Foundations

Four Big Questions We Should Be Asking But Typically Don't

Peter Mead

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781781916865

Part 1

The
Four
Questions

1: Which god is God?

The first and most important question is the God question. Which god is God? What is He like? How do we know? This is the first foundation stone.

Which God don’t you believe in?

When I speak to someone about spiritual things, I tend to be encouraged when they say that they believe in God. Not so fast! Which God do they believe in? The identity and nature of God determine everything else, so getting these right is critical.

What if someone says they don’t believe in God? Then I should probably ask the same follow-up question: which god don’t you believe in? This tends to be very revealing, and typically I find I don’t believe in that god either! Let’s think about the God who reveals Himself in the Bible.

For the purposes of our journey through these four questions, I’d like to point us to the book of Acts. This is the account of the early church as the message of Christianity spread across the Roman Empire from its Jewish beginnings. For the first few chapters it really is all Jerusalem-centred and the church is an entirely Jewish thing.

Then God does two things. First, in chapter 9, He grabs hold of a Jewish anti-Jesus persecutor of the church named Saul of Tarsus (we use his Roman name, Paul). God turns his life upside-down and commissions him to preach about Jesus to the nations. Second, in chapter 10, He convinces Jewish church leader Peter that the message of Jesus is for Gentiles (non-Jews) too.

So in chapter 13 we see Paul heading out from his church to preach the message of Christianity to people in other lands. Interestingly, he always seems to start in a synagogue, preaching to Bible-trained Jews and interested Gentiles. Typically he gets a response from some, but then a jealous backlash from others, resulting in his having to leave the synagogue, and often the town too.

But there are two occasions where Paul preaches to an entirely pagan crowd, a group of people who had no Bible awareness, no Bible stories as children and no Bible training as adults. What does Paul say to these people? Interestingly, he makes answering the God question his top priority.

Churning Things up in Lystra (Acts 14:8-20)

In Lystra we see the healing of a crippled man creating a big stir and leading to an opportunity to preach the Gospel. Barnabas and Paul find themselves being identified as the Greek god Zeus, with his communications director, Hermes. Things get even more awkward when the priests of Zeus show up with a bull to sacrifice to them! So what do they do? Do they affirm the people’s belief in a powerful god-figure and go on to explain the elements that were slightly off target? Not at all! They resist the whole scenario and declare that this sacrifice must not occur. Then Luke records a mini-sermon synopsis for us:

‘Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness’(Acts 14:15-17)

The whole message is offering an initial answer to the Which God? question. Paul urges them to turn from these vain things to the living God. He is the patient God, the kind God, the God who is the creator, the life-giver, the generous God…that one!

Creating Tensions in Athens (Acts 17:16-34)

Just a few chapters later we find Paul on his second missionary journey, this time arriving in Europe and coming alone to Athens. While he waits for his colleagues to catch up he wanders around and sees the idols placed all over the area. He finds the culture distressing, but then gets an opportunity to speak before the gathered philosophers at the Areopagus. Does he accept their religious awareness and then seek merely to add and tweak? No, again he presents the real God from scratch.

‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, “To the unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, ... being Lord of heaven and earth ... gives to all mankind life and breath and everything...that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him..’ (Acts 17:22-27)

His message feels a lot like the synopsis we saw from Lystra: God is the life-giving, in charge, generous, kind, wanting-to-be-known God. Their approach to divine things is ignorant, but Paul invites them to reject false gods and turn to the true and living God. The resurrection of Jesus is the proof of the coming judgment that will end this window of opportunity. At this point Paul seems to have been interrupted, but there were a few who believed.

There are at least three things we should learn from Paul as he spoke of God in these two passages.

1. Paul did not bypass the Which God? question. On both occasions where the audience did not know their Bibles, Paul answered this question as the first priority. It is dangerous to assume that people know what is meant by the term ‘God.’

2. Paul had one source of information about this God. In Athens he was speaking to a mixed group of both Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. That sounds intimidating. Actually, we are all effectively amateur philosophers: we try to make sense of the world based on the information we have and our own common sense. Similarly, all philosophers are theologians because they are trying to make sense of everything, including any ultimate divine being.

Stoics had a certain view of God; they saw the divine being as the pre-determiner. They believed that we live in a world where we need to engage our minds and think clearly, not letting our dangerous emotions carry us anywhere, and we need to be self-sufficient, rational and efficient. (To illustrate this with a slightly unfair caricature, this is a bit like the common view of the older generation’s approach to life: the stiff-upper-lip approach.)

Epicureans also had their own view of God. They also saw the divine being as distant and impersonal. Their mantra was something like, ‘there is nothing to fear in God and nothing to fear in death, so just attain good and endure evil.’ The result was a live-it-up mentality. Go for the thrill. Live in the moment. If it feels good, just do it. (To give another unfair caricature, this is how many today would typically view the younger generation.)

Paul had his nose in his Bible a lot!

Many have observed that Paul never quotes from the Bible, while he does quote from their own poets. In fact, he is brilliantly on target, with every line pointed at the Stoics, or the Epicureans, or both. So no Bible quotes, but two poet quotes. However, don’t miss a critical point here: the source of his information was not philosophy, or culturally defined ideas from poetry. Rather, it was all profoundly biblical. Every statement Paul makes shows he had his nose in his Bible a lot!

For centuries, people have been bringing philosophical assumptions about God to the Bible and have tried to blend what the Bible says with ‘what we know is true of God.’ This most often means that they are attempting to blend a distant and unknowable divine ‘it’ with the God of the Bible who has stepped in and made Himself known (see John 1:18).

All philosophical speculations about God tend to imagine a god who is completely self-absorbed, but the God of the Bible is completely self-giving. The god of philosophical speculation will typically be an enlarged projection of ourselves – a bigger, more impressive me as measured by the values of this world. As a result, speculative views of god always make Him out to be a glory-grabbing self-absorbed being (a bigger version of fallen humanity). By contrast, the God of the Bible is all-glorious, but He gives glory instead of grabbing at it. The God of the Bible and the god of philosophical speculation are very different and we should give up on combining the two, once and for all.

This is not to say that we should not give God all the glory, nor that God will ever share His glory with another god or mini-god (see Isa. 43:7, for instance). All of creation is an overflow of the gloriously loving and self-giving fellowship of the Trinity, so all of creation exists by and for the glory of God. The key issue is the nature of that glory – is it the self-absorbed obsession of an imagined divine being, or the self-giving goodness of the God of the Bible?

Perhaps you have never studied philosophy or tried to write a paper combining the two presentations of God. Here is how we can know if we are doing just that in our thinking. When we assume we can speak of God based on a set of truths before coming to the Bible, we are doing what I am describing. ‘We know God is the ultimate Supreme Being and super powerful and everything is for His glory and you can’t really know Him…’ – these are statements that reveal a composite view of God, even if most of this is true and you can attach Bible verses!

The mistake is that we think we are already somewhere in our knowledge of God. But we need to get into the Bible and know God on His terms. What is God like? He is like ...

Table of contents

• Testimonials
• Title
• Indicia
• Contents
• Foreword by Tim Chester
• Introduction
• Part 1: The Four Questions
• Part 2: Building on the Four Questions
• Other Books of Interest from Christian Focus Publications
• Christian Focus