything and who Himself is not made of anything because He created everything we know!!

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