In the last issue of the Compass, we addressed the tendency that some misguided people have of passing judgment over God's justice as portrayed in the Old Testament.  One of the conclusions stated: "As mere creatures, we are really in no position to stand in judgment of our creator, to judge the action of He who is the source of all goodness and virtue."  While this statement is factual, a little more explanation may be helpful in enlightening just how we are able to say anything about God and how much more intimately we can know Him since He took flesh and became man.

            One limitation that people need to be aware of is the habit of humanizing things in our minds.  Anthropomorphism is a rather large word used to name a bad habit that we humans have of explaining the behavior of animals or objects (just about everything) as if such things were human.  An example of such an occurrence would be when a person is having trouble with a computer and explains the situation by stating: “this thing doesn’t want to work!”  While the message is most probably understood it is not really accurate.  The computer doesn’t ‘want’ anything.  It is an inanimate object and any emotion or human behavior attributed to it is merely the result of this bad habit of human expression.  This tendency becomes more problematic when speaking of the Almighty.  While we may be rather comfortable using expressions that show God as being humanlike or having human emotions, such comfort on our part does not mean that God is accurately understood in such concepts.  The ancients philosophers were able to conclude through reason that God (although they had a plethora of various titles for Him) existed and that His was a necessary existence.  The only being whose existence was not dependant on some other existence and thus the one being from which all other existence emanated.  These lovers of wisdom in the ancient world spoke of God being the pinnacle of beauty, truth, and goodness, however, when they spoke of God being beautiful they knew that such divine beauty was not really the same as the beauty of their wives, a setting sun or a great work of art.  The beauty of the source of beauty itself was concluded to be far beyond the imperfect beauty that is found in material and passing things that change over time.  When they spoke of God as being good, they knew such goodness far surpassed what was meant when they called a strawberry a 'good strawberry'. 

            Such a limitation still exists when we speak of God as being good or just or mighty since our understanding of such things is limited to what humans see and experience as good, just and mighty.  This understanding leads us naturally to question whether we are able to say anything at all about God.  While we have to be careful about our limitations as humans we should not fall into some agnostic error of thinking that we can not say anything about God at all.  We can speak about God by analogy and metaphor and know that while our statements fall short of an accurate description and understanding, they do contain a truth as long as they conform to revelation.  The ancient Jews had to content with such limitations when they tried to make sense of the message that this awesome and transcended God was sending to them.  The New Testament speaks of this when it refers to God speaking to man in "shadows and veiled images".  This may also help us to understand the Old Testament in the light of the New Testament, for the shadows of the past and the difficulties of approaching the transcended were changed radically when the transcended willed to reach down to earth out of love for sinful man.  For now the revelation of God has been perfected in Jesus Christ who came to us as one of us, like us in all things but sin.  Truly God and truly man having taken our weak and fragile nature upon himself, this Jesus shows to us the love that the Father has held for us through all ages.  Through Him we can relate to God as never before, through Him we can know the Father, love the Father and knows that Father loves us.  Amen.