Monday, August 31, 2015
Making It Up
Husband:
Honey, I just lost 125 pounds.
Wife: How
do you figure? I'm looking right at you don't look any skinnier to me.
Husband: It was easy.
I simply decided that there are now 32 ounces in a pound. I used to weigh 250 pounds, which is 4,000
ounces. Now that there are 32 ounces in a pound, I divided 4,000 by 32 and got
125. So now I weigh 125 pounds!
The
argument, of course, is ridiculous. We
can't change reality simply by restating it in terms we would prefer. We cannot solve cancer by declaring it a
non-lethal disease. We cannot solve
world hunger by declaring that people are not as hungry as they imagine. We
cannot get out of a ticket by telling the officer that the state really meant
to put 95 mph on the interstate speed limit sign.
Yet,
routinely, people make similar leaps of logic when they redefine God according
to their preferences. In the most
reliable guide book of all time, God declared that sin will keep people out of
heaven, and He went to a great deal of trouble to define what sin is. Along come those who object to God's rules. Their solution is to simply declare that God
doesn't believe what He said and that He won't hold people accountable for what
they do. They just make up their own
version of God.
When
people decide what God is like and what God likes based on their personal
preferences they are, in effect, making their own god. They become idolaters. The prophet
Isaiah asked the question, "Who but a
fool would make his own god— an idol that cannot help him one bit?" (Isaiah 44:10 NLT)
In
Isaiah's day it was common to make gods out of wood. Since God and Isaiah were not constrained by
political correctness, they went on to expose the ridiculousness of making up
your own god:
"He burns part of the tree to
roast his meat and to keep himself warm. He says, “Ah, that fire feels good.” Then he takes
what’s left and makes his god: a carved idol! He falls down in front of it,
worshiping and praying to it. “Rescue me!” he says. “You are my god!” Such
stupidity and ignorance! Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see. Their
minds are shut, and they cannot think. The person who made the idol never
stops to reflect, “Why, it’s just a block of wood! I burned half of it for heat
and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat. How can the rest of it be a
god? Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood?” The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes.
He trusts something that can’t help him at all. Yet he cannot bring himself to
ask, “Is this idol that I’m holding in my hand a lie?” (Isaiah 44:12-20 NLT)
If I make
up my own god or just arbitrarily decide what my god likes or dislikes, I have
obviously become my own god. If
everybody can make up their own god, gods would be a dime a dozen -- and
meaningless. The notion that God is
whatever we want Him to be or whatever makes sense to us is preposterous!
Most
reasonable people would undoubtedly agree that if God is real, and if He is our
Creator, we would be wise to be honest about who He is. Those who are brave enough to face the truth
about God will find that although He is not politically correct, He is good,
right, just, loving and so much better than anything we could ever make up. Who
but a fool would make up his own god? I
would rather change my behavior to please the real God than make up a god who
cannot help me one bit.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
