Although I believe in God, that doesn’t mean that I know everything about him. It used to bother me when people asked me big questions about God that I couldn’t answer. Now I’m glad that I couldn’t answer them. Any god I could know everything about would be far too small to be the real God. Would the Arctic Ocean fit inside my refrigerator? Could I capture a great storm in a gallon jug? Can I get the Creator of all the world inside my little skull? But although I don’t know everything about God, in Christ I know enough about him to get started. He is what I see in Jesus Christ, and who knows how much more? I don’t understand the Trinity, nor does anybody else. I don’t understand how God could become man, nor does anybody else. But if God is like Christ, that makes sense of the world and helps me to understand a great deal about my meaning and destiny.
There are lots of things I don’t understand about the way God made the world and about the way he is running it. Sometimes I have tried to think up a better world than this one. I object to the inequalities I see among men—-but then I wouldn’t want to be absolutely identical with everyone else. I-low confusing it would be! Sometimes God is criticized for allowing things and people we love to pass away. But I don’t think I would like an unchanging world, without possibilities for newness in it, although all changes do away with something that once was. Sometimes I think that God should interfere promptly and stop people who are about to hurt others. But that would turn us persons into machines, and I fear God would be switching us off most of the time! Sometimes I wish that water wouldn’t drown, or fire wouldn’t burn, or falling wouldn’t hurt. But unless the things in the world behave themselves consistently according to their natures, the world would be all helter-skelter. I’d be driven crazy! I’d certainly like to get along without pain, but how would I find out about threats to my body if there were never any pain warnings? Any worlds that I ever dream up would be far worse to live in than this one God made. So I believe in God in spite of everything that seems to contradict my faith. I wish I could believe in myself with as great confidence as I can believe in him! I can never be sure that I will always be faithful and never fall away. Probably I shall never in this world reach a state of uninterrupted believing. But I believe that I shall always be held in the midst of the unbroken faithfulness of God. Even though my faith may waver, falter, or fail, my God will not waver, falter, or fail. Though I forget him, he will not forget me. If I should not even feel religious tomorrow, his feeling for me would not change. Even if my mind should blow a fuse and go dark, though I should faint, sleep, or utterly die, I believe in God.
Books by Dr. John A. Ross
