Things that make you go Hmmmm

Okay.. this post is someting I've wanted to do for a while. It's not about Cheryl and I. It's about a specific thought. I'll probably be doing more of these in the near future. You've been duly warned. They'll have a title prefixed, like this one, with [Hmm] so that you can be warned before reading it that it may challenge your world a bit.

There are a couple of things that I thought about as a child that really made me think. I loved to contemplate oxymorons -- things that seemingly contradict, but are true. They made my brain tingle. Take this childhood puzzle as an example: "If we know that: 1) God can do anything. 2) God can create anything, then can God create a rock that he, himself, can't lift?"

At first the answer is simple. If God can do anything, then yes. But then you contradict yourself... because he can't lift the rock, and God can no longer do ANYTHING, because he can't lift the rock. Suddenly your find yoruself questioning if what you know about God in other aspects are still true as well.

I beleive the answer is still yes. God can do anything, and the two statements are still true. But to fully understand this contradiction, we have to look a little deeper.

The first part of this is the two "facts" that we must abide by. And there-in is the flaw. God is more complex than our minds can comprehend, which is why he presents himself COMPLETELY to us, but uses three aspects of himself known as the Trinity. All three are completely God, but there is still only one God. All three represent aspects of his nature that help our finite minds wrap around who "God" is.

So, what does the Trinity have to do with a childhood puzzle? God (the father) created many rocks that God (the son) could not lift without relying on God (the spirit). Thus the answer is true.

The reason we have a hard time answering this riddle is because we put God in a box. We limit him to our understanding of "a person". A person is a single personality -- a single reference to their likeness and abilities. God isn't quite like that. There's so much more, which is why Christianity isn't a series of bits of knowledge. It's not about understanding or knowing about God. Knowledge alone will get you nowhere. Christianity is a relationship, where -- over time -- you reveal more of yourself to God, and he reveals more of himself to you. You learn to know God.

What are you doing in your daily life that will limit God? Are you hiding some areas of your life from God? If so, he will hide some aspects of himself from you, because you would not be able to understand.

We ALL need to constantly evaluate God from new perspectives. There are so many more aspects to God than our Old-testament "Charleton Heston" version of God. Take time today to ask God to reveal a little more of himself in a new way to you.