Years ago when I was leading a small group I can remember several debates in which someone would say, “God can’t… something, something”. It doesn’t really matter what was said. Maybe, “God can’t lie,” or “God can’t be in the presence of sin”. It was irrelevant. What bothered me was the idea that God can’t something. I saw in it people placing restrictions on God.
Who are we to say what God can or can’t do? I preferred to say, “God won’t”.
Today, I understand things quite a bit differently; more correctly. What I was seeing was a box. A structure around God that dictated what he could or couldn’t do. It would be wrong for us to create such walls around him. It’s not our place, and frankly, even if we wanted to, it wouldn’t work. So, in that sense of the phrase, I still agree. We cannot put a box around God.
But still, I always cringe a little bit when someone says “I don’t want to put God in a box”. Because when someone says this, they’re usually saying, in a subtle way they they don’t want to believe in any kind of concrete theology.
But I see now in hind sight that this reveals something about our faith in God. When someone says, “I don’t want to put God in a box”, what they’re often revealing is that they don’t truly trust God’s word. That’s what the Bible is. God’s word. If God has said he “cannot be tempted” (James 1:13), then he can’t be tempted. If my theology then says, “God can’t be tempted”, I haven’t placed God in a box, God has place God in a box (so to speak) and he will not leave that box.
If you see theology as a box man places around God, then there is a good chance you don’t trust that God’s word is his word. And if that’s true, then there’s a good chance you won’t experience the benefits therein.
October 12th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Amen bro.