No Other Gods Before Me (Part 1)

I, the Lord, am your God,
who brought you from the land of Egypt,
from the house of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before me.

This is the first and greatest commandment. All of God’s commands are important, but this one is numero uno. Implicit in the commandment to worship the Lord our God and no other is the necessity of knowing God as he has revealed himself to us in creation and in the scripture. If our view of God is skewed, then it isn’t quite the one true God as he has revealed himself that we are holding in our minds when we worship and serve. Instead, we are “exchanging the truth of God for a lie.” To the extent that we view God as different than he has revealed himself to us, we are idolaters.

On Redefining God
Last Sunday I heard a young lady—more of a girl, really—speak positively of redefining God so that people can believe in him. I’m not sure what she meant by that. It could be that she simply meant something like “explaining the God-who-is to unbelievers in terms that they can understand.” But maybe she thought redefining God to make him more acceptable to people is a good strategy for fulfilling our mission to make disciples. Perhaps she even envisioned tweaking this redefined image of God upward, little by little, toward the one true God and bringing people to faith in the true God that way.

The girl was right about one thing: A redefined god is easier for people to believe in. That’s because it’s easier to live with a god who is more like us and demands less of us. This is what the imaging and reimaging  of God throughout history has always been about: the redefining of God in an attempt to make him easier—easier for us to like and easier for us to live with.

But here’s one problem with this strategy for helping unbelievers come to faith in God: The God who exists and rules the universe doesn’t allow it. The God who created us is who he is, and he reveals himself to us in the created order and in his word, and it is that God that we are required to worship and it is that God we must hold before the unbeliever. Not a false god, but the one true God, and no other god. The only God we can rightly acknowledge is the real God who reveals his wrath from heaven against those who exchange what he has revealed of himself—“the glory of the immortal God”—for something less like him but more attractive to them. (See Romans 1)

Redefining God so that people can believe in him is idolatry because it’s crafting another god—a false god—to replace the one God who is. And holding out a redefined image and encouraging people to believe in this god is nothing short of encouraging them to be idolaters.

Thankful Thursday

I’m thankful that the spring pollen levels seem to be dropping. I heard this morning on the radio that we had record pollen levels this year. Record pollen levels for us, that is, and close to the record pollen levels in the whole wide world ever recorded. I’m thankful that I’ve learned in previous years how to manage my spring allergies and that the antihistamines kept my reactions in control. After hearing that pollen-in-the-north news report, I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet before I knew it was there, and for that I am thankful to God, who is sovereign over both pollen and me.

I’m thankful that many of the plants in the garden are up now and I can back off a little on the constant hand watering.

I’m thankful that God has revealed himself to us in scripture so that I can know more of him than I would if I only had creation to tell me of him. Without the revelation in scripture, what would I know about the grace of God?

On Thursdays throughout this year, I plan to post a few thoughts of thanksgiving along with Kim at the Upward Call and others. Why don’t you participate by posting your thanksgiving each week, too? It’ll be an encouragement to you and to others, I promise.

Unbeliever in the Dock

Quoting from Greg Bahnsen’s Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, Chapter 27, Answers to Apologetic Challenges:

Unbelievers take their intellectual autonomy so much for granted that they find it hard to believe that they are in no position, epistemologically or morally, to be questioning God and His revealed word. This is well described by C. S. Lewis:

The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.

God has, in His holy word, revealed the unholiness of this attitude. “You shall not make trial of Jehovah your God” (Deut. 6:16), as Moses decreed. When Satan tempted Jesus to do so—to push God into offering proof of the veracity of His word (as quoted by Satan)—Jesus rebuked Satan, “the accuser,” with these very words from the Old Testament. He declared “It stands written that you shall not make trial of the Lord your God” (Matt. 4:7). It is not God whose integrity and veracity and knowledge is somehow suspect, really. It is that of those who would accuse Him and demand proof to satisfy their own way of thinking or living.

In answering the objections of unbelievers, the apologist must not lose sight of that profound truth. It is incumbent upon us to offer a reasoned defense to the unbelievers, dealing with the criticism he has in an honest and detailed way. Christian apologetics is not served by obscurantism and generalities. Yet at the same time our apologetical arguments must serve to demonstrate that the unbeliever has no intellectual ground on which to stand in opposing God’s revelation. Our argumentation should end up by showing that the unbeliever’s presuppositions (worldview) would consistently lead to foolishness and the destruction of knowledge. In that case, and given the unbeliever’s sinful lifestyle, it is really the unbeliever—and not God—who is after all “in the dock,” both epistemologically and morally.