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