THE GOOD GOD

 THE GOOD GOD

 

Around the Year with Emmet Fox

 

November 4

 

God knows everything, and at all times.

The Bible sometimes speaks of God

as having changed His mind or being disappointed.

God is supposed to have tested Abraham’s obedience

in the matter of Isaac.

God is supposed to have had His plans upset

by the misconduct of Adam and Eve,

by the general wickedness of humanity before the flood,

and, in fact, He is frequently represented

as being disappointed

and even frustrated by the conduct of mankind.

In orthodox theology,

the devil was continually upsetting God’s arrangements

and bringing his plans to naught.

Indeed, to listen to some preachers, one would have supposed

that the devil was a good deal more powerful than God.

Of course, all this is nonsense.

Such things could not be really true of God.

It was Abraham’s idea of God

 that led him to prepare to kill Isaac.

It was the wickedness of mankind

 in the antediluvian world

that brought on the flood

as a natural consequence,

just as the fears, hatreds, jealousies,

and greed of mankind

over many years have brought on war.

We make an idolatrous image

of ourselves and call it God.

Let us destroy this image today

and worship the true God

who is infinite and unchanging Good.

 

“God is not a man, that he should lie;

neither the son of man,

 that he should repent. . .”

Numbers 23:19