Seeing through subjective spectacles February 24, 2009

With the aim of becoming slightly better read, I have begun an adventure into the “Classics” section of Borders (other bookshops are available!).  Thus, I find myself currently reading Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. And using words like “thus”. I’m quite enjoying it so far, although I do occasionally find myself a little frustrated by his elongated descriptions of the fictional countryside of Wessex. I find his prose far more interesting when it turns to people, and his observations about them. My favourite is as follows:

 

“In making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.”

 

I reckon this is true of how most of us view a lot of things in life. We are subjective. We don’t always see what is there, but what we want to be there. Instead of who people really are, we sometimes see only who we want them to be.

 

I think we can make this mistake with God too. We try to make him what we want him to be. But to do so, turns God into some sort of fictional, created being, and therefore what we end up believing in isn’t God at all, but an entirely imaginary character.

 

God doesn’t fit into our wants. He doesn’t fit into our box. He’s not going to change because it would be more convenient for us, or because we think it would be better for us, or because we think we’d find it easier if he was a different way. He cannot be coloured or moulded.

 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

 

- Isaiah 55:8-9

 

God is eternal, beyond our full comprehension, glorious and never changing.