The Irrational God
Aug 25th, 2009 by ljkim
God and reason DO go together. Don’t take my word for it, just look at the development of Western scientific thought founded on centuries of theological speculation. Theology was the “queen of the sciences.” Because what scientists do in studying controlled data empirically, they first learned from theologians who used Scripture as their data set, infallible, absolute, from which to draw and test their theories. I’m not saying this to strong-arm you into thinking Christianity is true – I’m just pointing out that whether you believe in God or not, the idea of God and “reason” are not strangers… That’s the setup for the point I want to make…which is: But…you can’t get very far into knowing the God of Christianity if all you know is the rational stuff.
Just the way you don’t really know a person based on their rational choices but their irrational (because their rational choices could be made by any of 4 billion other people on the planet acting rationally, but their irrational choices are unique to them), what you need to see about God is his irrationality. For instance as a Sunday school philosopher is prone to ask “but where did God come from?” [The answer is that God is eternally pre-existent, just the way the anti-theists believe the universe is eternally pre-existent] a better and more profound question is: “If the Christian idea of God is true, three in one, self sufficient, all wise, all powerful, then why did God make us?” Surely he could do with a little less grief. But grief aside, why would he need us in the first place? It makes no sense. Man makes automobiles to get around; we don’t go through time and expense to make things we have absolutely no use for that will only cause us grief. And yet the answer is: because He (irrationally) wanted to.
Same with prayer: Why does God need us to tell Him how to do His job? He doesn’t and yet He wants us to ask and pray; insists on not taking a step without us. He takes this “father” business seriously, and treats us like children being raised into the family business (of running the world – even after the mess we’ve made of it). God does a lot of irrational things like that. And those irrational things, the seemingly needless things, the things He didn’t HAVE TO do, tell us the most about who He is. That’s why the best hymns often lead us into worship, not with a statement, but with a question:
“Amazing love, how can it be that thou my God should die for me?”
Why would you do that for those who’ve rejected you and impugned your honor? “And can it be that I should gain an interest in my Savior’s blood? Died He for me who caused his pain; me, who him, to death pursued?”
I am curious how do you come up with prayer as a way for us to “tell God how to do His job”? I pray for help and to thank God. God created us, Gods job is over. We make our choices and be able to be responsible enough to handle the outcome of those choices.
God is not irrational, God is God! God is something that I know I cannot nor will ever be able to understand, regardless of that I love God and believe in God. Personally (I MUST STRESS THAT PERSONALLY) I think man has been trying to hard to describe God, decipher, even label God. God is everything and everyone and only God truely knows what God’s plan is, that again is a personal opinion
Hey David,
One of the main reasons I find people who believe in a loving God don’t pray is a sense of fatalism… “God is going to do whatever He’s going to do and what I say doesn’t change that.” And if all one knew was the idea of a good and loving God then that would be true.
But the character of God in the Bible is more than just good and wise… He’s constantly inviting frail humans into His work. So, God didn’t need Moses, but in the narratives that describe God’s calling of Moses, He is refusing to deliver the Hebrews without Moses’ participation…
I’m saying that same idea applies to us in the subject of prayer. God doesn’t actually need us to point out things that need to be done; yet He demands that we come and ask, and insists that His actions are in response to our feeble prayers.
But let me ask you a question, because all beliefs are personal aren’t they? …In your description of God as “everything and everyone” – if you mean that in a pantheistic sort of way, then why would god even have a plan? A plan for what? I plan to go to the store in the morning because the store is not me…I do not however plan to raise my left leg.
Anyway, part of the beauty of the God in the Bible is that He’s self-revealing… A child couldn’t really understand what a scientist did unless the scientist were to purposely describe things in ways a child could understand. And a dog couldn’t really be “friends” with a person (much less best friends) unless the person stooped to a dog’s level of interacting. That’s what God does. Otherwise, it’s game over for philosophers and theologians like you and me, we’d be barking up the wrong tree.
Thanks for the thoughts!
Leo