We need and we want a very big God

It is true that we are made in God’s image. This is a marvelous and awe-inspiring truth. But it is also true that we are not God. There are characteristics of God presented to us in the Bible that are not characteristics which any human possesses. Three characteristics come to mind off the top of my head. God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. You and I are not. (…Although I’ve been occasionally called a “know-it-all.”)

Sometimes God is described in Christian theology as “wholly other.” This is an attempt to capture the idea that God is different than everything else that exists.

This idea of the God who is above and beyond us is revealed in this passage from Isaiah 55:8-9:

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.

    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.
 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so my ways are higher than your ways
    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

By the way, the fact that God is above and beyond us is not bad, it is good. I think it’s probably true that most of us want a God who is much, much, much greater than we are. Otherwise God would be far too small.