THE LIVING GOD
John H. Paterson
"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands.
they have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but
they see not ... They that make them are like unto them;
so is every one that trusteth in them." Psalm 115:4-8
THERE were two classes of people for whom the psalmist felt unlimited contempt. One was the fools who say that there is no God, and the other was the kind of person who believes in a god which he has built for himself. In this familiar passage in Psalm 115, which is substantially repeated in Psalm 135, the writer was using the occasion to pour scorn on those in the second category.
In doing so, he was using an argument which was to occur elsewhere in the Scriptures. Nobody jeered more loudly than Elijah on Mount Carmel at the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:27)! And in his more refined and academic way Paul made the same point to the Athenians. "We ought not to think", as he delicately put it to these arch-thinkers of the ancient world, "that the godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, [96/97] graven by art and man's device" (Act 17:29). Why ought we "not to think"? Because of the sheer lack of logic in doing so -- of setting up the idea of "God", and then building Him to our own specifications.
It is easy enough to feel either scorn or pity for those to whom "God" means nothing more than their own construction out of whatever materials they can lay their hands on. And it is not too difficult to sense the dreadful emptiness of that moment at Carmel when Baal had been invoked by every means at his priests' disposal, and nothing but silence followed. But while we give thanks for our own deliverance from idol worship and man-made gods, let us pause for a moment to ask what our God means to us.
For the psalmist clearly infers that our God can do all the things which the idols of the heathen cannot do. He can see, speak, hear and smell. He has hands to act and feet to move, and a host of Bible references under each of those headings will already have crossed your mind in support of the claim. They all add up to an impression of a God who is at work in His creation; who acts and reacts.
But although this is the essence of our Christian view of God, it is under constant challenge from two separate directions, and it is to these challenges that I wish, for the present, to direct your attention.
The first challenge is this: that in our own society we are far too sophisticated to take a piece of wood or stone and label it "god" but what people do instead is to create their own gods as a product not of their hands but of their minds. They have a view of God which is just as much man-made as the wooden idol. How often have we heard someone betray this fact by saying, in the course of a discussion, "Oh, but that's not my idea of God!"? In a way, actually, the heathen with his idol is being more logical than the thinker because, having imagined his god, he sets out to give it a likeness -- to portray it -- whereas the thinker has nothing but a vague, amorphous Something to which he gives the name of God.
But we can go further. Not only does this Something lack definition, but definition is just what our thinker prefers not to give it. To him, crediting God with the ability to see, or hear, or move, only goes to show that we have made a god like ourselves. To him "god" is a force or a quality, not a person.
To think in that way is every man's privilege, if he wishes to do so. But believers everywhere must sound the alarm when they encounter this attitude not among their agnostic or humanist friends but among God's people themselves. You will not need me to remind you that it has become entirely fashionable to think of God as a Force -- generally identified simply as Love -- and to disavow any theology that could have Him make demands, or act in judgement, or react in any way to the condition of His people.
His seeing eye and hearing ear have long since passed out of account, for how is it possible that a God who really can see and hear should fail to react to the parlous state of His world? His hands and His feet, the instruments of His purpose, seem powerless or inert, and it is simpler, therefore, to believe that He has none -- which at least saves us the trouble of trying to believe in the miracles! He exists, if He exists at all, in our minds alone.
And so we have the spectacle of a Church whose God has grown very small -- a God who has nothing to say, and who makes no response to the crying needs of His world; who can be out-classed, in fact, by an Irish singer who raises millions of pounds for famine relief without even stopping to have a shave!
So, here is my first point. We must be ready at all times to challenge one another over this spirit within the Church of what the philosophers will call "reductionism". That simply means a [97/98] tendancy to explain everything in terms of the basics of life, physical or rational, as when Scrooge in Dicken's Christmas Carol, tried to convince himself that Marley's ghost was not a ghost but simply "an undigested bit of beef, a blob of mustard, a crumb of cheese." The Church's critics have been explaining it in this way for centuries: let us see to it that we do not base our view of God on the same kind of argument!
For this is not just a question of how we look at the idea of God. On the contrary, consider what we lose if we have a God that does not see, hear and the rest of it. The implications are appalling, as many millions of people realise who have no other view and no other God. There are basically four attributes of God which the psalmist refers to here:
(1) A God who can see and hear.
This means a God who can he informed about what is going on. If our God cannot see and hear, then we lose immediately not merely the idea of prayer, but the whole concept, also, of a moral universe. We lose the idea of any recording or accounting, and so of any ultimate justice. In that case, might is right and right is whatever a man can get away with; doing good is a waste of time because nobody notices and we may as well act in our own interest.
(2) A God who speaks.
The God who speaks can tell His creatures of His intentions and wishes. It belongs to the idea of "God" that, unless He reveals Himself to us, we have no hope of finding out what He is like: He must come to us, for we cannot come to Him. There is a certain logic, therefore, in those tribes and peoples who believe that God speaks in weather or crop growth, animal movements or earthquakes. They are desperate for God to say something -- anything -- and must imagine His words if they cannot hear Him speak in human terms. Without the word of a God who speaks we are lost, absolutely.
(3) A God who smells.
God smells. Strange as this idea may seem to anyone not familiar with the Bible narrative, it can be amply documented there. We can begin with Genesis 8:20-21, go on to the "sweet savour" of the Levitical offerings and the special incense burned in the Tabernacle for God alone (Exodus 30:34-38), and then note the contrast in Isaiah 65:5, where God rejects His people's worship as mere smoke in His nostrils.
Consistently throughout these references the thought is of what pleases God and what does not: what He will receive and what He will not. This God of ours with the "sense of smell" is a God who discriminates between good and bad: who can recognise in a world of sin the presence of what satisfies Him. As we come over to the New Testament we have no difficulty in seeing where His "sense of smell" is leading Him! Just as we may carry about with us a particular perfume or smell that our friends can identify even after we have left a room, so God detects the presence of the unique incense -- the presence of the one person who satisfies Him: "... lo, a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17).
Just because we live in a world of mixture; just because, also, we His servants have mixed motives which we can never hope to sort out for ourselves, how important it is to have a God who discriminates, and whose word is "a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).
(4) A God who has hands to act and feet to move forward.
If there is one idea more than another which has been lost to the world in our century, it is that of a God active and purposeful in His creation. Most people today would credit God with neither control nor purpose. Their constant theme is, "If there is really a God there, why doesn't He do something?" Can you not imagine the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel asking -- under their breath, of course -- the very same question?
To raise ourselves and our world above the level of Baal worship, we have got to insist on this: that God is at work; that He does have a purpose. The Children of Israel, above everybody else, should have known this, for their own legs had carried them in the train of this "God who has feet", clear across the desert and into the land of promise. They can have had no doubt that He was moving purposefully on, as Psalm [98/99] 68:24 says, "They have seen thy goings O God." But this view of a purposeful God is one which over the centuries His people have lost, just as Israel seems to have done, once they got into the promised land and stopped using their feet to advance. Yet it is vital that we recapture it, and insist upon it, if our God is to be great enough for our needs.
How much, then, is lost if our idea of God is diminished! But let me move on. I said earlier that there are two challenges to the idea of a God who sees and hears. The first comes from outside ourselves, the second from inside. For while, as God's people, we should be insisting on the "big" view of Him, we face the constant challenge to our own faith: "Do I really believe, myself, in a God like this?"
Does God really see and hear what goes on in His world? Is He really keeping accounts? Is He really interested in me? If we sometimes wonder about these questions, we are in the best of company! For few themes occur more frequently in Scripture than this complaint: God has forgotten or overlooked, or closed His eyes to, the trials of His people.
The psalmist himself was not always in the confident, sarcastic mood of Psalm 53 or 115. Listen, for example, to him in Psalm 77:1-5, as dramatically paraphrased for us by the author of The Living Bible:
"I cry to the Lord, I call and call to him. Oh, that he would listen. I am in deep trouble and I need his help so badly ... There can be no joy for me until he acts. I think of God and moan, overwhelmed with longing for his help. I cannot sleep until you act ... I keep thinking of the good old days of the past, long since ended."
What a distinguished line of doubters! Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, the souls of the martyrs in Revelation 6:10. Habakkuk it is who encapsulates in a single sentence the dilemma of God's people. Confronting His apparent reluctance to open His eyes and see:
"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity; wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" (Habakkuk 1:13).
The dilemma, you see, is a frightening one: either God has not noticed the evil, in which case the moral foundations of our world have ruptured, or He has noticed but does not care to do anything about it. You take your choice! How sadly Habakkuk needed the reassurance, "Though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come ..." (2:3). God has seen it all!
Among all these "senses" or actions of God -- His eyes, His speech, His hands -- the challenge may come to each of us on a different point. Has He a message for me, or a purpose for me, an ear for my prayers, or has He lost interest? Did I just dream it all in the first place? I think that, as we get older, we find ourselves looking back and recalling how long it is since He last spoke, or seemed to call us to fresh service; how little purpose our lives seem to be serving, until ultimately we may fall to brooding that He really seems as aloof and silent as if He were made of wood or stone, and the heavens of brass. To believe in divine purpose for a life which is, humanly speaking, almost ended may be the last and the hardest task of all.
There is a lot more that could be said about God's seeing, hearing and speaking, but you can follow through these thoughts for yourself. Let me now simply draw your attention to the latter part of our excerpt from Psalm 115: "They that make them are like unto them". The psalmist says that your concept of God shapes your entire outlook, your decisions and your character. If you have a God who never speaks, is blind to his world and purposeless or capricious in his activity, then you will tend to fill in the gap by making up your own rules, writing your own pronouncements; in short, by becoming your own god. It is a process of "reductionism" which Paul, I think, was referring to where, in reference to the heathen, he says they are "walking in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them" (Ephesians 4:17-18). "With a life-giving God" says Paul, "you don't write your own rules: you follow His!" [99/100]
So we become what our view of God makes us. But there is a happier side to this. If it is true that the idol-worshipper grows to be like his idol, then it is in a much fuller sense true that the living God gives life to those who believe in Him. That life has His own qualities, and we may speak, hear, see and act for Him. We may even "smell" like the Lord Jesus! 'Thanks be to God who leads us, wherever we are, on His own triumphant way and makes our knowledge of Him to spread through the world like a lovely perfume! We Christians have the unmistakable "scent" of Christ ...' (2 Corinthians 2:14-15) (Phillips). For those who serve the living God, it is their fondest hope and deepest faith that they are growing indeed to resemble Him, and that one day they will be like Him, for they will see Him as He is.
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