Man’s search for God

Deep in the heart of every human being there is a realisation of God. Helen Keller was a small child, about two years of age, when she became totally blind and deaf. She had a meagre existence, cut off from the outside world, unable either to see or to hear, and her baby vocabulary was inadequate to make her thoughts and her wants known. She endured her existence for a few years, until finally a nurse was engaged who found the way to get through to Helen. It is an amazing true story, but Helen grew up able to talk and live a relatively normal life. At one point in her youth and education she was told about God. This is how she responded: “I always knew there must be a God, but I did not know his name”.

Human attitudes towards that deep-seated notion of God vary between two alternatives. On the one hand, people find it somewhat reassuring to feel that there is a kind-hearted power watching over their daily trials and tribulation, giving hope for a positive turn-out to things. Just to believe that God understands and cares relieves the soul of many worries. On the other hand, there are those who profoundly dislike the idea that a divine power may be watching them constantly, noting their secret sins, hidden from others but not from God.

The first of these two groups of people prefer to think of God as loving and kind; the second have the impression that he is righteous and angry. This second group therefore shun the God they don’t want to believe in, and try in various ways to shut the idea of him out of their minds. They may harden their hearts and plunge into all kinds of evil, dulling the voice of conscience, hoping that this harsh God does not exist. Others remain decent citizens, but calmly side-line God in their thinking; they profess to be atheists or agnostics, so that the perturbing idea of God does not bother them.

Those who recognise within them the hunger for some transcendent reassurance hope that the God who is fairly vague in their imagination does look down in kindness upon them. For them to seek after that God with eagerness of heart, however, is another matter. Some attend worship, without really knowing too much about their God. Others keep him in the background of their minds, in case they ever need some divine help. Some seek God, but fail to find him; he seems distant, absent so they don’t bother too much about practicing any religion.

There is a balance that needs to be found here. If God is not kind and good, he is not worth believing in; if he is not righteous in his holy requirements of us, he has no moral fibre – which means he is not good. When Jesus was teaching about his Father, he revealed BOTH the awesomeness of God’s righteous demands and his eternal just judgment, AND the extraordinary kindness and grace by which he grants mercy, forgiveness, and acceptance to those who turn sincerely to him in trust and repentance.

So both our inner intuitions about God possess some truth. How they cohere in balance is brilliantly seen in the Cross of Christ. He died “for us”: we are, as sinners, under God’s wrath and judgment; but in amazing love the Father sent his beloved Son to suffer the just penalty on our behalf. On that basis God grants mercy and forgiveness justly when we repent and trust our Saviour.

Clive Every-Clayton