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The
Only True God
Fr.
George Smiga
May
21/22, 2005
John
3:16-18
Do
you know what sin is attacked more than any other in the Bible?
I bet if I took a survey today, very few would get it right.
It is the sin of idolatry. The very first of the Ten Commandments
is “I am the Lord your God, you shall not have false gods
(you shall have idols) before me.” It seems that in the long
history between Israel and God, Israel was frequently tempted
to turn away from the one true God, Yahweh, and to begin to
worship the pagan gods of their neighbors. When things were
going poorly, when the Jewish people could not understand
what Yahweh was about, they were always tempted to believe
that if they worshipped another god, if they worshipped one
of the idols of stone or wood, their lives would be better.
Perhaps the idol could provide something which Yahweh could
not. Therefore, the Hebrew prophets were always railing against
the worship of false gods. The pages of the Bible are filled
with oracles that condemn idolatry.
Now,
you might think that idolatry has very little to do with us
today. After all we are not inclined to worship gods of wood
or stone. Yet the temptation to idolatry remains a real threat
to our lives, because at its heart, idolatry is accepting
as God something that is not God. It is worshipping a false
god, rather than the true God. Although we do not tend to
worship idols of wood or stone, every time we accept a false
idea of who God is, we create a false god and we engage in
idolatry. Such a temptation is real. We are always inclined
to create God according to our own image. We would like to
believe that God thinks the way we think, that God would make
the same choices that we would make, that God would view the
issues of the world and evaluate them as we would evaluate
them. But the truth is, God is different than us and greater
than us. God is pure spirit. God is all-powerful. God is eternal.
God does not think the way we think or make the choices that
we make. God does not evaluate everything in the world the
way we would evaluate it. Yet, every time we try to shrink
the idea of God down to a size that we can understand or control,
we create a false god and engage in idolatry.
Now
the only way to prevent this tendency to create false gods
is to constantly remind ourselves that God is transcendent,
that God transcends us and the world in which we live. God
is greater than anything we can think or imagine. Here is
where the Feast that we celebrate today, the Feast of the
Holy Trinity, proves so useful. At the heart of our faith,
we believe that God is One. There is only one God. Yet at
the same time, we believe that God is three divine persons,
Father, Son, and Spirit. It is impossible for us to imagine
how God is the way that God is. How is God one and three at
the same time? I have no idea. What the Doctrine of the Trinity
does is remind us that God is different than us, greater than
us. In so doing, the Doctrine of the Trinity asserts the transcendence
of God.
Now
all this talk about idolatry and Trinity and transcendence
can seem rather remote and heady. Yet believing in the transcendence
of God has a number of practical and helpful consequences.
Let me mention two. Those who believe in the transcendence
of God know that they do not need to understand. They also
know that there is nothing we can do to stop God from loving.
Those
who believe in the transcendence of God know that they do
not need to understand. When something tragic happens in our
lives, when we have a miscarriage, when we discover we have
cancer, when thousands of people are killed in an earthquake,
we want to understand. We want to try to explain how these
evils are a part of our world. Yet every effort to explain
runs the risk of creating a false god. In our efforts to explain,
we say, “this happened because God was trying to punish me,”
or “God was trying to teach a lesson,” or “God was angry.”
All of these explanations do in some sense explain what happened,
but they do so at the cost of creating an idol, a god who
is different from the way that God is. Those who accept the
transcendence of God understand that they do not need to understand.
They continue to proclaim a good and saving God even though
they do not understand how God can allow these evils to happen
in our world. Knowing the transcendence of God, they are more
comfortable in saying they do not understand than creating
a false god. They accept transcendence over idolatry.
Those
who believe in the transcendence of God also know that there
is nothing we can do to stop God from loving. God's love is
radically different than human love. We love other people
because they are good and because they love us in return.
God's love is not limited to such categories. When people
attack us, abuse us, or manipulate us, our love ceases. At
times we must place boundaries so that we are not hurt again.
But God's love is different. God's love does not have the
limitations of human love. God can and does love everyone.
God loves our enemies. God loves us, even when we are wrong
and selfish. God can do this because God is different than
us and greater than we are. Those who accept the transcendence
of God understand that there is nothing we can do to stop
God from loving us.
We
believe in a transcendent God, in a God who is greater than
any thing we can think or imagine. This is Good News, because
we do not, after all, want a God who is just like us. We want
a God who is so good and great that we cannot completely understand
God. We want a God whose love is so free and powerful that
nothing we can do can stop God from loving us. Such a God
is beyond our comprehension. Such a God is no idol. Such a
God is not the creation of our best intentions. Such a transcendent
God is the only true God—the only God worthy of our love and
adoration.
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