God Is... Spirit

By Nick (My Experience As...)

Worshiping that which we cannot know

Back in the day I was very much into arguing.  I know, people are shocked and surprised at this admission but it is true.  Ok maybe I would be better off saying I was even more into debate than I currently am.  Over the course of a year or so I got into several online debates with a Mormon who was both rude and insulting. This is not to say all members of LDS (I did learn that many of them don’t like the term Mormon but the abbreviation LDS, for Later Day Saint, is less offensive) are rude or insulting, but this guy was.  It started on an old blog of mine, and moved to other blogs I participated in.

A key LDS belief is that God is a corporeal being so this guy often mocked the Christian belief that God is Spirit.  At one point he took a picture of his “Bubba Keg” and said he trapped our God in it since clearly God’s spirit has no mass or volume.

This argument doesn’t follow for many reasons, but at the very heart is a complete misunderstanding of what “spirit” really is.  Most people seem to assume it is some kind of ethereal energy, something like sentient electricity. This is an error in classification based on the assumption that “spirit” is something related to this natural order.

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God Is... In His Being

By Jason V

Infinite, Eternal and Unchangeable in His Being

Thinking About the Unimaginable: God's Self-Existence

My kids have a hard time with the whole "Who made God?" question.  We've been over and over it, but my oldest son, Andrew (age seven) is still wrestling with how it can be possible that no one made God.  The Bible does not explain or defend the self-existence of God.  It simple begins, "In the beginning, God..."  So, at the very beginning, when creation first began, God already was.  Of course He was, because He made everything.  How else would He be able to make everything if He did not already exist before everything else?

God is- absolutely!  Properly speaking, we cannot say that God exists.  We have to say that He self-exists.  Why?  Well, to further blow our minds, to "exist" literally means to emerge, to come out of, to appear, to come into being.  I exist.  I have appeared and have come into being.  God, however, always was and always will be.  He did not appear or come out of anything, so He does not exist.  He ALONE is self-existing, needing no cause and no origin.  He IS.  Isn't that what He told Moses in Exodus 3- "I AM"?

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God Is... Power

By Dusty (Reflections on the Life of a Christian)

I am held in awesome wonder at the power and majesty of God. As scriptures teach, so I believe:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:1-5)

"For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm." (Psalm 33:9)

This world we live in is a living breathing example of God's power. Borrowing a line from an old Christian song performed by Sandi Patty and entitled "Because of Who You Are":

"You spoke the words and all the worlds came in to order, you waved your hands and planets filled the empty sky, you placed the woman and the man inside the garden, and though they fell they found compassion in your eyes. Oh Lord I stand amazed at the wonder of your deeds and yet a greater wonder brings me to my knees. Lord I praise you because of who you are, not just for all the mighty things that you have done."

His power revealed through creation is beyond our comprehension. It is the stuff of fantasy. God spoke and things came into being. God spoke and they were rearranged. He spoke and light dawned. He exhaled and life began.

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God Is... Truth

By Jason S (Connecting to Impact)

Truth is such a sticky subject these days. We're not supposed to believe that there are absolutes, that there is no such thing as one truth, just your truth and my truth.

At points you feel like it's another verse to "Old McDonald's Farm" –here a truth, there a truth, everywhere a truth, truth.

E-I-E-I-Oh my (sorry, couldn't help myself).

If we believe the Bible and trust God, then we cannot buy into this relative truth and subjective morality phenomenon.  If we say we trust in Jesus as Savior, but in another breath say "all roads lead to God" then we aren't talking about the God revealed in scripture and we teeter on a shaky foundation.

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

Narrow-minded as that may sound, there is great comfort in knowing the truth (and sharing it). We cannot succumb to the whims of the world because while it's nice that we get to experience God's love and truth, there's a whole world that needs to experience the same.

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God Is... Justice

By Nick (My Experience As...)

But that's not fair!

At face value, it seems like kids are preloaded with a concept of who God is and all the attributes of God.  In fact, CS Lewis suggests that the universal morality is proof of God’s existence.  This isn’t to say that all people have the same moral values, but rather that we can make statements of “wrongness” because there is a predefined morality that we appeal to.  Something generally instinctive that we simple know to be true.  Hitler was a bad guy.  Sure some folks would argue against this, but generally most can appeal to the wrongness of what he did based on the Universal Morality that trying to exterminate others is wrong.  The proof is much more involved than this, but it is a very interesting thing to be aware of when folks try to argue against the existence of God because “If God existed He wouldn’t let bad things happen.”  Basically this proof comes back and says “If you believe there are bad things then God must exist.”

I digress; along with the general idea of morality we have the best friend to morality, justice, built into us.  From a very early age we generally know right and wrong, and clue in on consequences. That is, my two year old knows when I say, “put that down,” and he responds, “NO!” that there will be consequences.  It is based on his past experience. At some point his little brain will catch up and decide yelling no isn’t a good thing.

This evolves into the most basic sense of justice, that which is fair.  This is one of those self evident truths, justice must be fair, it cannot show favoritism, and when it does it isn’t really justice. How many times have children cried out “but that’s not fair.” This is their internal justice meter going off.  Of course therein lays the problem.  It has been corrupted by a sense of self. It affects me in a way I don’t want so it cannot be fair.

This is the greatest problem a parent faces in helping the internal sense of justice develop correctly. It is part of our job. Just like making sure our children grow strong and healthy with good food, exercise, and education. We must also help finish the development of justice in our children so that they will recognize injustice apart from self, and then be moved to deal with it.

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