Everyone has an opinion on just about everything. Who should be in the office of President, who should be appointed in his cabinet, what should be done about terrorism, what shouldn’t be done…etc. Everybody can voice an opinion on these topics and a lot of others. Ask thirty people what should be done about the war in Iraq and you will get probably thirty opinions, all of them differing slightly. That question alone is enough to start a small riot in an enclosed space. But what about the question of whether or not there is a God? What can we say about that question? Again, just about everyone has an opinion about Him as well. Some say that God is whatever we make of him, that we create him in our image. For example: Whites say that God is white, blacks say that he is black, and so on. Can God appear in any color he chooses? Certainly. I suppose if He really wanted to, He could be green and purple stripes, but that is entirely up to Him because He is omnipotent, omniscient, and Holy.
But it’s our opinion of God that matters, right? What we personally believe is what is fact. But the problem with that is, we all have to be the greatest, don’t we? Christians say that God is spirit and therefore can appear anyway He chooses, but they also believe that His Son came to Earth in human form and took on the body of a Hebrew man, therefore He is dark skinned like the Aramaic peoples of that time. But at the same time they also believe that God is a Trinity, and the God-head consists of a Father, a Son and a Holy Spirit. The three in One, or the One that are three if you prefer. Muslims have their own ideals that are God and so do the Buddhists. The Jewish people of today still believe in the God of their fathers, but their version is one God, not a trinity. So, what do we make of all this? What is the reality of God? Is He simply created in our image, and exists only as what the individual thinks of Him, or is He something else entirely?
God has described Himself enough times that we should have a fairly adequate idea of His image. In Genesis, He uses the term, “we” in describing Himself, so apparently, God thinks of Himself as being of multiple character. In the same passage He also uses the phrase, “the Word of God” as having been present also at the Creation of the world, so since the “Word” has always been defined as Christ Jesus, God always presents Himself as the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If God Himself defines God as a Holy Unified Trinity, then who are we to define Him as anything else? No matter that the Triune God-head is nearly impossible for the human mind to fathom, except by faith alone, God is still God, defined by Himself and Created by no-one. This, assuming that the Holy Bible is one hundred percent truth, is how God is most often and most clearly defined.
Is the Bible truth or is it all just make-believe? And if it is true, is all of it true? Those are the questions that define how people think of God in this day and age. We only want to believe that which agrees with our own sense of morality. If the Bible disagrees at some point with how we perceive reality, then we toss it out as falsehood. If we want to imbibe spirits all day long until we’re as drunk as that proverbial skunk and the Bible says that drinking fermented grape juice is wrong, then we need to toss out that passage of scripture in order to continue living the way we like. Well, if we can re-define God’s word, then certainly there is nothing whatsoever to stop us from re-defining God Himself. If we don’t like Him the way He is, let’s create Him in our own image. The point to be made from all this, is that God exists, He has always existed, and always will exist, and no matter how often we try to recreate Him, it can’t be done. He is what He is and that’s that. My opinion doesn’t count, your opinion doesn’t count. God is not defined by opinions only. He is, was, and is to come. Amen.
