I can’t imagine what it would be like to be God the Creator. Someone should invent a new word to describe God’s unique kind of existence. There just isn’t anything known on this earth that is more than merely somewhat like the Maker of all. I’m nervous about trying to prove that God exists if God’s “existence” is so unlike any kind of existence which we know. Human language and thought are utterly unable to arrive at an understanding of God. As for me, I’m content to let God speak for himself in his own terms, as he did in Jesus Christ. I know that Jesus existed. I know he had power over nature and life and death. All I need to know about God is that he is like Jesus. This simple knowledge saves me from making up a religion of wild guesses, and gods in the image of myself.
I don’t know how God “exists,” nor do I know how he made all things that exist. When I make something, I only reshape some existing material or rearrange something I already have. I may make paint from colored substances, canvas from cotton, and a painting from both, but I can never create anything. God is the only one who can create without pre-existing material. Creation is an activity peculiar to God alone! It is unique; I don’t know how he does it. God is still at work creating the universe in the process which we call time, steadily transforming his world, making all things new to the farthest reaches of space. Every moment of history is different from every other moment. If everything that happens has the hand of the Creator in it, then I cannot understand fully any event whatsoever, because I can’t understand how God creates it. If I forget this, I might easily think that mankind can learn everything there is to be known. But when I recognize the presence of the Creator in any situation, a due and proper humility comes over me. Then I approach the natural world with a wholesome sense of awe and respect. The simplest thing is too deep for the greatest minds. There’s a mystery about existence that brings me to worship, for everything that exists is a wonder from the creating hand of God. But worship does not excuse me from painstaking scientific investigation by which I shall try to know exactly what God has done in making his world. Worship and science should go hand in hand throughout God’s creation.
When I was a youngster I used to ask “Who made God?” Now I see that this is as meaningless a question as “How heavy is green?” Greenness has nothing to do with heaviness, and likewise God is not a makeable creature. Just as I have to accept the fact that light travels at a fixed speed, so I have to accept a Maker who was not made.
Books by Dr. John A. Ross
