(bear with me....it's a long one, but worth the read I think)
Have you ever tried to, “figure out who God is,” or "understand what His will for your life is,” or “plausibly explain the trinity,” or “make sense of why God does what he does?” I’m sure if you are like me the answer is, “Yes.” For some reason I have been in this space where God is asking, no, telling me to release my desire to figure out, understand, explain or make sense of Him. What I am realizing is that in my limited ability to comprehend God there is Paradox to my belief of who I want Him to be, and as a result of this, God becomes somewhat of a Mystery to me which ultimately creates Tension in my ability to believe in Him. So what do I do with this? How do I function in my relationship with God? How do I help others function in this post modernistic world where people look for a truth that works for them?
Several times in the last month God has brought me to Genesis 3, Exodus 3 and the book of Job. All of which have a degree of paradox, mystery and/or tension baked into each story.
Eve, in Genesis 3 looked at this “thing” that was going to give her knowledge to the why, how, when and what questions of God. Scriptures says, “when [she] saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” She did gain some knowledge, but not what she wanted. Ultimately she was deceived into thinking that this "thing" was good, it seemed pleasing and desirable at the time, and that eating this fruit was in no way wrong, but rather a good thing. Emotionally it met her criteria for explaining a truth that worked for her. She wanted to know and be like God so Satan preyed on her weakness and convinced her that it was o.k., that it was the right way.
Moses in Exodus is standing in front of God, knowing that it is the God of the universe, there is no doubt in his mind, yet he still asks the question, “what is your name? What shall I tell the Israelites your name is?" Moses asks this question because he had been raised in Pharaoh's house and had received his education through the Egyptian education system. He knew who all the false gods were, how they acted, what they did, he knew what to expect of them. So with this background he asks the God of Israel what his name is in order to set his, and the Israelites, expectation of how God would behave and what he would do. But God doesn't play by our rules. He answers Moses with, “I AM WHO I AM." In other words, I EXIST. Moses did not get his question answered the way he wanted, but he did get it answered the way God wanted to answer him.
Job is full of paradox, mystery and tension. What ultimately happens is that Job stays true to his faith in God but his entire system of understanding God is turned upside down. Job curses the day he was born and feels that everything he feared is coming true. He is in a state of disbelief, grief, doubt, questioning why, how, what. If anyone had any reason to doubt God, Job did. All of his council, including his wife, is to curse God and die. When God finally breaks his silence to Job He doesn't give Job the answer that he wants. Instead God questions how the creature can be a critic to the Creator by describing and asking Job of his knowledge about all of creation (38:1 - 39:30). Then in 40:2 God asks Job, "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?" In other words, "If you can explain all of these things then you have earned the right to question me and know my ways." Job doesn't answer. So God continues (40:6 - 41:34). Job ultimately repents by ceasing to use his religious system to manipulate God into his own beliefs about who God is and how he operated.
My point is this: Man today is no different than man has always been from the creation of time - we want God in a box! We want to be able to explain the paradox, mystery and tension that following God brings. We want a truth that "works" for our own beliefs & systems, so we adjust God to fit into them, when we should be adjusting our beliefs & systems to submit to what the Bible (His only inerrant written word) says about Him.
I don't claim to be an expert on either of these religions but there are two, obvious man-made, religions that do this. Joseph Smith's religion: The Church Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormonism) and Mohammad's religion: Muslim, an adherent religion of Islam. In the Islam creed Muslim's proclaim that Mohammad is God's final prophet. This is similar to the LDS religion (Mormonism) in which Joseph Smith claimed to be the first "latter-day" prophet, which assumes that he is the final prophet. One of the common threads of these religions is that they both refute the belief in the Trinity. In doing so, both religions reduce Jesus Christ from being God Incarnate to a mere prophet, making him no better than the founder of their own religion.
Note: Islamic tradition holds that Mohammad was not the founder but the restorer or the original monotheistic faith of Abraham, Moses and Jesus and other prophets (remember they don't consider Jesus to be God so it is now easy to fit Him into this new belief as just a prophet). The tradition also holds that Judaism and Christianity distorted the true teachings of these prophets in either interpretation or the original text or both.
With this blasphemous doctrine in place, which inescapably contradicts what the Bible says about Jesus, it is now easy to develop a belief system that "works for them." The paradox, mystery and tension of following God have been removed in this area. Then when new scripture, the Qur'an or the Book of Mormon, is introduced and portions of the Bible are dismissed as "other writings," then their new man-made doctrines can be validated. As a result, their understanding of who God is has been cheapened down to a more plausible explanation. They no longer have to believe in the Jesus of the Bible, that Jesus is God himself and God's Son at the same time. That is far too mysterious. So they have created a false Jesus that fits their belief system. They believe in a Jesus that never existed and does not exist today.
So it is safe to conclude then that the god these religions worship is not the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God that hung on the cross and died for our sins, paying the ultimate sacrifice so we can have assurance of our eternal salvation. Becuase if it was, then they would have to accept what God said about Jesus and open their box and let Him out to be God.
Remember John wrote to the churches in his day and said to them in 1 John 2:22-23, "Who is the liar? It is the man that denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the anti-christ - he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also. See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you will also remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he (Jesus) promised us - even eternal life."
