Things I've Learned About God

It's amazing to me how much we can learn about God's character, the Bible and life even after growing up in a Christian home and church. That's not to say I didn't have good teachers and role models, only that God can always surprise you. Here are a few things I've learned:

1. God's primary characteristic (contrary to what many think) is not love, but holiness. Look at how many time God is called love in the Bible vs. how many times He is called holy.

2. God does not save us because He loves us. He loves everyone, but He will not save everyone. He saves us only when we allow the death and resurrection of Christ to take the place of the death that is demanded of us as payment for being the property of Satan--making us the property of God. Why does it have to be this way? Again, because He is holy. We are not.

3. Good and evil don't exist in the normal, conceptual way we think of them. That is why atheists (rightly) have trouble accounting for them as 'real'. The only way we can know "good" is to know God--(again, He's holy--He is the standard of goodness). Evil is the antithesis of God--anything that is contrary to God. God--a Being, not a belief or a concept--IS the standard. There is no such thing as a standard for goodness or a measure of evil without accepting that God is who He says He is. It just doesn't make any sense. This is also why asking questions like, "Why does God do evil things?" is nonsensical. Whatever God does is "good"--because He's the standard. He cannot be judged by any other standard aside from Himself. (Certainly not by us.) Good and evil are exclusively relational terms and always find their essence within a relationship or lack of relationship with God.

4. There is no such thing as blind faith. All faith is based on a reason or a set of reasons. (Although, they may not be good reasons.) Just ask someone--even the crazy guy in the asylum who talks to his magic marker--why they believe or act the way they do. They'll have some kind of reason.

5. Satan is evil, but he's not the "embodiment of evil." Evil entered the world through man, not through Satan. Creation was given to us and we promptly handed it over to Satan--practically gift-wrapped it for him. That's why he's called the prince of this world.

6. Angels don't have wings. Seraphim and Cherubim (never called "angels" in the Bible) do have wings. Regular angels don't. These are distinctly different beings created by God.

7. There is no foundation in Scripture for the belief that the fallen angels became the demons.

8. The Bible doesn't ever, not in a single translation I could find, says that in heaven the lion will lie down with the lamb. There is a brief mention of a lamb lying down with a wolf, but not a lion.


Well, that's it for now.