Friday, January 13, 2012

The Right to Be Ridiculous...

Sometimes, I think life would be easier to understand if God acted the way we think he should. The Greco-Roman gods, for example, acted in the way we expect gods to act. They may have been powerful, divine beings, but their actions, their emotions, their motivations are so human that actually, they are easy to understand... perhaps not surprisingly given that they were the invention of human mythology!

But our God, the real, living God, doesn't act like us. His ways are higher and his thoughts are different to ours, and, although he has made us in his image and given us the ability to think and reason and to try and understand him, we have to accept that sometimes we just aren't easily going to be able to... which is why some of the things he does seem pretty ridiculous to us.

I'm mean, surely the idea that the God who brought the whole enormity of creation into being, just by commanding it, would speak to his servant in a still small voice is ridiculous.

Surely, the idea that the All-Powerful God, who knows every moment of time and space, would come to earth and be born as a vulnerable, innocent baby is in itself ridiculous, even setting aside the circumstances and place of his birth.

Why would the King, the Ruler of All Things, chose to live his life as a homeless, wandering preacher in a poorly regarded part of occupied Israel - isn't that almost ridiculous as the perfect, sinless Son of Man dying the horrific death of a condemned criminal?

Or most ridiculous of all, the idea that this perfect, powerful, awesome God, who is so far above us that we can't comprehend him properly should love us so much that he prepared to do all these ridiculous things (and many many more) just so that we can have a relationship with him. If that is the result of God's ridiculousness, then its much better than any example of man's rational thinking, so maybe I should trust him more, and be a bit more ridiculous myself! 

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